After last season’s heartbreaking loss to his hockey team’s archrival, Jacksonville Sea Storm goalie Riley Hunter is ready to let go of the past and focus on a winning season. His new roommate, Ethan Kennedy, is a loud New Yorker with a passion for social justice that matches his role as the team’s enforcer. The quieter Riley is attracted to Ethan and has no idea what to do about it.
Ethan has no hesitations. As fearless as his position demands, he rushes into things without much thought for the consequences. Though they eventually warm to their passionate new bond, it doesn’t come without complications. While trying to financially help Ethan, Riley must hide his family’s wealth so as not to hurt Ethan’s immense pride. For their relationship to work, Ethan will need to learn when to keep the gloves on and let someone help him—and Riley will have to learn it’s okay to let someone past his defenses.
Today I’m very lucky to be interviewing Avon Gale author of Save of the Game.
Hi Avon, thank you for agreeing to this interview. Tell us a little about yourself, your background, and your current book.
Do you buy a book because of the cover, the blurb, or something else?
Any and all of those! Blurbs usually get me since I’m a word person, but I love a good, intriguing cover. Usually though I read the blurb, and I get a lot of recommendations from friends. I love the “recommendations” features on Amazon and GoodReads, and I also love those user-created lists on GoodReads.
What does ‘romance’ mean to you?
I generally say that what I find romantic is when two people are better together than they are apart. I’m not really a sentimental person, and my characters don’t tend to be, either. Romance to me is about how people treat each other and respect their partner(s) as individuals and equals, no matter what other dynamics are at play in the relationship. I consider myself a character-driven writer and the thing I love about romance is writing people’s relationships – not only with each other, but family and friends, too. It’s why I tend to have a lot of secondary characters in my books. I also find confidence and security in one’s relationship to be romantic, which is why my characters often express that they are attracted to other people to their partners, even if it’s just in fantasy and they don’t do anything about it (or even if they do!) Celebrating all kinds of sexuality is a big thing for me as a writer.
What are your current projects?
Currently I’m editing the draft of the fourth Scoring Chances novel, getting it ready for submission to Dreamspinner. I’m also working on two novellas, one about a bourbon distillery in a small Kentucky town and one about old time hockey players in the 30’s. Novel-wise, I have a book about rock singers and a fantasy novel to finish up. I have a thousand WIPs, it’s really ridiculous.
What is the most difficult part of writing for you?
Editing that first complete draft, ugh! I’m a very fast writer but a sloooooow editor. I can complete a book in half the time it takes me to edit it into something manageable. I don’t generally outline unless I get lost somewhere in the 40K mark (okay, let me rephrase that – I generally don’t outline UNTIL I get lose somewhere in the 40K mark :D ) so a lot of my character development happens as I’m writing. It makes for a wordy manuscript with a TON of irrelevant background information that I have to cut out. It means I know my characters well, but it often bogs the story down. One of my goals as a writer is to get better at avoiding the “info dump” and work on my incorporating backstory into the main story.
Tell us something about yourself that would surprise people.
People are sometimes surprised to find out that I went to graduate school for ancient history. I studied military colonization of the Spartan military. It’s really boring. But I love Spartan history and Bronze Age Greece stuff, and all my schooling is in classics, art history and history. Yet I write contemporary romance about hockey players and am a hair stylist at my day job! Academia wasn’t for me, but I will never regret the chance to study what I did for seven years, even if wild horses – centaurs even – couldn’t drag me back to graduate school.
His phone beeped, alerting him that he had a new text message. It was from Ethan Kennedy, the defenseman the Storm had acquired before the trade deadline last spring. The rowdy Kennedy, who had a heavy New York accent and was a huge fan of the New York Rangers—a team Riley hated, by virtue of being a New Jersey Devils fan—had bunked with him for a few weeks during the finals. He’d gone back to New York after the Storm lost in the playoffs. Riley hadn’t been sure if he was coming back or not, but the text message indicated he’d just gotten back to town, and would Riley mind picking him up from the airport?
And oh, he got a cheaper rate by flying into Tampa, which was three hours away. Was that a problem? And one last thing. Riley didn’t need a roommate by any chance. Did he?
Riley looked around his apartment, which was nice and clean and quiet. Just like it always was, except for those few weeks last spring when Ethan was there. He was loud and messy and always in Riley’s space, left half-full cans of Pepsi everywhere, drank whiskeys with dubious-sounding names, and smoked like a chimney.
be there in 3 hrs, Riley texted and grabbed a few boxes of coconut water out of his fridge. The idea of coming home alone after games reminded him of those car rides in Wyoming, and he was getting tired of the silence.
Avon Gale was once the mayor on Foursquare of Jazzercise and Lollicup, which should tell you all you need to know about her as a person. She likes road trips, rock concerts, drinking Kentucky bourbon and yelling at hockey. She’s a displaced southerner living in a liberal midwestern college town, and when she’s not writing you can find her at the salon, making her clients look and feel fabulous. She never gets tired of people and their stories -- either real or the ones she makes up in her head.
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