Welcome to another week of Author Chat. This week’s guests are Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood. They did the interview like they write their books, together. That means we get two sets of answers instead of one. Interesting fact: Ryan and Joshua don’t live far from me, though we’ve never met. (I’ll need to change that once we get my daughter vaccinated.) They write steamy MM hockey romance novels like their current release, Fire in the Ice.

Check out their interview to learn more about this awesome writing duo, make sure you join their mailing list, and enter the giveaway.

Now, let’s chat with Ryan and Joshua!

ACwA Guest: Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood

What inspired this storyline

Josh: Ryan and I are both eager for there to be openly gay players in the NHL. There are junior hockey and college players who have come out, and some have been drafted by NHL teams, but none are yet playing for an NHL team.
Ryan: One of the things we explored in Fire in the Ice was what would happen if teammates fell in love. We settled that question, and when we began talking about Ice Angels, Josh asked, “If being teammates in love was tricky, what would happen if players on different teams fell in love?”
Josh: Talk about complicated! There would be two sets of teammates, a long-distance relationship, and a lot of travel to complicate things further.
Ryan: We decided to use that as part of the plot of Ice Angels, and it produced a beautiful romance with a big dose of passion.
Josh: The most important thing was that Cleevs and Drew were madly in love. They were both determined to make their relationship work, not simply blame each other or wallow in their misery.

How did the muse lead you to tell this story?

Ryan: We knew we didn’t want conflict between the main characters.
Josh: Ryan and I like to have our main characters face some obstacle together, not to have trouble between themselves.
Ryan: As we worked on the outline, we explored how Drew and Cleevs could overcome the challenge of a relationship that was not only long-distance, but also closeted.
Josh: They’d been together long enough to know they were committed for the long haul, but because they played for different teams, they lived hundreds of miles apart for most of the year.
Ryan: They needed to find a way out of that pain, and coming out became part of the process.
Josh: The muse sitting on our shoulder led us to see how those different problems could be interconnected and solved together.

When did you know who your main characters were going to be? Was it an easy decision? What was the “aha” moment that these were your guys for this book?

Ryan: We spent most of the summer working on another book, which will be released in January. Obviously, it has different main characters.
Josh: As we wrote, Cleevs and Drew came up as side characters. They have small roles that are nonetheless important to the story, and we began discussing the possibility of building a tale around them for the holiday book.
Ryan: When the time came to sit down and work on the book that eventually became Ice Angels, it was obvious that our entire perception of the story had Drew and Cleevs in the main roles.Josh: We started writing and never looked back. Their story told itself, so we were confident we made the right choice.

You wrote this story while on vacation in St. Barts. Can you tell us how much that played into the book?

Ryan: Obviously, Cleevs and Drew’s trip to St. Barts was inspired by our travel there. We wanted them to go somewhere special, and the answer was staring us in the face.
Josh: Many of the things we wrote about the island, hotel, and the guys’ schedule there were based on our own experiences.
Ryan: We’ve always had a policy that we wouldn’t write about a place we’d never been because we want the smack of reality you can’t get any other way.

Did writing this story spark any ideas for future books?

Josh: Yes, though we can’t say too much about that yet.
Ryan: We will tell you that we’ll be changing our approach to future storylines somewhat. We’ve thoroughly dissected the question of whether hockey players can be in relationships with each other.
Josh: There are so many aspects of love between men who play hockey, and those have different slants for storytelling. Don’t expect the Bethesda Barracudas or the characters you love to go away, though. They’re here to stay.

Ryan Taylor & Joshua Harwood’s Newest Release

BLURB

Drew and Cleevs love hockey, but they love each other more. How can the men find a way to save what matters most?

Todd Cleever and Drew Simon are crazy about each other. They started dating three years ago when “Cleevs” was a rookie defenseman for the Chicago Ice. Drew, the team’s captain, was a few years older than Cleevs. Both men were deep in the closet, but it didn’t take long for them to fall in love.

Cleevs was traded to the Bethesda Barracudas a year later, causing a heartbreaking separation. Ever since, they’ve skated around the problem with occasional stolen nights together and brief vacations under the guise of “friends,” but two years of living apart have taken their toll.

As the holiday approaches, Drew and Cleevs decide things have to change. Still, with their careers and two professional hockey teams in the way, how can they score the game-winning goal and save everything they cherish most? If you like fierce love, a smallish age gap, exciting hockey, and a steely determination to make things work—not to mention enough steam to fog up all your windows and a fantastic HEA—this is the book for you. The novella contains about 43,000 words of sparkling holiday romance.

Buy Links

AMAZON US

AMAZON INTERNATIONAL LINK

Giveaway!

WIN A COPY OF YOUR CHOICE OF THE FOLLOWING BOOKS: THE CHRISMUKKAH CRISIS, WHAT HE REALLY NEEDS, TOO CLOSE TO THE FLAME, NICE CATCHING YOU, FIRE IN THE ICE, OR ICE ANGELS. All you need to do to enter is comment below.

About Ryan & Josh

Ryan Taylor and Joshua Harwood met in law school and were married in 2017. They live in a suburb of Washington, DC and share their home with a big, cuddly German shepherd. Ryan and Josh enjoy travel, friends, and advocating for causes dear to their hearts. Ryan also loves to swim, and Josh likes to putter in the garden whenever he can. The romance they were so lucky to find with each other inspires their stories about love between out and proud men. You can contact them through their website at https://www.ryanandjoshth.com/.