Tag: family

Sisters on Ice: Two by Birth, One by Choice, and a Farewell to Ovi

On By Bella BruceIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Yesterday I promised I’d tell you about the trip, and more specifically about the name. So pull up a chair (there’s room in the Smut Hut) and let me introduce you to Sisters on Ice.

On paper it’s simple. Three women, eight days, one very big country, three hockey games and a quantity of snow I genuinely cannot picture, because I have never seen snow. Not once. Not a flake. I’ve also never seen a live hockey game, which, for someone who writes as much hockey romance as I do, is a confession I make with my whole face going red.

We fly into Vancouver at the very end of November. From there we drive to Edmonton for the Capitals against the Oilers on the third of December, then four hours down the road to Calgary to see them take on the Flames at the Saddledome, in its very last season. Then a full day’s drive back to Vancouver for the Capitals and the Canucks on the seventh. Three games, three cities, a lot of highway and, I suspect, a lot of bad car singing.

Will any actual writing get done? Honestly, probably not much. Millie and I have been writing together since the late nineties, and we already know how this goes. We won’t make words. We’ll make stories. Long drives are where we plot out loud, argue about character names, and invent entire towns somewhere between one petrol station and the next. Some of the best books I’ve ever written started in a car with Millie, and I fully expect to come home with a notebook full of chaos and at least three new series I absolutely don’t have time for.

I’m also hoping to bring a few printed books along for the ride, so keep an eye out. If you’re going to be at any of those games, there may just be a giveaway or two.

Why Sisters?

Two of us actually are sisters. There’s me, and there’s Jo, my long-suffering sister, who has followed me into more adventures than any reasonable person should and has never once let me forget a single one of them.

The third is Millie, and Millie needs a little more explaining.

Full disclosure: Millie and I were together once. We’ve been writing partners for twenty-five years, and for a while we were more than that. In the end it wasn’t a lack of love that did us in. It was the Pacific Ocean, and two governments that had no interest whatsoever in closing the distance between Tasmania and the Pacific Northwest. Love will get you a long way, but it won’t get you a visa.

Millie is married now, and happily so. And here’s the thing: when the romance ended, the friendship didn’t. It was too good to lose, so Jo and I did the only sensible thing and adopted her. She’s family now. Not by blood, not by law, but by stubbornness, which in my experience is the strongest glue there is.

So, Sisters on Ice. Two by birth, one by choice, and all three of us about to be very, very cold.

The Uniform

Every family needs something that ties it together. Some families have a crest. Some have a recipe. We needed something we could actually wear, and since this is a hockey research journey (I am saying that with a perfectly straight face), there was only ever going to be one answer.

A jersey.

Three jerseys, three women, one little found family. When you see three women in the stands looking slightly underdressed for the weather and far too excited for people their age, that’ll be us. Come and say hello.

And Then Ovi Happened

Here’s the part I still haven’t fully recovered from. We had the whole thing planned. Flights, drives, tickets, thermals. And then, after all of that, Alex Ovechkin announced his retirement.

Seeing Ovi play in person has been on my bucket list for longer than I’d like to admit. Suddenly it wasn’t just a bucket-list item. It was the last chance. So the trip quietly picked up a second name, and now Sisters on Ice is also the Ovi Farewell Tour.

I’m fine. I’m completely fine. I’ve just booked a separate seat for my feelings.

Over To You

So that’s us: two sisters, one adopted sister, three jerseys, three games and a goodbye. I’d love to know what you want to see from the road. Snow reactions? Arena food reviews? An honest account of three women in a hire car crossing the Rockies? Tell me in the comments, and I’ll do my very best research on your behalf.

Bella x

Gone Dark (Not By Choice): Chicklets, a Naked Ducklet and Holding My Breath for Tom Wilson

On By Bella BruceIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

So. If you’ve been wondering where I disappeared to these last few days, the short answer is “everywhere except near a decent internet connection.” The long answer is this blog post, and I apologise in advance, because you all know by now that I have never once told a short story when a long one was available.

I flew up to Brisbane to tick off a list of Things That Must Be Done before the Canada research trip. (Yes, I’m still calling it a research trip. Yes, I’m sticking to that story. The hockey is research. The snow is research. Any poutine consumed will be strictly for the purposes of authenticity.)

Then, rather than fly home like a sensible woman, I drove. For those of you not up on your Australian geography, driving home to Tasmania means that at some point you run out of road and have to put the car on a boat. The overnight ferry is many things: an adventure, a test of the stomach, a surprisingly decent night’s sleep if the sea is feeling generous. What it is not, in any sense of the word, is online. No Wi-Fi. No signal. Just me, the dark water and a creeping awareness that my social media wasn’t so much slipping as falling down the stairs in a heap.

And then I got home, and instead of catching up on everything, I started pulling the house apart and putting it back together. The idea is that when we come home from Canada, jet-lagged, frozen and full of stories, we walk into order instead of chaos. Future Bella is going to be so grateful. Present Bella has dust in places dust should not be.

The Farm Report

First, the chicklets. (Chicken chicks, for the uninitiated. I refuse to call them anything else.) They survived four entire days without their helicopter mum hovering over them, and every single one of them made it. I’d like to say I was purely relieved. I was relieved. I was also mildly offended at how little they seemed to need me.

Then there’s the ducklet. She’s the lone survivor of a summer that included both the male ducks and the ravens, which tells you she’s made of stern stuff. She’s about six weeks old now, a big, beautiful baby, and she still doesn’t have a single proper feather. She is all fluff and confidence, like a bridesmaid who’s lost her dress somewhere around midnight but remains fully committed to the dance floor. The feathers should arrive any day now. I check every morning. She looks back at me as if to say, “Patience, woman.”

Meanwhile, In Hockey

Let’s talk about the moment my heart stopped.

Tom Wilson threw a hit and got tossed with a game misconduct, and I just about had to breathe into a paper bag. I was certain, absolutely certain, that a long suspension was coming. Because a) he’s Tom Wilson, and the league has a long memory where he’s concerned, and b) I had done the maths, and a suspension of the length I was imagining would have kept him in the press box right up to and including the last game we’re flying across the planet to see.

Picture it. Thousands of kilometres. Thermals. Snow I’ve never seen. And Tom in a suit.

But lo and behold, the hockey gods were smiling on all of us. No suspension. Not even a phone call from Player Safety. Sometimes, just sometimes, things work out.

And while we’re on the subject of hits, Chych laid out what might genuinely be the hit of the season, and that didn’t draw any supplementary attention either. Excellent news for everyone except, I suspect, the gentleman on the receiving end.

Which brings me to the most important point of all: the sisters’ trip is safe. Jo (my long-suffering sister, who has survived far worse than a Bass Strait crossing in my company) and I are still on track, Millie is still counting down from the Pacific Northwest, and the boys we’re going to see will all, fingers crossed, be in uniform rather than in suits.

One More Thing (Because Of Course There Is)

I almost forgot, and I would never have heard the end of it. The signage for my office shed arrived today. It’s official, it’s on the door, and I can now formally welcome you all to the Smut Hut.

This is where the magic happens: the writing, the podcasting, the blogging, and a fair amount of staring out the window at the mountains while pretending I’m plotting. There’s no cats allowed (their rule is the only one they’ve ever obeyed), there’s always a kettle within reach, and there is absolutely a chair with your name on it. So come in, kick your shoes off, put your feet up and stay a while. Just mind the stack of notebooks by the door. It bites.

Over To You

Now that I’m back online and the house is slowly coming back together, I want to hear from you. What should I be researching while I’m over there? What do you want to know about seeing hockey live for the very first time, from someone who has only ever watched it on a screen at ungodly hours of the Australian morning? Tell me in the comments. I’ll take notes. Probably on a napkin. Possibly in the dark.

In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be standing at the duck pen, waiting for feathers.

Bella x

In My Defence, It’s Thorough Research

On By Bella BruceIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I want to show you something.

What you’re looking at — if you’ve scrolled down to the images I’ve attached to this post, and I hope you have — is the Professional Hockey League. The PHL. Men’s league, women’s league, full team rosters of logos, jerseys, and mascots for every franchise in both competitions.

Portland Pioneers. Seattle Sirens. San Francisco Golden Gate. San Diego Wave. All the way through to Charlotte Fury and Kansas City Heartland and everyone in between.

Every team has a logo. Every team has a home jersey. Every team has a mascot with a name — and I want to take a moment to appreciate that the Portland Pioneers’ mascot is called Dusty and he is wearing a cowboy hat, and the Nashville Sound’s mascot is a purple musical note called Pick, and the Dallas Queens have a horse in a crown called Queenie, and I love all of them unreasonably.

Now. Here is the thing I need to address directly.

I am, in my books, currently using three of these teams.

Three.

Out of thirty-two in the men’s league and sixteen in the women’s league. I have built forty-eight teams — complete with branding, mascots, staff rosters, full operational crews, support staff, back office personnel, and arena teams — and I am, at present, using three of them with any regularity.

Is this crazy?

I have been asked this question, mostly by myself at two in the morning, and I want to give you my honest answer.

No. It is not crazy. It is thorough research, and I will tell you why.

The PHLu exists as a universe, not a backdrop. When Deacon Worth skates out onto the ice in Portland, he is not skating into a vague gesture at a hockey league. He is skating into something real — real in the way that matters for fiction, which is to say internally consistent, fully populated, and detailed enough that I know exactly what the rivalry history is between the Pioneers and the Seattle Sirens, why the Las Vegas Aces have the reputation they do, and what it means for a player to be traded to the Austin Capitals versus the New York Empire. I know the arena staff by name. I know who runs the back office. I know the mascots and what they mean to their home crowds.

And that last part matters more than it might seem.

When a character gets traded — when someone leaves the team they’ve bled for and shows up in a different dressing room, a different jersey, a different city — that transition has weight. Real weight. I know exactly what colours they’re leaving behind and exactly what colours they’re pulling on for the first time. I know what their old mascot looked like and what the new one means to the fans in that arena. If a character hands a kid a puck with their old team’s mascot on it in a quiet moment of goodbye, I know what that mascot is. I don’t have to make it up on the spot or leave it vague or hope the reader doesn’t notice the gap. It’s there. It’s real. It’s Dusty or Cinder or Bolt or Surge, and it means something specific because the whole universe means something specific.

That is what the worldbuilding is for. Not the parts that end up on the page explicitly — but the parts that make everything on the page feel true.

None of it ends up in the text in any heavy-handed way. You will not read a chapter in which I pause to describe Jackpot the Las Vegas Aces mascot in loving detail. That is not what this is for.

What it is for is the texture. The specificity. The particular quality of a fictional world that has been thought through rather than sketched — the kind of world where a character can make a throwaway comment about another team and it lands as true because it is true, within the logic of the universe, because I actually know the answer.

I’ll also be honest about something else, because I think honesty is earned here: some of my logos will look familiar to hockey fans. There are only so many ways to put a letter in a shield or a flame around an animal before things start to rhyme with something already out there in that other league. I know this. These logos live in my blog and in my head and almost certainly nowhere else, and I’m at peace with that. They needed to exist. Not for the world — for me. For the integrity of this universe I have been building, which required real teams with real identities rather than placeholders with vague colour schemes.

This is my hockey world. I built it from the ice up. And my hope — my genuine, slightly sleep-deprived hope — is that the more I have already built it, the more you will love it too. That when you read about the Pioneers you will feel the weight of a real franchise behind them. That when a character bleeds in that jersey it will mean something, because you know what that jersey looks like and what it stands for and who else has worn it before them.

That’s the dream, anyway.

That and Dusty. Always Dusty.

— Bella 🏒

On Found Family and the Teams We Build

On By Bella BruceIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

One of the things I love most about writing hockey romance is the thing that was true about hockey long before I started writing it: the team is always, already, a family.

Not always a comfortable one. Not always a quiet one. Families rarely are. But a family in the truest sense — people who did not choose each other initially and who, through the specific alchemy of proximity and pressure and shared purpose, become something to each other that has no cleaner name than that.

The PHL has its blood families, of course. Brothers who came up through the same system, who learned to skate in the same backyard, who ended up on the same roster because the talent ran in the same veins. Fathers whose sons are now playing the game they played a generation before, sometimes for the same organisation, sometimes facing each other across a faceoff dot with the specific complicated weight of all that history between them. Those stories are real and they are rich and they are part of the fabric of the league.

But they’re only part of it.

What gets me every time — what got me long before I started building the PHLu universe, when I was just a reader falling in love with this sport — is the found family. The one that forms inside a locker room and on a bench and on a bus between cities at two in the morning. The one that happens because these men spend more time together than they spend with the people who chose them by love or marriage or blood. You cannot be that present in each other’s lives without becoming something. The question is only what shape the something takes.

Sometimes it’s the veteran who takes the rookie under his wing and teaches him how to survive the league and doesn’t say a word about it to anyone. Sometimes it’s the line that develops the specific shorthand of people who have been reading each other’s bodies on the ice for long enough that the communication happens below language. Sometimes it’s the goalie and his defense, who have a relationship that the rest of the team watches and cannot fully explain and does not try to.

And sometimes — and this is the one that breaks my heart open in the best possible way — you find the small family within the family. The cluster of three or four or five players who have become something specific to each other inside the larger something of the team. The ones who have each other’s emergency contacts. The ones who show up. The ones for whom ‘teammate’ stopped being the right word somewhere around the second season and nobody has quite found the better one yet.

The PHLu is full of them. The Worth family gave Portland its backbone — real brothers, real history, the complicated grace of people who grew up together and are now performing the same work in front of crowds — but they are not the whole of what the Portland Pioneers are. The Pioneers are also every player who walked into that locker room without a single person who belonged to him and found, slowly and then all at once, that he had a room full of them.

That’s the story I keep coming back to. Not the blood families — though I love them — but the ones that built themselves from scratch, in the middle of a season, in the specific hothouse of a roster that has to function as one thing while being made of very many different and individual people.

It doesn’t take long, in hockey, to find the small families within teams. They’re always there if you look.

I have been looking for a long time. I am still finding them.

🏒 — Bella