Elin Gregory

I’m delighted to be hosting RJ and VL today as a celebration of their ice hockey series about the Railers team. It’s always sad when a series ends, but it’s something to celebrate too as the authors go on to explore the lives of new characters. So let’s hear how the Railers stories came to be and wish all the beloved characters well.

Building the Railers

Building any kind of team for a writing project, be it hockey players or a SEAL team, or a group of friends, can be approached in so many ways. Believe me when I say Vicki and I have learned a lot about building a team in our hockey writing, mostly by trial and error, and always with a lot of fun.

For example when we created the Railers, we didn’t really have a sense of who the team were. We knew that the Railers were a fairly new expansion team, and we knew what our storyline was for book 1. Other than that the team itself was a blank slate.  As new to each other co-authors we were literally flying by the seat of our pants for Changing Lines (Railers 1) and the May/December, best friends little brother, story, just fell out of us in only three weeks.

We had our star, we had a coach, we even had a Russian goalie who didn’t speak very good English. What we didn’t have was the rest of the team, and for the Railers series, that happened very organically after book 1. We kept a google doc that we could both access with names, relationships, positions, age, and most importantly country of birth.

A hockey team is made up of guys from all different countries. From the big contributors like Canada and the USA, there are also swedes, Finnish, Russian, Norwegian… the list goes on. As the team grew, so did the spreadsheet of information, and the spread of countries we represented in our writing. Then not only did we need our players, but we required a person in marketing, another to control social media, even the name of the security guard that became a focal point in a couple of the books. Not to mention we had to name an arena!

For the spin-off, Owatonna U (NA series), we created a team of character names to start with. Sitting in Vicki’s house in Pennsylvania we came up with characters and the positions they played first. We already had Ryker, he is the son of Jared Madsen in book 1 of the Railers, but the rest were all new to us. As we wrote names down we got over excited with small character sketches – “his dad drives the bus!”, “He’s lost his brother”, “He gets to be in the NHL draft!” and just by sitting together and coming up with names we also came up with the stories we wanted to tell.

Slowly but surely our teams have become more, and with the release of the final Railers novella we not only have teams, but we created family.

Changing Lines (Harrisburg Railers #1) – Jared & Tennant

Can Tennant show Jared that age is just a number, and that love is all that matters?

First Season (Harrisburg Railers #2) – Layton & Adler

Layton wants success, Adler wants family, how can love made both these things possible?

Deep Edge (Harrisburg Railers #3) – Trend & Dieter

One man’s passion, another man’s lies. Can love fix even the darkest of hearts?

Poke Check (Harrisburg Railers #4) – Stan & Erik

One scorching summer in each other’s arms could never be enough.

Last Defense (Harrisburg Railers #5) – Max & Ben

A hockey player with a medical secret, meets the owner of a no kill shelter. Two men afraid to feel have to make choices that could end up breaking down their defenses and leading them back to love.

Goal Line (Harrisburg Railers #6) – Gatlin & Bryan

Fear and sadness mark Bryan’s life, can Gatlin show him that you have to trust before you can love?

There’s a giveaway too, which you can enter by clicking the Rafflecopter Link