In the days to follow, she finished reading the fourth book, but read about creative writing concepts she didn’t go in depth before once that book is finished. And, of course, reading about the controversy surrounding the Kraken over hockey romance books. Which made her define what she codenamed “team A”, well, the Kraken.
On November 1, even though she doesn't have a cover page yet, she creates a Google Doc page with a working title: Player Masher. Her hands are shaking after the title and the first chapter title are written, so, to calm her nerves, she decides to make an announcement on her Discord server as well as on her social media. I only had 15 days to learn what I could about creative writing, I feel like I am a little unprepared, but today is the opening day!
And she jots down the scene at the Kraken’s practice facility, with dozens of players being arrayed in a room, awaiting the final cuts of its training camp. She can feel like some players are shaking as the coaching staff, as well as the front office, are present.
“Je vois que tu as commencé par le hockey. Un des livres que tu as lus pouvait se dérouler dans une ville où un joueur peut voler sous le radar” (I see that you began with hockey. One of the books you read could happen to in a city where a player can fly under the radar) her dad skims the few words that his daughter managed to write.
The first one definitely couldn’t have happened in a Canadian city. All 7 Canadian NHL cities are markets where hockey is front and center when hockey is in season, and there’s no way a player whose cap hit is in the $9-10M range is going to go scot-free! A bottom-pairing D-man, or a bottom-six forward maybe, Caro seems a little distracted by her dad’s statement. Here comes the Latvian Player Masher; since Latvia is the smallest of the top-10 hockey countries, it’s also the least represented.
Also, by now, she feels like she needs to write down the core rules of the waiver wire in the NHL because she knows that a lot of hockey romance readers know nothing about hockey beyond three periods, five skaters, a goalie, a puck to be shot at the net, and fights incur penalties. But that’s after the cuts are made, and all players who could be waived end up in a separate room.
The next step is to make a link to the manuscript available in read-only mode for her followers; she feels like she doesn’t have the time for writing more of her hockey romance book before leaving for work.
Speaking of work, she spills the beans to her colleagues about writing a hockey romance book.
“J’en avais plus qu’assez de lire des livres à la glace de rose qui ignoraient l’aspect transactionnel du hockey, alors je me lance dans l’écriture d’un livre qui tourne autour de ça!” (I was fed up reading hockey romance books that ignored the transactional aspect of hockey, so I began writing a book around that!) Caro drops a hammer on her colleagues.
“Mais pourquoi?” (But why?) a colleague, who goes by Chelymun on Twitch, asks her, taken aback by the statement.
“Vous n’êtes pas sans savoir que certains sont devenus fans de hockey à coups de livres d’amour de hockey! Je vais même diffuser son écriture!” (By now you know that some people became hockey fans after reading hockey romance books! I will even stream its writing!) Caro then sends out a text message with a link to her Twitch channel to her colleagues.
Merde! The Canadiens’ season is going so poorly that I might want to read what she called a livre à la glace de rose instead, or on top of watching the next game! Chelymun ruminates about how her favorite team doing poorly leads to her wanting something else out of hockey. However, she didn’t interact with Caro much.
Jacques, their colleague who mentioned the whole Kraken fiasco over hockey romance to Caroline overheard them. “Parfois, il y a un livre ou deux qui l’a l’affaire pour les matchs de hockey, mais le mieux que j’ai lu au niveau transactionnel était un échange qui chamboule un couple” (Sometimes, there’s a book or two who gets hockey games right, but the best I read on a transactional level was a trade that shook a couple)
“Jacques? J’ignorais que vous lisiez des livres d’amour de hockey!” (Jacques? I didn’t know you read hockey romance books!) a surprised Chelymun gasps.
And I began reading hockey romance when the Kraken’s BookTok scandal happened, Jacques refrains from telling them when he began reading hockey romance.
But when she returns home that night, to resume writing the book she has titled Player Masher, she starts the stream with posting the word count of the manuscript before firing up the game. However, Capitolium has yet to supply his opening word count, so both word count bars sit almost empty in a corner.
“Welcome to tonight’s stream. We’ll begin with the daily battle pass quest, for which I have four characters ready to go, two of whom are almost max level, and these will be the ones I will use tonight” Caroline announces to her viewers while preparing her non-max-level characters for use in the daily battle pass quest.
New viewer 1: What advantage is there to use non-max-level characters for daily battle pass quests?
“Despite their finite leveling time, when it lasts, it yields the same rewards but at a fraction of the deployment cost, which is why I usually get the weekly gauntlet done early” Caroline answers her new viewer’s question before actually accomplishing the quests of the day.
If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.
So collecting and leveling characters is one of the main appeals of this game? The viewer starts wondering about what could draw players to the game she normally plays on air, but, for this month, she plans on reducing her on-air play to the strict minimum for the battle pass until Nov. 30.
Once that is done, the attention is turned to the manuscript on hand. She realizes that she has an unfinished scene taking place in a room where the GM and the head coach herded the players about to be waived. The coach has a scathing indictment of the main character, for whom she resorts to picking a random first and last Latvian name.
And the head coach refers to the male lead by his last name to scold him. And you, Kurpnieks, the so-called Latvian Player Masher, during the preseason, you hit like a synchronized skater! This scolding makes Gustavs angry, as well as put him on the defensive. Especially since the higher-ups believed his play tanked.
Lagado (confused behind the screen): What do you mean, that guy hit like a synchronized skater?
Maridun: Please excuse me for not knowing about synchronized skating, but do you think synchronized skaters make good or bad hitters?
“The coach is implying that synchronized skaters make poor hitters!”
The coach wouldn’t be implying that he’s a good hitter if he was placed in a room along with more players slated to be put on the waiver wire, and given the rundown of what could happen to them over the next 24 hours… Caro ruminates about this passage as she writes exactly that, as relevant to him.
Chelymun (pressing the follow button): Come again? Synchronized skaters, poor hitters?
“Thank you for the follow, Chelymun” Caro announces as she keeps quiet about how she knows Chelymun outside of the stream, and the subtext triggers her new follower.
Chelymun: I guess, he could be forgiven for believing Kurpnieks to have gotten worse at hitting because synchronized skating is a mostly feminine world
Maridun: Do you have proof to the contrary?
Chelymun: There is only one ex-synchronized skater I know who plays hockey, she can skate, but doesn’t know what to do with the puck, and she hits like crazy
Damn… Chelymun’s ex-synchro skater friend has what it takes to be a good shutdown D! Maybe I can make my MMC skate like a synchro skater! Like a Jeff Skinner but trading some offensive ability for hitting! Caro starts having a better idea of what kind of player Gustavs is.
Maridun: Are you talking about the kind of beer league where an ex-synchronized skater can dominate simply by skating better than everyone else?
To that question, Chelymun draws a blank. But after this discussion of how experience of synchro skating translates to hockey, then she makes Gustavs agonize for hours as the harsh reality sets in.
That his attempts to preserve himself for a long season cost him a spot on this roster and got him waived. And, of course, crosses his fingers so that he hopes another team would be willing to give him a second chance, and hence take on his $2.25M cap hit as a pending restricted free agent in his contract year.
By this point, Glitter couldn’t resist joining voice chat:
“Caro, right now, there’s too much hockey!” Glitter yells at her.
Capitolium reviews what Caro managed to write about how it would feel to be a player on the waiver wire. “Yeah, just ensure that, going forward, you don’t give characters’ descriptions all at once! Not that a cap hit of two million and some change is a big cap hit per se”
“The cold, hard truth is that often roster players don’t always have the best pre-seasons. Sure, I made him pay the price for it the way, say, a top-pair D-man wouldn’t have”
And, of course, Gustavs’ anger turns into anxiety, as he seems to be waiting for some sort of notification that he’s going to be claimed. Which, in turn, disturbs him in his daily life as he continues to do dryland conditioning.
“I want to see the meet cute!” Glitter keeps harping on Caro.
“This is going to happen after he gets claimed off waivers, Glitter! I already explained in an earlier stream what waiver wires entail for players on it! Now, I never talked about who can be waived, but players on an entry-level contract cannot, nor a player on one can have a cap hit of two point twenty-five million!”
This means he must hastily pack his bags should he be claimed. But of course! Why can’t I make team B the Montreal Canadiens then? And then he’d have his pick of hotels with resto-bars! Or just bars; but this means that if I made him a forward, he’ll be traded away when Laine becomes healthy again, Reinbacher if he’s a D, Caro starts to think about what the choice of teams would imply for Gustavs getting traded away at the deadline, while being reminded of the injuries sustained in the preseason.
“You see, Glitter, hockey romance books often have a lot of subtext regarding the players’ on-ice performance” Capitolium feels like Glitter is mad at Caro, while Caro also has hidden subtext regarding his playing career up to this point.
“I don’t feel too hot about your book!” Glitter yells.
“With Montreal claiming him off waivers, I can invoke the second chance trope, but in a sporting sense!”
“It doesn’t feel like a hockey romance anymore, even if you had the kind of happy ending a hockey romance would have!” Glitter whines when she hears about how Caro plans on putting in a second chance theme, on top of potentially obliviousness to love.
“Caro, you do realize that most hockey romance readers would, at most, be hockey fans that are content watching hockey games?” Capitolium scolds her.
I’d probably lean towards Reinbacher’s return to play being the point where Gustavs gets traded because Laine will be out of play until maybe mid-January and hence make my male lead a D-man! Caro thinks while she reads about the estimated time these two players will spend rehabbing.
“Yeah, they might not be able to tell the difference between a forward and a defender” Lagado comments.
“After all, you have your forwards who seem to be much more effective on defense than offense, and you have your defensemen who contribute to the power play! The latter may very well be conflated with a winger in a hockey romance book!” Caro follows up on a comment about skaters in hockey romance as she gets to the meet cute Glitter waited for.
“As you get deeper into writing the book, you will realize that people will criticize your leads’ actions, just not the same people criticizing you depending on the actions taken” Capitolium adds, as he writes about how poor grades forced his protagonist to consider declaring for the major junior draft over college.
And then Caro starts writing not only how how he reacts to being claimed off waivers, but also the rush to get to Montreal as quickly as he possibly could from Seattle. I guess, the meet cute Glitter waited for will have to come in the next chapter. I can always say the FMC is pretty and reminds him of the girls from his native Latvia; both Québécois and Latvian girls are widely acknowledged as being, collectively speaking, pretty and fashionable, although the former tend to be shorter.
By the end of the stream, the final word count comes in for both: 2142 words for Caro, 2709 for Capitolium. Not bad for a complete newcomer to novel writing! Capitolium thinks that Caro’s daily word count is very good for a first-timer.