Forgotten Love Stories #2 – “Cracking Ice” + Q&A

I don’t know if I can justly call “Cracking Ice” a forgotten love story when it’s my longest book to date (which is also the reason it was published as a serial). But in a way, I’m known for shifter omegaverse, so I do think it gets overlooked.

What makes Cracking Ice different from your other books? Other than the lack of howling at the moon, obviously.

Well, it took me five years to write it for one. But I guess the reason it did is that I bit off WAY more than I could chew. As an artist, there is always this struggle between familiarity, staying in these spaces that are gloriously beautiful and meaningful to me and the demanding pull of more. I don’t wat to keep saying the same thigns again and again (though obviouslyI still have a lot to say about arranged marriage 😅)

But even then, I am not the same person, I keep growing and writing is a way to explore that growth and solidify it, and hopefully share it in a way that is meaningful to someone else too.

When I began Cracking Ice all I had was the idea of enemies/rivals to lovers and ABO, of course. I have never watched a hockey game, I get distracted by all the moving players and can’t follow the play, and I did some research but the more I learned, the more I realised I would never be able to truly put it down on paper like other people did.

So I thought, fine, let me just take the parts I like, the ones I feel when I read hockey stories, and to cover my own arse a bit, I made the goal lights purple and started adding strange details that would make it clear this was not our world.

But you can’t give me a new set of paints like that and expect me not to play around, so suddenly there were electric scooters and public transport was great and inequality existed in A/B/O but the world was not disabling people who couldn’t walk or hear—everyone learned to sign as a default, which meant in turn people could talk to foreigners that way pretty well and there had never been a second world war and green energy was a given.

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***SPOILERS*** Is that why Carry doesn’t get a label until the end?

Yeah, exactly, in a world that is adapted to neuroatypical individuals, Carry doesn’t need to tell Keenan he’s autistic and give him a list of his ‘special’ needs. People who care about him pay attention and ask questions and they do their best—same as we all do with those we love.

The other reason for that is a really cool blog post by a fanfic author I read years ago about how while she was all for LGBTQ+ rep, she also thought it would be particularly cool if someone wrote a story about some guys having adventures and then at the end revealed they were gay or romantically involved with each other. Sort of like their sexuality became an afterthought.

Not because it’s not important, but because if you are, say, hunting vampires with your best friend in the world who you would die for, it’s not all that relevant if you are also fucking him.

I’m a fan of sex as a gateway to intimacy, so you probably won’t catch me writing that one, but I thought it was a brilliant idea from an inclusivity point of view. Like, sure, Carry is autistic and no one blinks twice because in the end, Carry is Carry.

Is that why Keenan’s Indian?

I got no idea, I have decided character’s ethnicity on occasion (because it’s so easy to default to white), but Keenan was Indian from the get go. Just like he was from a loving family who made him feel confident in who he was (remember Keenan identifies as monosexual, which is unusual in their world where bisexuality is the norm), which is why Carry disliking him is quite hard for Keenan to cope with.

It’s probably got something to do with the fact that as someone who’s been a immigrant most of my life, I often feel drawn to characters who have got a double culture like that.

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***MAJOR SPOILERY QUESTION: highlight to see***

***What made you give Keenan a different love interest in the middle of the book?***

Keenan’s not someone who has needed to question himself a lot. His parents have gone through tough shit, sure, and Keenan knows the world isn’t all rose coloured, but he knows who he is.

Until Carry.

But the thing is… Keenan only accepts his attraction to Carry because he understands it’s fated. They are a one true pair and therefore they should be together.

Some people find soulmates romantic, I’m not so sure myself and Carry agrees. What’s romantic about this person who shows up and wants to be with you forever without even knowing you? Your dislikes? Your loves? Your flaws or your history?

It feels invasive, frankly, and kind of fake too.

You could argue that it’s someone who sees past all the superficial shit and sees right into your soul…

But I feel like I’m as much the choices I have made as I am my soul, so I want someone who sees both and says: yeah, okay, you fucked up there, and you are still not perfect and I want you anyway because I can tell you keep working to be better/more aligned to that awesome soul of yours. And I think that work reflects in my books. So if we are together, I will be better, you will change me not simply because you love me but because watching you be brave enough to love yourself will inspire me to aim higher.

So Carry calls bullshit on the soulmate bond, and Keenan meets Amalia and she is the kind of person who can do that for him, inspire him to be better.

He admires her work, and in fact, they break up because he has learned enough from both her and Carry to want to raise his own flag and stand up for omega rights.

Sometimes it’s like that, someone loves you and you love them and your roads diverge.

***END SPOILERS***

Are there more books in this series?

In my head? Yeah, definitely. Written down… Well, you might have seen A Unique Perspective here and there because I had a gorgeous cover made and then ran out of steam. I wrote about 80,000 of that so not super happy about leaving it in a drawer.

Funnily enough, that’s a side novel that doesn’t connect to the main storyline of Cracking Ice and Not Destiny, unlike Amalia’s own romance and two others that come in between (M/M Beta/Beta & M/F/M).

That cover was a serious sign of overconfidence on my part, so I’m just going to say that I hope to one day get to tell you those stories.

Do you have more questions? Ask in the comments!