Why I wrote Heated Rivalry

Portrait by Suki Dhanda

The Canadian author Rachel Reid realised she was part of something big when Heated Rivalry ­– the hit TV series based on her 2019 queer ice hockey romance novel – was discussed during CNN’s New Year’s Eve broadcast live from Times Square in New York. “You’re watching with your family in Nova Scotia, and they’re talking about whether they’re a ‘Shane’ or an ‘Ilya’. I was, like: ‘What? I can’t believe they’re talking about my characters,’” Reid tells me in still-shocked tones.

Heated Rivalry details the steamy closeted love affair between two male players in the fictional Major Hockey League: Canadian Shane Hollander, portrayed by Hudson Williams, and Russian Ilya Rozanov, played by Connor Storrie.

After its premiere last year on the Canadian streamer Crave – the show aired in the UK in January – it has morphed into a word-of-mouth phenomenon: it was the most-watched series for Crave, while averaging 9 million viewers an episode on HBO Max in the US.

Titles from Reid’s Game Changers hockey romance series – Heated Rivalry and her other Ilya/Shane novel, The Long Game, plus the separate, ice-hockey-star-meets-barista tryst Game Changer – entered the New York Times and Sunday Times bestseller lists. Canada’s former prime minister Justin Trudeau said he was a fan of the TV show. There were themed events and raves. Before the first series had finished, a second was commissioned, based on The Long Game.

While there have been popular LGBTQ+ streamers before (the Netflix series Heartstopper, for example, and the US romcom movie Red, White & Royal Blue), Heated Rivalry, created by director Jacob Tierney, turbocharged the sexuality. You don’t see actual sex acts, but it’s explicit for mainstream fare: oral sex, anal sex, masturbation, graphic dialogue (“Did you enjoy sucking my cock?”) and noisy orgasms. When Ilya and Shane aren’t getting it on in hotel suites or sports stadium shower cubicles, they’re passionately emoting their love for each other.

When it was reported that huge numbers of heterosexual female viewers were tuning in, it generated more cultural debate: why were straight women so invested in a sexually explicit queer romance?

Reid and I talk in a room at the Union Chapel in north London, where, later, fellow romance author Talia Hibbert will interview her before a rapturous 850-strong crowd at a Waterstones event that sold out in less than three hours.

She is combining a family trip (she has two sons – 16 and 12 – with Matt, her husband of 18 years) with promoting her 2023 novel Time to Shine. Just as Heated Rivalry made stars of Storrie and Williams – who were among those chosen to carry the Olympic flame for the Milano Cortina Winter Games – interest has soared in Reid’s work: a kind of metaverse of queer ice hockey erotica, featuring myriad male gay/bisexual characters (Troy, Harris, Ryan, Fabian, et al). All her titles – previously only available as ebooks – can now be bought in bookshops in the UK.

Friendly, with dryly amused eyes and a light, ready laugh, Reid is still reeling from her fame: “Authors – we’re not usually seen.” She adores Tierney, Storrie, Williams and everybody else involved with Heated Rivalry. She had thought the book was unadaptable. “Jacob just had this vision – it was beyond everything I could have hoped for – and so loyal to what I wrote.”

She had also expected Heated Rivalry to appeal to fans of her books and be a “Canada-only” thing: “This is way beyond anything you dream about as an author,” she says.

Reid’s books explore topical themes – prejudice, neurodiversity – but they’re also much more sexually explicit even than the TV series: in her Heated Rivalry, sprawling passages are devoted to a single blowjob.

How did she research it – or did she just dream it up?

“I, you know, had some experience, some conversations, and then reading lots of books.” Later, Reid says: “The sexiness of the show and the books makes people have ideas about me. They’re not sure what to expect when they meet me … I’m just … normal”.

Reid’s family and parents are proud of her success but, she tells me, in the past, she was reluctant to tell people she wrote queer hockey romances – because it was difficult to explain: “Since the show came out, I don’t have to explain, I just say: ‘Heated Rivalry’ and people know.”

A lifelong inhabitant of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Reid (a pseudonym: her real name is Rachelle Goguen) became interested in erotica as a teenager. She took a political science degree and was aiming for law school, but performing queer burlesque – “Very scrappy, artsy – taking my clothes off” – to raise money for sex workers was a turning point: “It introduced me to a whole lot of cool queer people. It was: ‘Oh, these are the kind of people I want to hang out with.’ … I don’t think I would write the books I write now if I hadn’t done that back then.”

She started writing hockey romance as a “creative outlet” as a young mother – sometimes while sitting on her children’s beds as they went to sleep. An ice hockey fan from childhood, supporting the Montreal Canadiens, she wrote in the spirit of allyship: “I wanted to write a book addressing homophobia in hockey.” While there’s a more out culture in women’s hockey, there are still no out male National Hockey League (NHL) players. “It’s a very homophobic culture. More than other sports.”

She’s been pleasantly surprised by the reaction in hockey circles. The NHL’s commissioner, Gary Bettman, said he’d watched Heated Rivalry. She also heard there was a 20%-plus boost in NHL ticket sales since the series aired. “People in the hockey world told me it’s started conversations that have been long overdue. That’s really exciting.”

The third book, Unrivaled, will feature Ilya and Shane as out, married thirtysomethings. It was due this year but was put back to June 2027 because of Reid’s worsening symptoms from Parkinson’s disease, which she explained to fans in a heartfelt Instagram post.

Reid was diagnosed with the condition in 2023. Four days later, she received a message from Tierney, who had read her books in lockdown and wanted to adapt Heated Rivalry.

“When I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2023, I didn’t think I was going to enter the best period of my life,” she says wryly. “I didn’t expect my life to get much, much better. It was great timing because I really needed the boost. It gave me something positive to focus on, and when you have something like Parkinson’s, your mindset really helps.”

During our conversation, Reid holds her right hand a little. Towards the end, she prefers to stand to talk, explaining: “I’m just going to stand up now – for tremor reasons – not to be weird.”

She had been expecting the diagnosis: “I had this tremor on my right side for over a year. My toes on my right foot were curled really tight all the time. I knew that combination of things typically means Parkinson’s.” She was relieved it wasn’t something worse, and to start medication. But the excitement at Heated Rivalry’s success meant she overdid it and her symptoms worsened.

“I’m just slower for writing – probably a third slower at using a computer than I used to be – but also just mentally; all this is not putting me in a great headspace to create fiction.” While her health is the most important thing, she also wanted more time to work on Unrivaled. “I really didn’t want to write a bad book. Once a book’s out there, it’s out there for ever.”

The success of Heated Rivalry shone a light on to the literary romance genre, where there are tropes (rivals to lovers, redemption arcs, May-to-December affairs) and sexually explicit subgenres, such as romantasy. Queer hockey lies within the sports romance subgenre, and Reid stirs in issues such as structural homophobia: “I love writing about toxic masculinity in general,” she says.

There has been criticism of Heated Rivalry, however, including that it idealises and fetishises gay sexuality for a straight audience. The actor Jordan Firstman of the US TV comedy I Love LA stated that it wasn’t how gay men had sex (he apologised later).

“I remember somebody saying that, and that it was like a whole thing,” says Reid. “But I think, generally, there’s lots of ways people have sex – we can assume that one person’s not the expert.” She adds: “I try to write sensitively and thoughtfully and talk to people and make it somewhat realistic – even though it’s also fantasy.”

Also, while Reid focuses on men, she isn’t against writing female-based erotica: “I’d love to! I’d very much like to write a book with female main characters.”

What about all the theories relating to how strongly straight women respond to Heated Rivalry? One was that, wearying of the dark side of heterosexuality (be it apps, or violent pornography), they’re drawn to explicit but consensual queer sex, untainted by misogyny and gender imbalance, but also connected and emotional.

“There are a lot of theories,” she smiles. “It’s either really complicated or really simple. I’ve heard the gender politics side of things – and I’ve also heard people say: ‘Oh, I just think it’s hot!’”

Reid points out that women are the biggest consumers of fiction and romance. “The emotional vulnerability is really attractive to a lot of women … But also, some women like to remove themselves if they’re reading sex scenes. Maybe because of their own history, they feel more comfortable if they don’t see themselves in it.”

She agrees it’s strange how anyone could be surprised by how sexual women are. “Women are sexual beings too – with desires and libidos like men.” When I mention EL James’s 2011 novel Fifty Shades of Grey, Reid says: “Fifty Shades of Grey was important for any fans of sexually explicit books … removing some of the stigma of reading books like that.”

As a romance writer, does she feel there’s snobbery towards any genre that predominantly women enjoy?

“Yeah, I think that’s why I was ashamed to say that I was writing these kinds of books for so long. It’s something people are dismissive about. They don’t understand and they don’t want to understand.”

When the author, whose creation arguably demystified gay sex for a generation, gets back to Nova Scotia, she will continue writing Unrivaled. “It feels like quite a lot of pressure, like the whole world is waiting for it.”

She sometimes feels nostalgic, too, for the old days of tapping away on an iPad on her children’s beds. “It was pure joy back then. It wasn’t a job … I was just writing for me.”

Heated Rivalry, Reid explains, was originally conceived as a standalone book. “It was going to follow them to retirement and beyond. I’m glad I didn’t do that.”

Will it stop with Unrivaled – as a trilogy?

“A trilogy is probably good. I’m going to try to wrap it up,” Reid laughs. “But I said there wouldn’t be another one after The Long Game, and now there is … Who knows?”

Photographs by Alamy