We chat with author Kate Cochrane about Wake Up, Nat & Darcy, which is a sapphic second chance Olympic hockey romance and follows follows two former teammates turned rivals, and now co-hosts of Wake Up, the USA’s winter games coverage. PLUS we have an excerpt to share with you at the end of the interview!
Hi, Kate! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a former attorney who is now a law librarian which means I get to do all the fun parts of being a lawyer with no billable hours and lots more teaching. I played Division 1 hockey in college and went to the first ever women’s Frozen Four. I live outside Boston with my wife, two teenage daughters, and two labradors.
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I wrote a few stories when I was in elementary school which were “published” by parent volunteers who typed and bound the books for us. But I came back to writing after our second child was born. I was at home with both of them and I needed something that was all my own. I started writing as a way to have something concrete to show for each day and fell in love with it.
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Noisy Nora by Rosemary Wells
- The one that made you want to become an author: Ash by Malinda Lo
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
Your debut novel, Wake Up, Nat & Darcy, is out November 12th! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
teammates, exes, rivals, spandex, shenanigans
What can readers expect?
Readers can expect silliness. Nat and Darcy are former teammates and girlfriends turned exes and on-ice rivals who now are teamed up to cover the Olympics for a morning show called Wake Up, USA. They try out a variety of other Olympic sports to varying degrees of success all while snarking at each other and falling back in love.
Where did the inspiration for Wake Up, Nat & Darcy come from?
There are at least four Team USA-Team Canada married couples I can think of off the top of my head and that is not something I had seen explored in romance novels to the extent I think it deserves. I wanted to play around with teammates who fell in love only to find themselves on opposite sides in the greatest hockey rivalry on the planet. I also wanted to be able to talk about the fact that women athletes, even multiple gold medal winning athletes often need a second act in life because they aren’t paid like their male counterparts. So, some of the book explores what happens when players retire from hockey and have to figure out what comes next.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Oh I had a blast writing all the scenes where they try other sports. Any scene where I could make world class athletes struggle and talk trash to each other was a lot of fun. I got to channel my own experience of what it sounds like in locker rooms filled with funny, competitive athletes who love their teammates but will be absolutely brutal when it comes to taking the piss out of each other.
This is your debut published novel! What was the road to becoming a published author like for you?
Long. As I said, I started writing when my youngest daughter was an infant. She’s thirteen now. So it has been a long road full of setbacks and rejections. But I think being an athlete certainly helped me have the tenacity, grit, and just stubbornness it took to get to this point.
And also, I am incredibly lucky to have a family that supports me and has for years. They allowed me to steal time to write and always took me seriously even when the rejections were much more plentiful than any bit of good news. I couldn’t have done it without them.
What’s next for you?
I’m writing my next book, YOURS FOR THE SEASON, which will be out next year and is a romance starring one of the small characters we meet in Nat & Darcy. It’s a smalltown, Christmas week romance.
Lastly, what books have you enjoyed so far this year and are there any that you can’t wait to get your hands on?
If you like mystery I can’t recommend Tom Ryan’s THE TREASURE HUNTERS CLUB highly enough. In terms of romances I loved, Alison Cochrun’s HERE WE GO AGAIN made me laugh and cry, Anita Kelly’s HOW YOU GET THE GIRL is a must for anyone who loves sporty queers, and Mae Marvel’s EVERYONE I KISSED SINCE YOU GOT FAMOUS was just so good. I can’t do any of these justice so just go read them!
EXCERPT
Darcy hated being called an ice princess. The implication, especially coming from Natalie, that she was cold and aloof, that she lacked any feelings, really bothered her.
She wasn’t cold. She didn’t lack feelings. If anything, she had too many that were too easily hurt. Caring too much about what her friends thought, about their future as a couple, about Natalie had led to her making the biggest mistake of her life. It had cost her Natalie and broken both their hearts.
She looked at Natalie and tried not to pick a fight. They were getting along better every day and it made working together significantly more fun. But the way Natalie casually mentioned Grace’s concerns coupled with how easily she dismissed the notion that she’d ever have feelings for Darcy burned.
People treated her differently when they found out who her father was or that she’d won a bunch of gold medals. She was proud of those accomplishments but wished it didn’t change how people spoke to her, how they treated her. It was too much pressure to live up to that image. Anything she said or did could only ruin that impossibly high opinion. Her anxiety told her there was nothing she could do to improve on people’s expectations of her. She could only disappoint them.
If she didn’t fall all over herself to be kind and polite, or if she was having a bad day, people might think she was rude or aloof or full of herself. Or, like Natalie, they might claim that everything she had was given to her because of her last name and not because she’d worked her ass off for it.
This had bothered her for years, and she’d mostly realized that there would always be people who thought she’d been handed all her successes on a silver platter. She couldn’t change who she was, but she could try to care less about the people who would never look past her last name.
Back in college, she thought that Natalie saw through all that bullshit. They joked with each other, and being a Canadian princess was a big part of that, but it was always lighthearted. She thought Natalie knew that all of that was a joke, not a real thing. It made her relax in Natalie’s presence. She could be herself with Nat.
Back then, when they were together, she didn’t think about the pressure to be perfect. She didn’t worry about disappointing Natalie because Natalie didn’t expect her to be superhuman. Darcy didn’t worry about disappointing Natalie by failing to live up to some image of her that wasn’t real.
Except, she blew it. She ruined all of that. She disappointed Natalie, and herself, and she’d never really recovered. She vowed she’d never disappoint another person like that ever again. Having Natalie bring up Grace brought all the memories flooding back.
A couple days after they got back from the NCAA finals, it felt like everyone on campus stopped her to say congratulations. When Darcy looked up from her meal, she expected another round of congratulations. Instead, Grace started screaming about how Darcy was a “selfish, overrated, asshole who deserved to spend the rest of her life alone and miserable.” Darcy tried to shake it off but Grace’s words ate away at her, even years later.
She looked over at Natalie, who was making notes on her legal pad. Was she thinking about what an asshole Darcy was all those years ago? Did she still hold that grudge? Or was it nothing to her now? Was Darcy’s biggest regret something Natalie never thought about because Darcy was just some insignificant footnote to her life? Was Natalie taking shots at her for fun, or was there real hurt behind her words?
Darcy couldn’t decide which was worse, being someone Natalie never forgave or something Natalie never considered at all.
“What about this?” Natalie shoved her laptop toward Darcy and hit play on a YouTube video. Darcy watched as a skier took off over and over again and then demonstrated indoor training where he jumped off a platform and his coach held him aloft.
“Who knew ski jumping had so much in common with Dirty Dancing?” Darcy said, her eyes on the screen.
Natalie laughed. “I think if they have us do that we might kill someone. These jumpers are built like whippets and we…”
“Are not,” Darcy said with a laugh.
Darcy found another trove of videos and watched ski jumpers flying off the end of massive jumps again and again. There had to be some videos of people training, little kids or beginners, learning how to do this wild sport because there was no way she was going to go to the top of the ramp let alone ski down it and off the edge. No matter how badly she wanted this job, she wasn’t going to die for it.
She turned her screen to Natalie. “I’m not keen on killing some poor, unsuspecting skiing coach, but I’m also not excited to fly off the end of that ramp and die in a fiery crash.”
Natalie scoffed. “The hill’s covered with snow, there’s zero chance we’d catch fire.”
Darcy shoved Natalie’s shoulder without thinking about it. Then realized what she’d done. “Sorry. Unprofessional.”
“Remove your hockey stick from your ass, LaCroix. You’re allowed to joke around with me. I’m not calling HR because you stopped pretending we haven’t known each other for fifteen years.”
Darcy nodded solemnly. “Things with us…” She had no idea how to finish that sentence. “I didn’t know if I was allowed after everything.”
Natalie held her gaze. “I’m a grown-ass woman, Darcy. People have said mean words to me before. I’m sure they’ll do it again. I can take it.”
Darcy swallowed. Natalie hadn’t forgotten what she’d done. But it wasn’t clear she had forgiven her either. It felt worse, somehow, to be dismissed as one of a group of people who had been shitty to Natalie. When it came to Natalie, she never wanted to be one of a crowd, she wanted to be the only one.
She tried to read Natalie’s expression, searching for any bit of hope she could find there. Natalie wasn’t giving anything away but her eyes weren’t angry. If anything, Darcy would have said they were soft and gentle, the blue sparkling with mischief and something else. Darcy wouldn’t let herself hope that there might be more there. How could she even dare for a second chance after what she’d done? She’d hurt Natalie, the first girl she’d ever really loved. She didn’t deserve a second chance.
But sitting in that stupid conference room, watching videos of skiers flying into the air, she realized she wanted another chance with Natalie.
And she had no fucking idea how to get Natalie to give her one.
