We chat with author Rufaro Faith Mazarura about Let The Games Begin, which is set against a sizzling-hot Greek summer filled with sunshine and souvlaki.
Let the Games Begin follows the university grad Olivia Nkomo and the star runner of Team Great Britain Zeke Moyo during the 2024 Summer Games in Athens. Can you tell us a little bit about where the idea for this book came from?
When the Tokyo Olympics happened in 2021, we were still in a lockdown limbo. So without much else to do that summer, I fell into a rabbit hole of reading articles about the lives of different Olympic athletes. I watched athletes recording Q&As about what life was actually like inside the Olympic Village in a normal year and to my surprise, they didn’t just mention training routines, strict diets and pre-competition jitters. They likened the Olympic Village to a university campus and talked about the friendships they had formed, the parties they’d gone to and the fascinating non-athletic experiences they’d had. I left that summer wanting to read a book set in the Olympic Village, so when I couldn’t find one, I decided to write one.
I love summer romance novels so I immediately decided to give it a romantic storyline. I also wanted to explore different sides of the Olympics so I knew I had to create two characters who were experiencing The Village from different points of view. Zeke and Olivia became fully formed characters in my head pretty quickly, as if they were people I knew in real life. So once I figured out what two weeks in their lives might entail, the story came together like magic.
In Let the Games Begin, Olivia’s story revolves around the pursuit of a summer internship with the Games. Can you talk a bit about what kind of research you did on the Summer Games while writing this book?
Researching the Summer Games, Olympic Village and what it’s like working behind the scenes of a major international event was my favorite part of the whole writing process. I’m 95% sure the main reason I write stories is so that I can step into somebody else’s life for a couple of months/years and that’s what I did with this novel!
First, and most importantly, I watched A LOT of sports films, documentaries and TV series to get a better understanding of the high stakes that people who work in that world experience day to day. Some of my favorites were Battle of the Sexes, King Richard, Cool Runnings, Bend it Like Beckham and Welcome to Wrexham. I also listened to interesting interviews with Olympic athletes on podcasts like Torched and In The Village. I lost hours of my life to emotional compilation videos of the best/most iconic Olympic moments in history and had a lot of fun volunteering at an international sports event happening in my hometown to get a feel of what the atmosphere is like behind the scenes.
But I think my favorite research activity was rewatching the 2012 London Olympic Opening Ceremony. l vividly remember watching it live when I was a teenager, but seeing it again 10 years later was such a special experience. It reminded me of why I get so swept up in the Olympic spirit every four years and made me so excited to put pen to paper and write my own fictional Summer Games.
Let the Games Begin is such a lush read set against the romantic backdrop of Athens. Which places in Athens or experiences were the most fun to write about, and what are you most excited for readers to engage with while following Olivia and Zeke’s story?
So, this is a bit embarrassing and I maybe shouldn’t admit this out loud, but I’ve never been to Athens! It was a trip I wanted to take before the pandemic though so writing this story kind of gave me the chance to live that out in a fictional way.
There’s an idea that runs through the book about the different versions of ourselves we become in the summer when the days stretch out and there’s more world to see, so I was excited to write the scenes that play on this idea. I think that the best part of travelling is just strolling around a city with no destination in mind and letting yourself get absorbed in the unique sounds, smells and atmosphere of somewhere new. So, I really enjoyed writing the scenes when Olivia lets herself wander around the city and treat the trip like a holiday. I really enjoy reading summer novel scenes that feel like Eat Pray Love so I hope readers feel like they’re stepping into the city and exploring Athens with her during those chapters.
However, my favorite scenes to write were definitely all of the golden hours and sunsets Zeke and Olivia experience together. Everyone looks more beautiful in the sun, and the world feels like magic in that period between golden hour and dusk. I genuinely believe you could probably kind of fall in love with anyone if you spoke to them every day while watching the sunset, it just feels so romantic and otherworldly. So, I’m excited for people to read this with the sun on their skin and a cold drink in their hand.
Olivia is such a fun and passionate character readers will immediately want to root for. Can you tell readers a little about where the inspiration for Olivia’s character came from and what went into developing her charming personality?
Olivia’s storyline came from the initial question ‘What happens when a person who’s planned their whole life out hits an unexpected roadblock?’ From then I decided to map out the kind of character who finds it hard to let go of her carefully crafted plans but who ultimately has the determination to overcome major roadblocks.
One thing I knew from the start was that I wanted Olivia to be a regular person who possesses traits we love to see in athletes: confidence, charm, competitiveness and immense drive (traits the male main character Zeke possesses too). I think sometimes people struggle to appreciate those traits in women, what makes a man admirable can make a woman be perceived as ‘unlikable’. So I wanted to write a character who is trying to preserve those traits in spite of living in a world that might want her to shrink and only openly possess a socially acceptable amount of ambition.
But despite her bravado and self-belief, like all of us, Olivia is slightly terrified of the future and that fear can manifest itself in different ways. I’ve read a lot of novels I loved with characters who respond to fear in a sticking your head in the sand, passive, ‘pretend it’s not happening!’ way which I completely understand. But for me and a lot of the women I grew up with, fear manifests itself in being super proactive, planning out every single thing and potentially losing yourself on the way to maintaining a sense of success and stability. So, I wrote Olivia for the Type A girlies who wait until the summertime to finally let themselves live a little, Liv a little if you will…
Zeke is such a charming, swoon-worthy heartthrob. Are there any male romance leads that provided inspiration for his character?
I wanted Zeke to have a good heart and one of those frustratingly attractive ‘god help me, this man has me giggling’ personalities that no one is immune to. For him to be smooth, emotionally intelligent and charming as hell to the point where even people who are annoyed at him can’t help but fold when he shoots a smile or compliment their way. So, I drew inspiration from some of my favorite on-screen leading men like Anthony Bridgerton, Darius in Love Jones, Peter Kavinsky from To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and the Ted Lasso team. But while I was definitely inspired by romcom leads, I think that personality-wise wise I got most of my inspiration from press conferences and interviews with British footballers and American basketball players. So I wrote Zeke to have the confidence and charm of a superstar athlete with the warmth and down-to-earth nature of a boy next door.
Olivia discusses her ongoing struggles in the workplace along with the similar sacrifices her parents faced immigrating to the UK from Zimbabwe. Can you tell readers why this thread was important to highlight in Olivia’s story?
I think it would have been harder for me to write a character like Olivia without touching on the struggles and anxieties that come with being a Black British woman and the daughter of Zimbabwean immigrants because that’s what has shaped my life and the lives of the people I grew up with. My parents moved to the UK just before Zimbabwe fell into a political and economic crisis and all of the adults I know faced the struggles Olivia’s parents did of feeling homesick in a sometimes hostile country, retraining for jobs they would face prejudice at and feeling a growing distance between their children because of how differently we grew up.
I think when you’re in your teens, the desire to make your parents proud can feel like unfair pressure. But when you get into your twenties and experience the reality of how hard adult life can be, you can’t help but put yourself into your parent’s shoes and realize just how much harder it was for them to navigate those same workplace struggles while also experiencing culture shock. So, it was important for me to write that into the story to give context to why Olivia is so focused on becoming successful. For her, becoming a product of her parents’ wildest dream is the only way to repay them for the sacrifices they made. Even if that’s not a completely healthy way to build a life.
Another important thread in the book is Zeke’s journey with his mental health during his pursuit of his first gold medal at the Games. Why was it important to you to explore this discussion of mental health and the pressures athletes face through Zeke’s narrative?
When the 2020 UEFA European Football Championship’s happened, I like the rest of the UK was seated in front of my TV screen watching the final England vs Italy game. It went down to penalties, and I spent the whole time watching it through my fingers and thinking about how much pressure each player must feel knowing that millions of people around the world were watching them either hoping they won or praying on their downfall.
So many athletes in their prime are still quite young adults and as I watched the game, I kept putting myself in their position and thinking about how if I was an athlete who knew that many people had put their hope in me, I would regularly crumble under the weight of that pressure. Even with a solid support system. The combination of pushing the limits of your physical ability and handling public pressure sounded like it would be overwhelming, so I wanted to write a character who is very successful but is privately struggling to carry the weight of it all. At the time I was coming up with the idea, I was also watching a lot of stories about athletes whose first informal coach was their father (like King Richard and High School Musical), so I wanted to explore what navigating that pressure at the peak of a career would look like without the person whose support, understanding and guidance was most crucial to Zeke’s success.
We know Zeke is the star runner for Team Great Britain’s track team. Besides track, are there any sports that you’ve been following? Have you ever played sports before? If so, did that inform Zeke’s experiences as an athlete in this book?
I grew up in a tennis watching family so I used to always watch Wimbledon on the TV during the summertime. Through that I developed a deep level of admiration for the Serena and Venus Williams, they were definitely role models when it came to teaching me to believe anything was possible. Similarly, I loved watching Gymnastics whenever the Olympics rolled around because of the sheer beauty of each performance.
When it comes to my own life… I’m not going to say that I’m deeply unathletic. But I will admit that at school I always ended up in the team of girls who used PE as a chance to walk around the athletics track chatting about everything that had happened during first and second period instead of running. BUT I am the proud owner of exactly one medal for a 10k that took me an embarrassingly long time to complete. When I was 21, I lived in a house of girls who’d decided to sign up for a half marathon and so every morning before work I’d hear them get up at 6 am to go for an hour-long run, come home and make a smoothie before going to our 9-5. I can be peer pressured into doing anything if it sounds good for me, so I ran for a couple of months and enjoyed just how much it cleared my mind. So from then on, I knew that one day I would want to write a character who used running as a way to manage anxiety and got the infamous runner’s high I am yet to experience.
Olivia and Zeke both have amazing friends in their corner who keep them grounded throughout the summer. The book features so many memorable side characters, from Olivia’s glamorous best friend Aditi, Zeke’s fellow athlete Haruki, as well as Zeke’s talented ex-girlfriend Valentina. Besides Olivia and Zeke, who was your favorite character to write?
Fun fact, when I originally came up with the idea for this book, I wanted it to follow multiple POVs. So while their friends play supporting roles in the story, they are truly full characters with rich backstories in my head, which is what made writing them such an enjoyable experience for me. I hate to choose because I love them all, but Aditi ‘the human personification of sunshine’ was definitely one of my favorite characters to write.
I enjoy showing different sides of a character’s personality through their friends so I wanted to show how light and carefree Olivia can be when she’s doing facemasks, dancing and drinking iced coffee with her best friend, while also giving her a person she can allow herself to be honest and vulnerable with without any judgement. I think it’s necessary to have people in your life who know when to entertain your drama and when to lovingly call you out and that’s the role Aditi plays in Olivia’s life. Also, I just really wanted to write a character that reminded me of my friends who love K-Dramas, summer romance novels, breakfast foods (though iced coffee makes me jittery) and dancing around the kitchen to timeless noughties R&B.
Without giving away any spoilers, what was one of your favorite scenes in the book to write?
Movies rarely make me cry, but my eye always well up at the end of sports films when the protagonists get to the big game/race/competition and finally find out If the dreams they’ve been working towards are going to come true. So, I really enjoyed writing all of the competitions from Zeke’s perspective, especially one of the final running scenes near the end of the novel.
But I think my favorite scene to write was the last chapter of the book. The entire story plays out over less than two weeks, so it was tricky to write a romance that felt realistic in relation to how long they know each other while still feeling like a swoon worthy love story. So, I tried to use the last few pages of the book to give readers a glimpse into what Olivia and Zeke’s future could look like. It’s the scene in the book that feels the most visual to me. When I read it back, I can see it playing out on screen as a slow zoom out unfolding to the last minute of a song I love called Cosmic by Amer Mark. I plan out most of a story before I write it, but the final chapter was one of the few scenes that I just sat down and wrote without a plan as if the characters themselves were seeing it, instead of me being the one writing it out.
What was one of the most challenging scenes to write (or: What was one of the greatest challenges you encountered while writing the book?):
My favorite thing to read in a romcom is dialogue, but I absolutely hate writing dialogue. I found it so hard to write Olivia and Zeke’s conversations in the first draft that I essentially wrote the whole book and just bullet pointed things like ‘Zeke & Liv flirt here’ and ‘funny back and forth about something? IDK???’ to fill in the blanks later because I found it so daunting. Writing good dialogue is like trying to write a tennis match but playing both sides which felt like an impossible task. So, in the end I just sat myself down and wrote the dialogue by asking myself ‘how would I flirt with me if I was split into two characters?’ Then I rewrote and edited it all to suit Olivia and Zeke’s personalities. In the end the back and forth between them ended up becoming some of my favorite sections of the book, so I’m glad I moved past the bullet points!
What books are currently on your nightstand?
I recently started reading Brown Girls by Daphne Palasi Andreades which I’m really enjoying, it’s so poetic and beautiful. Next up on my TBR is Manny and The Baby by Varaidzo, a debut novel partially set at the London 2012 Olympics which I’m so excited to start reading. I got my copy of Just For The Summer by Abby Jimenez in the post last week so I can’t wait to dive into that once the sun comes out. And a friend recommended the book Blessings by Chukwuebuka Ibeh so I’m definitely going to dive into that soon.
Lastly, we have to ask – what are you working on next? Without giving too much away, can you give readers any hints as to what they can expect from your next book?
I’m obsessed with the next story I’m working on! But if I start talking about it, I’ll accidentally tell you everything. So here is what I can say right now:
- It’s definitely not a sequel, but it is set in the same
- You might see some familiar faces, but none of the main characters you’d expect.
- And finally, the last line of Let The Games Begin is a major hint to the plot of *potential* book 2…
