Rachel Reid is the bestselling author of the Game Changers hockey romance series that includes Heated Rivalry, the TV adaptation of which (by director Jacob Tierney) has become a massive hit since it premiered on Crave in November. Rachel and I talk about how she, as someone who submitted the manuscript of her first novel without even telling her partner or her family, is handling the sudden explosion of attention, about the pressure she feels to make her next book worthy of this attention, and about her rules when it comes to writing explicit sex scenes.

The interview has been edited here for length and clarity.

How have these few weeks been for you? Because I’m assuming this is not your usual pace. This is not your usual level of visibility.

No, no, usually my level of visibility is almost none. It’s been very weird and overwhelming and amazing but kind of still really hard to believe. I can’t believe it’s such a short amount of time, but things have changed so much for me. I mean, just professionally, I’ve definitely kind of levelled up, as an author, to another category, doing things I never thought I would achieve, like the New York Times Best Sellers list. Being invited to a lot of events that usually bigger authors might get invited to. And also getting offered all of my travel expenses paid for—that kind of thing. Before, it’d be more like a “Would you like to come to this convention? It costs $500 for a table” kind of thing. And now it’s “We would like to fly you here and put you up in a hotel and pay you.” And so, it’s just in the last couple of weeks that that’s changed a lot, and obviously, my book sales have gone up a lot, and just generally, everybody is very familiar with my characters and my story, which is a very unusual and amazing feeling.

When you are at these conventions, even the ones you’re being flown to, and being put up in these hotels, are you still reflexively, like, stealing shampoo and putting soap in your bag and going like, “I could use this stuff”?

Yeah, you know, I was put in the Four Seasons in Toronto for the premiere, and I felt like a hick, like I don’t belong here. And they had these maple toffees, and I was dumping them in my purse every day. Because I was like, I mean, free toffee!

One thing I noticed—and I wonder if this is going to change—is when I was looking to contact you, I was like, “Well, I’m probably going to have to go through six different levels of management and agents.” And then I looked on your website, and there’s a line literally saying, “Here’s my email address. If you want to talk to the real me, it’s really easy.”

I might have to change that. I just hired a publicist, because I have been getting a lot of emails—more than I can read, more than I can respond to—and probably some of them are good and should be responded to. I mean, things like a Rolling Stone interview request had gotten buried in my inbox. And I was like, “See, that shouldn’t get buried.” So things like that. It’s not like a one-person job anymore, I guess, being me.

I do feel like—and I don’t want to push........

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