Hat Trick is now out!
So many readers have emailed me and messaged me about when the next Heller Brothers book will be out and HERE IT IS!!I wanted to blog a little about the book so people know what to expect. This is not Matt Heller's story - I do have one planned for him, but there are reasons I didn't write his now. And here they are.
When I wrote Logan’s book, One Man Advantage, I set it in the fall, when the NHL trading deadline is, because Logan gets traded and his life turned upside down, which meant it happened close to the due date of Brianne’s pregnancy (from Breakaway). In One Man Advantage, in early December, the baby is born. Jase’s brothers are still pushing him to get a paternity test, as they did in Faceoff. But there was never a good way to work that result into One Man Advantage, which was really Nicole’s story. And so readers (and I!) were still left wondering — was Jase really the father of Brianne’s baby?
I knew I had to wrap up that story thread. And I have one more book planned, for youngest brother Matt. But at only age 19 in the first three books, I'm going to have to jump ahead at least 8-10 years to make him a hero the age I usually write. How would I work in a detail like the paternity of the baby, which at that point would be pretty old news? Especially if the baby wasn’t Jase’s? (I still didn’t know the answer at that point.) It would seem pretty obviously planted just to tie that up, and I didn’t like that. I also felt that readers would want to be there when that news was revealed, to experience the emotion of the moment, whatever the outcome, rather than read about something that happened ten years ago.
So seeing as the last story ended in early December, I decided to get all the Heller brothers home together for Christmas, and I wrote Hat Trick. Jase and Remi have just got the results of the paternity test. Tag and Kyla also have surprising news. And Nicole is meeting Logan’s overwhelming family for the first time in their new relationship, at a stressful time of year. We get to revisit all three brothers and their girlfriends and at last have the answer we’ve all been waiting for.
I never intended that thread to draw out through four stories, but somehow it did, and I find it so funny that I didn’t know the answer either until I wrote Face Off!
So now we just have to have patience as I try to find enough time to write Matt's story. Believe me, I want it done as much as anyone!