New York Times and USA Today bestselling author, Helena Hunting lives outside of Toronto with her amazing family and her adorable, emotional cat, who thinks the best place to sleep is her keyboard. Helena writes everything from emotional contemporary romance to romantic comedies that will have you laughing until you cry. We sat down with Helena to talk about her love for hockey romances and hear all about her latest series, Toronto Terror.

Congratulations on another successful hockey series! Where did the idea come from?

Over a year ago, in April of 2023, I had a conversation with a friend and colleague, Becca Mysoor from FairyPlot Mother and we talked about what I wanted to do next. I really wanted to write a brand new hockey series. I love the Pucked world, but there are a LOT of books, and a lot of stuff to keep track of when you have fourteen books that all sort of sit inside this same world. I wanted to do something new, but I really love writing hockey romance. I wanted to set something in Ontario, in an area that I’m incredibly familiar with. It’s so much easier to write when you know all the landmarks and everything is familiar. So, that’s how that happened, I’d said let’s plot a series and here we are.

You’ve written so many fantastic hockey novels. What draws you to this world?

It’s so Canadian. You almost can’t be Canadian and not like hockey. Hockey is such an intelligent sport, and I really love the team, and I love the aspect of everything that comes with being part of a team. I love how hockey as a sport tends to be these down-to-earth guys, but it’s such an intense sport. It’s so fun when it’s a bunch of guys who are already a found family to begin with–I love found family, it makes my heart happy. It’s a really comfortable place to be, so I think that’s why I keep coming back to it. It’s a really special group of individuals who end up in that world, so it’s a fun place to spend time.

When you first wrote Pucked, did you envision it spinning off into several other series the way that it did? 

Originally, I had two ideas for Pucked–Pucked and what became Forever Pucked. That’s not what ended up happening.  Pucked was the book that gave me a career, my launch book. I had no idea what I was doing, at all. I learned a lot from that series. I wanted to branch off from it, to create a new launch point. The Pucked series is seven books with two sequels in the middle of it. I can now say, never do that! It’s not a good plan. When I wrote the All-In series, I loved that I could pull some of these characters back in. It’s its own series, but it’s series adjacent. 

How do you keep your stories fresh and interesting after all this time? 

I try to ask, what’s something I haven’t done before, or how can I spin this in a different way? I think it’s being able to work with some really cool people who have great ideas and we can generate ideas and build stories together. That is so helpful, and talking through what I am comfortable with writing, and what feels organic to write, and where can I push and move in a different direction. There’s some stuff in If You Want Me and If You Hate Me that’s stuff I’ve never done before, and even in book three there’s a moment where you’ll be like “Woah, that’s gonna happen”. Sometimes you’ve just gotta change it up a little! 

What’s your favorite trope or genre to write? (You’ve done sports romance, small town, etc.) 

I think I really love enemies-to-lovers. It’s so fun, because there’s so much built-in tension already. They can’t stand each other, so when are they going to crack? The tension becomes passion, and the banter is so fun to write.

Is there any storyline or genre you haven’t written yet, but would like to?

Marriage of convenience. I love a marriage of convenience! Whenever there’s a “my wife” moment, I’m in it!!! One day I’d love to write that. There has to be a good reason for it. Why is this happening, and why is this person saying yes to this relationship that they actually don’t want to be in? 

You write an impressive number of books each year. Talk us through your writing process. 

Admittedly, I’m a workaholic, I really like writing books and I need my brain to always be doing something creative. My goal per year is to write between 300,000-400,000 words. Most of my books are around 100K. Normally, it takes me anywhere from 4-8 weeks at the most to draft a book. That’s like, from chapter one to the end, but then I take about 2-3 months for edits. I’ll be editing something and then working on another project. I need space from it before I start editing, I need to separate myself from the characters before I can continue on with the editing piece. For me, editing is the rock climb, it’s the heavy lifting. I look at what’s missing, what needs to be developed, adding all that detail in, and making sure it hits all the notes that I want to hit. 

Do you have a favorite character or series? Or one that has a special place in your heart? 

There’s a book that I haven’t published, it’s been written forever. It sits in the drawer and I’m waiting for the right time, and I have a lot of emotional attachment to it. Of the ones that I’ve published, Little Lies (Lavender & Kodiak’s story) really spoke to me. The timing of it was interesting and very relevant. I wrote it in 2019, and then the pandemic hit. It looked a lot different in Canada than in the United States–literally everything stopped for two years. You couldn’t go anywhere or do anything, we were literally in our homes doing whatever. It was a weird, dark time and I feel like a lot of people that had never experienced anxiety before suddenly experienced anxiety for the first time in this ruthless kind of way. I really connect with Lavender with the anxiety piece, and the messages I was receiving were that people felt seen. I was really happy that I could tackle some real mental health stuff and that people felt it and felt connected to it.

How do you see yourself continuing to evolve as an author? 

I’ve seen some posts that really hit home. Kandi Steiner recently posted somewhere and essentially, it said there is no coasting in writing. It’s not like when you get a promotion and you can celebrate your promotion and new job. In the writing world, you really have to keep striving to hit the next goal, but that target keeps moving on you. For me, I want to sit in this series for a while and enjoy writing it. I’m really in love with writing these books, and I’m having a really good time. I’ll do this for a couple years and then we’ll see what’s next. We’ll see where the next place to go is. Sometimes the trends in writing or books inform your choices moving forward, but I’m having such a good time doing this.  You have to evolve in order to stay in this business, you can’t sit in the sameness.

Can you talk about what’s next?

If You Need Me (Toronto Terror #3) is coming in November–that’s Dallas and Hemi’s story–it’s enemies-to-lovers. These two are such a handful, it’s so fun! Book four, which I’m almost done with, will have its characters announced later this year. I have some other stuff, not in that series, that I’m also working on as well for 2025. There’s lots of stuff happening! 

If You Need Me by Helena Hunting

Dallas and Hemi’s enemies-to-lovers story. While this is book three of the Toronto Terrors series, it can also be read as a standalone novel. The first two books in the series are If You Hate Me and If You Want Me.

Buy the book now: Amazon