Heated Rivalry, the new hit telly series, has been melting screens and brains for over a month now. For some of us, it’s been years.

And for me, there’s a personal connection that is so freaking cool…

Heated Rivalry released in 2019 with Carina Press, an imprint of Harper Collins, and it slowly built an almost cult like following among queer reader groups. It’s the queer yearning, the heat, the slow emotional build. It hits all the beats. It quickly became one of my all-time favourite books, joining my re-read list. I own it in digital and in print – with the original covers.

In 2019, I submitted a book to Carina Press and it was accepted with plenty of fanfare. A sapphic WWI book, it was going to hit the current trend when it released in June 2020. WWI was massive in 2019.

The way that a pandemic in early 2020 completely changed the reading market and resulted in Her Lady’s Honor completing tanking is a whole other story… This is the story of how I was invited to join a Carina Press discord group and got to hang out with Rachel Reid (and others).

I’ve been there, with a small cohort of colleagues in a niche, queer, sub-section of publishing, chatting about publishing stuff, writing stuff, and occasionally life stuff, for years. We’ve watched Heated Rivalry go from that book that everyone recommends to anyone wanting to try mm romance, to getting a tv deal (and shrugging our collective shoulders while smiling because tv is cool and also because they hardly ever get made), into the show being made as a little Canadian art film project with brand new nobody actors, into a global sensation. GLOBAL sensation!

We’ve all sat in the group talking about how freaking cool it is. And it really is. It’s so incredible to have a colleague on this freaking amazing ride of success. And those books, phew, they really are the best. Rachel has a way of tugging at your emotions as a reader and drawing you into a story that is truly wonderful.

My list of re-reads:
Heated Rivalry, by Rachel Reid (and the sequel The Long Game and Role Model)
Proper English, by KJ Charles
The Duchess War, by Courtney Milan