via Leslie Cohen
Alright, we’re back with more from the most unexpected literary career of 2025.
As you might recall, Sean Avery, the hostile NHL icon who lived in the penalty box, is now writing steamy romance novels.
It’s one of those absurd book projects that I’m happy exists. Good proof that you can just do things, as the saying for the chronically online goes.
His co-author, Leslie Cohen, just dropped an essay at LitHub claiming that novelists are actually tougher than hockey players. Her reasoning is pretty solid: Baring your soul to critics is way worse than a punch to the face—especially when, as she puts it, “They’re on skates! There’s no… leverage.”
Given that Cohen also admitted they “fought constantly” while writing (apparently, Avery dismissed her entire tennis career as “amateurish”), we’re inclined to believe her, just knowing how Avery’s reputation precedes him.
Their book, Summer Skate, is about what she calls a “forbidden, lust-drenched game of chicken” between a brash New York Rangers rookie and a novelist in the Hamptons.
The gloves are clearly off, both on the page and off.
We’ve got our hands on another exclusive excerpt from this fascinating project. Go buy it wherever you buy your books, including Amazon.
Dive in.
You can order Summer Skate via Amazon, where one 5-star reviewer says it’s “the hockey romance novel I’ve been waiting for” and notes they were “genuinely impressed by the storyline,” or your favorite local bookstore.
I stayed out later than everyone else last night, yet somehow, I’m up first. Yup. It’s just me and the girls, the random girls strewn about the house. They’re in the bedrooms. They’re by the pool. But they aren’t making anybody breakfast, so that’s what I do.
I rent this house with my former college teammates, Harps and JT. Scott Harper is a goalie from upstate New York. He’s quiet, so quiet that you can’t tell if he’s depressed or happy. You’d have to decipher whatever wildly outlandish thing he says under his breath. He’s into astrological signs. From Monday to Thursday, he does sunrise yoga, reads the classics—Hemingway, Kerouac—and looks through his telescope. What’s he looking at? Nobody knows. But then, Friday to Sunday, he goes, and he goes hard. Booze. Girls. A lot of cocaine.
Jack Thomas, JT, is a left winger from Canada. He loves electronic music, like deep house. He plays it every chance he gets. He dresses like a white rapper and doesn’t give a f*** about anything. He’s always high, always going up or down. He sniffs out all the late-night parties. But he knows who he is. He’s accepted it. And I mean that. He has an arm tattoo that says: I am what I am.
A scout from the Rangers came to see me at UNH during my freshman year and ended up drafting all three of us. I was a first-round pick, meant to finish my degree and go straight from college to the NHL. JT and Harps will go to Hartford to play in the American League for a few years before they get a chance at the show.
There is a knock on the door, and the sound of somebody letting themselves in.
“Hello?” a female voice bellows from the front hallway. It’s JT’s older sister, Jill.
“Hi,” I yell back. “The guys are still asleep.”
She comes into the kitchen wearing a long, pink-and-white checkered caftan and pink clogs. She’s the one who hooked the boys up with their summer job, a catering gig. They’ll make a ton of money, she assured them. I have a signing bonus, so I didn’t need the job. All I had to do was spend the summer in close proximity to New York City, to be available for the team.
I ask: “What’d you get up to last night?”
She doesn’t respond, just sighs audibly, and then goes banging on doors, barging into the bedrooms clapping her hands and clicking her clogs, waking the guys up.
“What is going on in here?” she shouts from the upstairs hallway. “It’s almost ten! Why isn’t anyone awake? You do realize that you have an obligation?”
“Could you chill?” I hear JT say to her. “It’s an eleven o’clock party. We have, like, ten hours.”
“What? The party is at eleven AM!”
“Eleven AM?”
“Yes! It starts in an hour.”
“What kind of party… It’s not at night?”
“Why would you just assume it’s at night?”
“It said, ‘Welcome to the jungle’ on the invitation! In neon lights! I thought it was a Guns n’ Roses–themed rager.”
“Oh my god. It’s a nine-year old’s birthday party. Jungle-themed.”
I start cackling.
Jill comes up to me, grabs my chin, and says in a sing-songy voice: “If you don’t stop laughing, we won’t bring you back any cake.”
I shake my chin loose and get back to my fruit. She is aghast by our kitchen, holding up an empty bottle of tequila and throwing beer cans into a garbage bag. JT is walking around in his white wifebeater, looking confused.
“Your uniforms are at the venue,” she says to him. “Just put on anything.”
Harps puts on a hooded sweatshirt, left arm first. Like all goalies, he’s superstitious. Left shoe first, left arm first. Always.
She says: “Christ. You’re going to be late for your first gig. I’m so glad I recommended you for a job at Celebrate. That was a very shrewd move of mine.” They start moving at a faster pace.
“That’s what the company is called?” I ask. “Celebrate?”
“Yeah… so?”
I throw my hands up into the air. “It has no cachet, no island flare!”
She rolls her eyes and looks at the couch, starts collecting all the handbags off it. “All right, ladies! Show’s over. Ubers, everyone! Back to Gurneys! Last Jitney is leaving the station!”
One girl pouts and shouts something at her in Russian, presumably curse words.
JT crushes Adderall with a credit card onto the kitchen table. He and Harps both snort. Nose to table.
I shake my head at them. “You should have taken your Adderall an hour ago! You know what this is? This is an American League mindset. No berries for you.”
They ignore me completely. Harps grabs a bag of hamburger buns for the road. JT drinks water out of what appears to be a vase, leaves without shoes on, then comes back for them.
“Have you seen my shoes?”
“Get the f*** out of here! Your lack of motivation is contagious,” I say, and then catch a glimpse of the cover of the book on my kitchen counter. The Mindful Path: 9 Weeks to Emotional Clarity and Inner Calm.
I had to take an anger management class in college, a decree from the coaching staff. I keep the book around as a reminder, occasionally flipping through it.
I fight the urge to say more to them. If I stop talking and focus on my breath, I might achieve inner calm. Also, I won’t have to open that damn book.
“What are you going to do while we’re gone?” JT asks me. “Don’t get bored and f*** $** up, okay?”
“What am I going to f*** up here at this house at ten in the morning?”
JT throws his hands into the air. “Who knows what you’re capable of?”
Jill holds the front door open, glares at JT. “He’s fine! Let’s go!”
JT yells back at her, “You think he’s fine, and then suddenly some girl is calling me crying, and he needs bail money! He’s a stealth bomber!”