In which the magic that happens is extremely accessible
In early 2011, I went to the Bank of Montreal in St. Albert, AB, to activate my first real credit card. I was in the drive-through, because that was what the card told me to do. Bank drive-thoughs are not, like, super fast, so I had several moments of sitting there, listening to the radio and thinking. It was winter in Alberta and my hand-me-down (times three!) car was old enough that it had crank windows, so I was mostly just hoping to time it such that I was exposed to The Outside for as short a time as possible. Then, a song came on the radio.
I am 1000% sure we went to see King Arthur: Legend of the Sword in theatre because Pacific Rim was at least an eighth of our personalities at that point. Aside from a few minor quibbles (someday, Katie McGrath, you will have justice), I adored it. It was funny. It was fast. It was ridiculous. Everyone involved was clearly having a great time. Yet outside the theatre, the movie was getting terrible reviews because it came out in 2017, and in 2017 we were all allergic to fun for some reason. I decided not to let that stop me. I was going to love Trash King Arthur with my whole soul.
The song in bank drive-through was “50 Mission Cap”, by the Tragically Hip. The Hip are an almost aggressively Canadian band that, while wildly popular here, never really broke into the American market. And I don’t think that bothered them. Anyway, while the song goes on to be about something completely different, the intro is a poem about Bill Barilko, a Canadian hockey player who went missing in the plane crash in 1951. But the real story is that the Leafs won the Cup in 1947, 1948, 1949, 1951, and then “they didn’t win another until 1962, the year he was discovered.”
The thing about Trash King Arthur is that people will try to tell you that it’s objectively bad. Those people are incorrect, but they’re usually very insistent. I don’t like Trash King Arthur because it’s A Bad Movie In The Fun Way. I like it because it’s genuinely fun storytelling, great music, an extremely engaged cast, a creative take on an old legend, and has some lines and moments that speak to my very soul. It is absolutely ridiculous. That part is not up for debate. However it’s ridiculousness is a feature, not a bug.
Stay with me, we’re working our way up to a book announcement.
Sitting in the bank drive-through, I thought to myself “What if sports curses were real? What if no one ever found the Barilko plane? What if the Leafs were still cursed? What if Barilko had a family, and that family was ALSO cursed?” I had written two full novels at this point, but I hadn’t had the idea for The Story of Owen yet, so it was before I was seriously considering writing as more than a fun hobby. Still, the idea—and the story behind it—lingered.
One of the characters in Trash King Arthur is named, delightfully, Mischief John. He’s the main bad guy’s 2nd ranked lackey, but does most of the dirty work because Lackey #1 is more of a Yes Man. He has a great accent, several social tiers down from Lackey #1 and Vortigern, and is generally extremely easy to hate. He has several lines and important scenes, but there’s one line near the start of the film that I’ve never been able to decipher.
Years passed after I left that bank drive-through. I wrote The Story of Owen and Prairie Fire and all of the other books. In 2021, I had an idea for a Middle Grade horror novel that I really liked, and in 2024, I decided I was going to try to sell a pair of MGs. The problem was that I only had the one.
Trash King Arthur has become a fixture in my life. I frequently forget what the movie is actually called. I am probably responsible for 50% of the people who have ever seen it. I have made an event out our annual viewing at my writing retreat. And this summer, after eight years of being delighted by newbie reactions to [redacted], Trick Weekes said “Hey, can we watch with captions?” and I realized that we were finally going to understand the line.
I went to the gym that day in 2024 when I was thinking about only having one MG book idea. About halfway through my workout, I casually thought “What if the Hockey book was Middle Grade?”, and by the time I got home, I had cracked open a book that had been haunting my imagination for more than a decade. I had fixed the plot problem. And it was so easy. Hayley just needed to be 14, not 18. Andrew Karre was on-side, and we got to work.
When the sword reveals itself in Trash King Arthur, Vortigern looks down at his soldiers as they try to pull it from the stone. He tells Mercier to get the men back to work, Mercier nods to Mischief John, and then Mischief John shouts “Get them under manners”, which is a particularly British colloquialism for oppressing people. It doesn’t really change my understanding of the film (the context clues are strong), but it’s nice to have the whole picture after all this time, and closed captioning made it possible. I felt a little silly for never thinking about the captions before, but the important thing is that the piece revealed itself.
And that’s what happened with the Hockey book. After almost a decade and half, I had the last little bit of the idea. It seems so easy in hindsight, but it always does. Finding the perfect piece of your book is like finally watching Trash King Arthur with the captions and understanding a line you've been puzzling over since 2017.
All of this brings us to today, in 2025, when I can finally tell you about my Middle Grade debut The Third Period Comeback. It’s a bit like The Story Owen, which isn’t really a surprise, is that it’s Canada with a twist. Instead of dragons, this time it’s magic, specifically sports magic. Hayley Rilko wants to play professional hockey when she grows up, but she can’t, because her whole family is cursed.
To break the curse, Hayley will need the support of her cousins and the freedom of a summer at the family camp north of Timmins. And ATV lessons. No one wants to hike through muskeg looking for the long lost body of their great-grandfather.
The Third Period Comeback will be published by Penguin, Dutton Books for Young Readers in the summer of 2026. I will share details (like the cover!) when I have them. I am so excited for this one, pocket friends. I hope you’ll join me on another Canadian northwoods adventure.
I have a new list of newsletter topics, so I hope to stay in touch with you all while I’m drafting Secret #2 this fall. If you have any requests, please feel free to send me a comment. In the mean time, there are so many books to read.