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There\u2019s plenty about Sean Avery<\/a>\u2019s post-NHL career that he never expected.\n<\/p>\n Since the former New York Rangers enforcer hung up his skates in 2012, he\u2019s landed small roles in major films like Patriot\u2019s Day<\/em>, Christopher Nolan\u2019s Tenet<\/em>, and even Nolan\u2019s 2023 Academy Award-sweeping biopic Oppenheimer<\/em>. He interned at Vogue for a summer, went into modeling himself, and even wrote a memoir about his ferocious and often antagonizing 12-year NHL career.\n<\/p>\n While Avery never envisioned himself doing any of that \u2014 once even faking sick to get out of a drama camp his mom forced him to sign up for when he was a kid \u2014 writing a romance novel was certainly last on his list.\n<\/p>\n But Avery, who released his first new romance novel Summer Skate <\/em>on Tuesday, tells PEOPLE he\u2019s excited about his new career path \u2014 perhaps more than he\u2019s been about anything in a long time.\n<\/p>\n \u201cI’m a bit of a showman,\u201d says Avery, 45, about his road to becoming an author. \u201cIt’s in my blood. I feel it. It’s what makes me want to get up out of bed every day, you know, to chase it. So, it\u2019s been an interesting journey here, but I think I\u2019ve found my sweet spot, and I’m starting to really settle into it and have fun.\u201d\n<\/p>\n <\/span> The former hockey star-turned-multi-faceted entertainer caught up with PEOPLE ahead of the release of Summer Skate<\/em>, the romance novel he co-authored with Leslie Cohen, which follows a steamy romance between a young hockey player and a best-selling author looking to escape her demanding life of deadlines and motherhood.<\/p>\n The book is Avery\u2019s second published work, following his 2017 memoir, Ice Capades: A Memoir of Fast Living and Tough Hockey<\/em>. Avery says the project stemmed from his agent pitching him the idea.\n<\/p>\n \u201cHe just called me up out of the blue one day and said, \u2018I just finished your autobiography. Would you ever be interested in writing a sports romance novel?\u2019 \u201c Avery recalls. \u201cAnd I had no idea that the category was so big, and he educated me on it, and it didn’t take long: I said, \u2018Yeah, absolutely.\u2019 But also, I said, you know, it’d be nice to write it with a woman. Because, listen, we all need a woman’s touch, okay? You know, nothing should be ever done without a woman’s touch in my opinion, because they’re just, you know, more gracious and patient and smoother than men.\u201d<\/p>\n Avery and Cohen spent nights having frank and open conversations about sex and how their characters would interact. \u201cI mean, there were times where you would waffle the actual acoustics of us talking, because it’s like, oh my god, we were saying these things,\u201d Avery recalls. \u201cMe and Leslie, we were always laughing about it in the end, but we had intense conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n The father of one says it was also an \u201ceye opener\u201d for him to learn the difference between \u201cwhat do I think women want versus what [Cohen] thinks women want, and vice versa.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIt was nice to have somebody be able to say, yeah, that might be a little too much, or I don’t know, I’m not sure if everybody likes that sort of thing,\u201d Avery says. \u201cSo we had battles. But again, like great teams, you know, people don’t see the battles that go on inside dressing rooms. But to get something to be great and a bond to be strong, you have to have friction and tension. That’s where the juice comes from, so I really enjoyed the process.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span> Avery drew from his own life as inspiration for his and Leslie\u2019s main character, Carter Hughes, though Carter isn\u2019t exactly Sean: \u201cI didn’t go to American University, and Carter did. He’s much taller than me, you know, he’s not a small player. He’s a high draft pick. I wasn’t a high draft pick,\u201d Avery says, listing off the difference he sees between him and his character.<\/p>\n \u201cWe got a lot of runway with this guy,\u201d Avery says, noting that he and Cohen \u201cimmediately\u201d began writing a follow-up book after putting the final touches on Summer Skate<\/em>.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n \u201cI’m excited to go through Carter\u2019s entire career,\u201d the author says. \u201cAnd I hope that we’ve sprinkled in enough for everyone, the romance, the hockey, the trials and tribulations of being young and famous and maneuvering those waters. There\u2019s a little bit of everything for everybody.\u201d\n<\/p>\n<\/div>\n NEED TO KNOW Former NHL star Sean Avery released his debut romance novel Summer Skate on Tuesday Avery, 45, co-authored the book with romance novelist Leslie Cohen The book’s main character is a young NHL player who strikes up a steamy romance with a best-selling author looking to escape the pressure of her marriage and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2164,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Ex-NHL-Star-Sean-Avery-Talks-Steamy-Debut-Romance-Novel-Exclusive.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2165,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions\/2165"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2164"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nMike Stobe\/NHLI via Getty\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\nBenBella Books<\/p>\n
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