T J Fernandez - An Interview

Ink On Ice is a tale of (ice) hockey, college journalism and truth.

Open Shelf caught up with author T J Fernandez to find out more. 

At first look, Ink On Ice is immersed in ice hockey and journalism.  But when you get into the story it becomes clear that it is about more.  What first sparked the idea for Ink on Ice, and when did you realise it wasn’t just a story about hockey, but a story about truth?

Ink On Ice took many different turns when I first came up with the concept. The original idea involved a plot regarding sports gambling.

Cal and his crew weren’t supposed to be college journalists. In fact, they were supposed to work for a larger outlet that discovers a plot involving embezzlement, gambling addiction and more. But as I thought about it more - something just didn’t really sit right as I kept working through that first manuscript.

Enter the town and college of St. Lorne.

When I started to rework the concept of Ink On Ice, I was working on my final project for a journalism ethics class I was taking, for my masters in media studies. I pitched to the professor a case study regarding student censorship involving the University of Texas Austin and their student paper. The long story short, the university ended up shuttering the paper for a few months and all the staff left after a few battles regarding important topics such as censorship and prior review.

That story stuck with me, and it was the inspiration for the work you see here today.

But I also love hockey - I used to be a former NHL reporter - and I always feel that when starting a new project, it’s best to write to your strengths and so that’s what I did. As I worked with my wife on the new concept of Ink, we knew hockey was going to be a part of the story and we tried to include as much of it as made sense.

It’s an old adage of course, write what you know.  And that really does come through in the writing. 

The novel explores the cost of telling the truth. What drew you to that theme?  And why does it feel so urgent right now?

I think what drove me to the cost of telling the truth is that in most mediums, we see the good guys tell the story and the story ends right? We don’t see the messiness that comes from telling the truth because the run time is over. I wanted to go that one step further and really look into that.

I go back to a famous quote from Sam Seaborn, played by Rob Lowe, in The West Wing. Seaborn is in communications and during one episode, he’s trying to refute claims made by a former staffer in a tell all book. He has a line when he’s asked why he’s spending valuable time refuting a guy who had only been in the building for a cup of coffee or like 5 minutes in a career. Seaborn promptly replies: “I just don’t think we should be cavalier about the truth.”

Tying this back to Ink, I think all journalism as an industry shouldn’t be casual about the truth. We’ve seen journalists tell the truth in their writing and reporting and it came at a cost.  This was important to me because I think a lot of times in our society, it’s easier to not tell the truth. To not have the morals to stand up for what’s right and to take the path of least resistance. As I studied the UT Austin case and some of the others involving collegiate newspapers, there was a pattern that became painfully obvious. Students that were trying to do good journalism were not only being shut out from telling their truth, but they were losing jobs, influence and in some cases the papers are even being shutdown permanently. And this is happening all over the U.S. in both the collegiate and K-12 levels of student journalism.

Let’s look more closely at a couple of the key characters. 

Cal returns to St. Lorne exhausted and burnt out. What interested you about writing a protagonist who starts the story already depleted?

When I started the second version of Ink, I personally felt how Cal felt. My wife and I had been going through trials and tribulations that come with fertility issues and trying to start a family. On the career side, I had joined up at a school where it didn’t go like I expected and was moving to a new school in the coming fall. All those struggles, along with trying to work on my master’s degree in media studies really drained me. To me, Cal’s starting point in Ink was just my way of getting my feelings and thoughts out on paper about what we were going through.

You want your reader to root for your protagonist and having them start at such a low point can help. I mean, Cal’s not really depressed, he’s just kind of done with it all and I think all of us have been there at some point or another. So, it gives the reader a chance to relate to the character immediately in my mind.

But I think there’s something more mysterious about it that can help hook the reader. Immediately, you’re asking yourself: “Why is this guy so burnt out? What caused him to leave in the first place?”

Cal Cooper is defined as much by what he’s avoiding as by what he’s chasing. How did you approach writing a character shaped by absence?

You ever have a job that you’re just comfortable doing but know that you can do something more? That’s kind of where I was going with Cal. He’s avoiding taking a serious role in The Ledger because he wants to get back to a place of comfort - but that place doesn’t exist anymore.

So, Cal now has a choice to make and due to some help - it’s made for him.  Also, throughout the story, when Cal takes a body blow after a plot point, we can see what the absence is doing to the others around him. It doesn’t just affect one person when you don’t show up - it affects the whole team. That dynamic mattered to me.

I also think there’s a moral to this story that sometimes the people around you can see what you’re missing. His friends and his advisor knew that Cal could do more, it’s just getting him to believe that. I think we’ve all had moments where the people who love us can see the forest while we’re still staring at one tree

Beckley Keane is both a catalyst and a complication. What was the key to getting their dynamic right?

I think the biggest thing was that I wanted them to both be on equal footing. Beckley is just as talented as Cal and she’s doing his job just fine, thank you very much. But throughout our editorial meetings - at least that’s what we jokingly called them, my wife and I agreed that it’s important to treat Beckley as her own character and not just a plot device for Cal. I didn’t want to lessen her as a character just to elevate Cal. And at times, it can be tough to thread that needle.

I wanted to quickly transition her from complication to catalyst and then ultimately to partner as the story progressed. My reasoning for that is while Cal may be the “main character,” the book works best as an ensemble.

I think that helped me make sure that when I wrote Beckley scenes, it wasn’t just “what does this mean for Cal?” It was more “What does this mean for the team? What does it mean for Beckley?”

The setting, that is, the newsroom, almost feels like a character in itself.  The Ledger newsroom feels chaotic, authentic, and lived‑in. Were any characters or moments inspired by real experiences in student journalism?

Absolutely. I worked at my college paper, and it was definitely like that. However, I wanted to bring more chaos, so I included how the newsroom was when I worked as an associate producer in broadcast news.

Newsrooms are chaotic.

There’s a flurry of activity as people scurry around trying to stay above water and meet deadlines. And then, when you think that your show or paper is ready to go - boom, breaking news. So now, instead of getting close to the finish line, you’re up against it and redoing everything on the fly. It’s a unique kind of tension and experience and many people have always felt a rush as they get to the finish line. I wanted the readers to experience that rush and that tension, so I tried to focus on my real-world experience to help make those scenes really come alive.

And it’s not just the newsroom.

Throughout there is a strong command of place - the rink, the newsroom, the apartment above the bookstore. How did you build such textured environments?

That was something we wanted to clean up as we focused on the final version. Readers will only truly buy into your work if you can paint that picture for them. I always tell my students, the story isn’t just what happened. You have to report all of it. They usually give me a puzzled look but eventually they catch on to the fact, that I’m talking about the atmosphere, the energy, the crowd. All of these things matter when it comes to crafting a good story whether it’s for a newspaper, yearbook or even a fictional novel.

I’m a bit of a prose perfectionist that way where I want the reader to easily draw up a mental image when my character walks through the door. And to do that, you must address all of the senses. When a reader, reads about the rink, they need to be able to smell the obscure mixture of old hockey gear, freshly flooded ice and fried foods from the bar near the rink.

I also took some inspiration from the different college campuses that I’ve been on over the years. A few years ago, we went to Harvard and stopped in their bookstore which is where I got my vision of the bookstore. But as I was writing Cal and Grady’s home, I thought - it would be cool to have a writer live above a bookstore. It’s where I would live if my wife would let me.

As for the newsroom, when you’re stuck covering a big natural disaster like a hurricane, you tend to spend a lot of time there. I remember that we had to camp out overnight as we did our storm coverage.  And even when I was in college, the newsroom wasn’t just where we went for our shift, it ended up being our stopping point in between classes and became like a second home.

So, for any journalist, a newsroom isn’t just where they go to clock in - it’s also where they live too.

The hockey scenes are crisp and sensory without over‑explaining the sport. How did you strike that balance?

For me, hockey is a fun sport to watch live.

However, hockey isn’t necessarily the most fun to read about and it was important for me to remember that. If I gave my reader a play-by-play of a whole hockey game, I knew I was going to lose them. But there’s so many important sensory cues in hockey that can help tell the story. For example, skates scraping the ice or pucks bouncing off the boards after a shot. Readers can hear that little piece of black rubber smacking off the boards or hear that slapshot hit when the stick collides with the ice. I think focusing on the different cues and moving the plays along help.

I will also admit that when it comes to sports, I grew up listening to a lot of hockey games on the radio and I think that really helped me focus on moving the reader through the action like a radio caller would do. Because if you think about it, radio listeners don’t have the game in front of them. They’re depending on the radio announcer to paint that picture for them, and I wanted to style my hockey scenes that way with a bit of both the play happening on the ice and the sensory details to really immerse the reader.

St. Lorne also feels like a character in its own right. What makes campus settings so suitable for building and delivering tension?

I think one of the things that make the campus perfect for building tension is the built-in deadlines revolving around a college schedule. These characters have classes they need to attend, so they can’t get into a heavy debate and stay on their soapbox all night. They’ve got to keep going, so that internal clock helps make it a bit easier to build the tension. That’s why a lot of the scenes are kind of like a walk and talk around the campus. Cal and friends can’t just stay in one spot. This helps keep the reader engaged too as it moves them with the characters to the next plot point or area.

I also think that a campus is like a miniature city. It has all the spots that we see throughout movies and literature. There’s a place to gather socially, there’s a place of work, it really is a hotspot that provides a lot of great areas to write different scenes.

But like all campuses, there’s quirks that students know about. For me, the university where I got my bachelor’s degree had a restaurant that no matter what, each day smelled like burnt bread. So, we would be sitting in philosophy or English Comp and the smell would waft into our classroom. Some days it would make us feel sick and others, it would kind of make us feel a bit hungrier - of course the bread wasn’t burnt by the time we placed our orders.

Let’s have a look at what our author readers like to know more on, some of the writing.

The opening “simmers” rather than shouts. Was the slow‑burn structure intentional from the start?

Yes, as this was my first work of fiction, I wanted to get a sense for how things would develop and build out. Also, from a narrative device, I built the story around the school year concept.  School years always tend to start slow as students return to campus, and it takes a minute to get into the swing of things especially for Cal as he’s been away for a long time. So, I know that we must capture the reader’s attention but at the same time, the introduction must build a world, tell the major theme of the story, introduce characters and do a lot of heavy lifting. Whew! I like to think of my introduction as a fine pot of pasta sauce, the longer it can simmer the better it tastes but there is such a thing as burning it by having it sit too long so it’s a tough thread to needle through.

Dialogue is one of the book’s major strengths. How do you approach writing conversations that feel real without becoming messy?

This is ended up being something that I’m very proud of. I like to trust the reader and so I removed some dialogue tags and let the readers just follow along without being bogged down in the “he said, she said.”

I think writing dialogue is like writing music or writing a speech, and that’s something that I’ve learned when I was in television broadcasting. As a television producer, you have to write to the listener’s ear and that’s what I tried to do. I’m also a huge Aaron Sorkin fan and I love the way his dialogue isn’t just quippy or snappy, but it has a cadence and flow to it, and I wanted to develop something like that for my characters. I think the dialogue rhythm helps the reader feel the pressure of the newsroom and it also helps them believe in the character’s motivations and arguments.

What was the hardest scene to write, and why?

There’s one scene where Cal and Beckley for lack of a better term “go for it” in their relationship and I didn’t want this to just be another romance scene. I wanted it to be earned and so I tried to build that up for it.

If I could add another one, one of the characters goes through severe loss and tackling that subject was a bit tough for me as I recently lost my dad and we’re still going through that. I tried to pour those emotions I felt into what the characters felt.

Ink On Ice does ask the reader questions, especially when exploring the reveal of the plot.  The story asks whether digging for the truth is worth the personal cost. How do you navigate that moral grey area as a writer?

That’s a great question, I think so much of what we expect from people is to solve the problem but, in this case, solving the problem means that someone is going to get hurt. And for journalists, it’s an ethical dilemma, Cal and friends could not report the story they’re following and save themselves but are they going to be able to live with it?

Institutional pressure plays a huge role in the novel. What interested you about exploring power dynamics on a campus?

One of the ways, that I navigate that is to try and put the reader in their shoes, have the reader ask themselves “would you do this?” and that was the core of my thesis for Ink On Ice. Across the United States there are stories that should be told but aren’t because student journalists are strongly encouraged not to run them or they face various consequences for them and their advisors. It’s a tough line for them, they have First Amendment rights but at the same time, it’s so severely limited compared to normal media outlets and that can be challenging because these journalists want to do good journalism and report the stories their communities need to hear/watch/read.

Without spoilers, the “real” news story shifts everything. How did you decide how far the consequences should go?

It may be a bit cliché, but I think that story sparked from the idea naturally. I originally didn’t plan on having those specific consequences, but I wanted to showcase to the reader the impact of what the story would do to certain characters. That hurt and that pain isn’t just for shock value, but it really cements what Cal and Beckley have to do to focus on and I wanted the readers to believe in what Cal and Beckley are trying to do.

Let’s have a final look at the people.  Cal and Beckley’s relationship is threaded with tension, trust, and risk. What did you want readers to feel as their connection deepens?

I wanted the readers to believe in the relationship and wanted it to feel earned. I think in some media, the relationship between the characters is just another check box and I didn’t want that to be the case. And it makes sense to me because they are young adults navigating not only their futures through their class load but also their professional careers. I also wanted them to be on equal footing. Beckley compliments Cal and Cal compliments her - even if he’s technically her boss. But as you can see throughout the novel, they work together and it helps build that relationship.

How do you balance the personal stakes with the professional ones, especially when the two collide?

That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? I think that’s what makes writing about young adults or new adults in college so fascinating because our society thinks that they should have a handle on things, but they really don’t. They have to balance loyalties to friends and family and then also with their professional choices. Then you have all of the work that goes into being a college student on top of that. I think what makes this work is to clearly show the reader what happens when those stakes collide. What I like to do is have the readers really ask themselves, “what does a win really look like?”

And like all things in life, there’s days when you’re on top and then there’s days when you’re just trying to get ahead and stay above water.

As we come to a close, we always like to look ahead.  In our review I have called this a “solid foundation for sequels.” Do you see Ink On Ice as the start of a larger series?

So, the plan right now is to do a trilogy of books. The second one, Blackout On Ice is currently in progress and I am hoping to have it done by next year! I’ve also already got the outline done for the third book Fire On Ice as well. So, fingers crossed, there’s more positive news on that front, but both novels have their outlines done and now it’s time to crack my knuckles, stretch, take a sip of water and get back to the grind.

What do you hope readers carry with them after closing the final page?

I hope readers carry a new appreciation for journalists, especially college journalists. I also hope they enjoy the characters and world that I’ve brought to life. Finally, I really hope that readers connect with that overarching theme of what happens when you tell the truth. I think we all think we can do it if we were put into those situations, but I hope it has them think about what they would do.

Let’s end with a different sort of question.  If you could ask Cal one question - and get an honest answer - what would it be?

Hm, if I could ask Cal one question and get an honest answer, it would be does he still believe that telling the truth with good journalism can still fix things?

Maybe we will find out his answer in the next books in the trilogy…

Thanks to T J Fernandez for joining us to discuss Ink On Ice and more!

You can read more about T J Fernandez and his work HERE.