Stars in My Eyes 🤩⛸️

Never meet your heroes, unless they’re Jason Brown

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of attending the Stars on Ice show in Chicago (well, Rosemont). If you follow me on Instagram, you may have already seen my supercut of favorite moments, but I want to do a deeper dive into the experience here.

I’ve been to Stars on Ice once before, back in 2022 following the Beijing Olympics. That time I just went to the show itself, but this time I decided to splurge and do the whole shebang, including the “Stargazer” preshow (where you get to watch the skaters practice) and the post-show meet and greet with the whole cast. And I got the best seats in the house: on the ice!

Watching live skating is always a thrill, but these elite athletes zooming by so close you could reach out and touch them is a whole other level of exhilarating. From the moment the show started, I was smiling so big my face hurt. I felt like a little kid again (without all the trauma lol).

I got a meet and greet ticket for the express purpose of getting to meet Amber Glenn and Jason Brown, who are both mentioned in the acknowledgements of The Favorites. I brought signed copies (the UK edition with purple sprayed edges, for extra 🏳️‍🌈 vibes) and handwritten notes for both of them, and spent my whole time in line mentally rehearsing what I was going to say. As an author I’m often on the other side of the signing table, but meeting ACTUAL OLYMPIC FIGURE SKATERS feels to me like meeting movie stars or royalty or something, so I still get nervous as hell.

Amber was first. When I blurted out my little spiel about how she was one of my favorite skaters and mentioned in my novel’s acknowledgements, she kept saying “No way!” and excitedly flipping through the pages til she found her name. She and Alysa Liu (who might be the coolest human alive) posed for a bunch of cute selfies with me and the book too.

Jason was at the final table, along with another one of my faves Isabeau Levito. My heart was pounding the closer I got to them; I was excited to meet everyone in the cast, but Jason especially because The Favorites literally would not exist in its current form without him. If you’ve attended one of my book events before, you’ve probably heard me tell this story, but here it is one more time for the purposes of Substack immortality.

Back when I saw the 2022 Stars on Ice tour, I’d been working on The Favorites for just a few months. I was still trying to make the story fit that dark and twisty thriller tone I used in my first two books, but something about the plot I’d outlined seemed off. Then Jason took the ice.

I’d seen him on television plenty of times, and he’d been one of my favorite skaters since his Olympic debut back in Sochi. But seeing him in person, I was so struck by his palpable joy and passion for skating, it was almost overwhelming. At intermission, I turned to my partner and exclaimed, “There has to be JOY, that’s what the book is missing!!! I have to make the ending happy!”

(not from the Chicago show, but this is the performance in question)

Now, not everyone considers the published ending of The Favorites to be happy or joyful the way I do, but to those haters I have to say: just know it would have been a lot worse if not for Jason Brown!

So I get up to Jason and Isabeau’s meet and greet table. I’ve got my speech all ready to go. I pull out the book. And before I’ve gotten more than two words out, Jason says, “Oh my god, you wrote this?? I love this book!” 🤯

Apparently his mother read The Favorites, and then Jason and several of his relatives also read it on a family vacation, and they were all freaking out about him being in the acknowledgments. When I wrote those words, I always hoped they’d reach him one day, but I never dreamed he’d just, like… organically find out about my book and the impact he had on it.

Anyway, he hugged me like three times, and Isabeau took a bunch of pictures of the two of us with his phone, and I floated out of the meet and greet in a state of equal delight and disbelief.

Once I could think clearly again, that beyond-my-wildest-dreams interaction got me thinking about how, as artists, we can’t know who our work will reach, who our creative energy will touch, and that’s part of why art is such a magical, connecting force in the world.

I was one of the thousands of fans who saw Jason skate during the 2022 Stars on Ice tour, just another face in the crowd — and it changed my book, which ended up changing my life.

I’ll never know who all has read my work and what impact it might have had on them. Even the smallest possibility, though, that I could make a reader feel the way Jason Brown made me feel — four years ago, and last Friday night — is enough to keep me going for a good long while. I’ll never be able to thank him enough, but what an honor to finally get to thank him in person!