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After his own fairytale-esque rise to fame, Hudson Williams has started writing his own stories.
The 24-year-old Vancouver-based actor first gained attention in November of last year, starring on the breakout Heated Rivalry as hockey all-star Shane Hollander.
The Crave Original series is the most successful show on the streaming platform to date, even garnering recognition from Prime Minister Mark Carney, who met the Canadian lead and director at the Prime Time 2026 gala in January.
In a recent interview with Wonderland, Williams revealed to his co-star Sophie Nélisse that he’s working on a book and stays grounded through writing and journaling.
“I’ve been writing a lot,” he said. “I have two separate journals. One is a manuscript — semi-autobiographical — about this period in my life, where I blur the lines between fiction and real life.”
He credits his love for journaling in part to American writer Joan Didion, author of books like The Year of Magical Thinking and Play It As It Lays.
“I have a Google doc where I’m building my internal monologue, writing down what I’m thinking and feeling in hotel rooms between events … I love Joan Didion, and she once said she journals so that when she gets really old, she can pick up her books and find her way back to herself again.”
Didion is not the only “hot girl read” — a subgenre defined by popular literary novels written by women — that Williams says he enjoys. In a video with Vanity Fair last December, Williams shared he was reading Sex and Rage by Eve Babitz.
Pre-Heated Rivalry fame, the actor often shared his current reads online, from Anne de Marcken’s absurdist novel It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over to DC Comics’ Nightwing.
In the Wonderland interview, Williams expressed that he feels most connected to reading and writing at home.
“In Vancouver, I read books, watch movies. I feel plugged into my inspiration. I can absorb art before I have to expend it.”
Whether readers will soon see Williams’s debut novel on shelves is unknown, as he has yet to announce a book deal. But publishers “will be falling over themselves” to publish this debut, literary agent Samantha Haywood said in an email to CBC Books.
“A semi-autobiographical novel by the star of the global phenomenon Heated Rivalry? Publishers will be competing to the max for territorial rights, likely around the world, for this novel,” said Haywood, who is president of Transatlantic Agency in Toronto.
“And if it happens to be a spicy romance, they will throw the bank at it.”
CBC Books has reached out to Williams and his team for comment but has yet to receive a response.
