A giveaway for Flirting Lessons! Books to look forward to! And a little pep talk!

Goodbye to January. What an endless month you've been.

Friends: well, 2025 certainly is…something so far, isn’t it? For those of you who don’t follow me on Instagram (or who don’t regularly watch Instagram stories) I periodically do pep talks on my Insta Stories, and when I did them last week, at least half of the people requesting pep talks had the same general ask. “How do we keep going/keep creating/keep hoping with so much bad in the world and in our country right now?”

My answer, in part, was what I keep saying to myself, and have for the past few months: All we have is each other. I am trying my best to do as much as I can for my friends, my family, and all of my communities, and also recognize and be grateful for everything they all do for me. This very much includes donating to GoFundMes for people who lost everything in the LA Fires earlier this month, a cause very close to my heart. This is all so hard, and we all have to grasp at joy wherever we can find it, and sometimes that joy comes in the midst of, and because of, doing that work for our communities, and in the midst of, and because of, doing that hard, good, creative work. I don’t think I have any perfect answers, but I know that giving myself things to look forward to has helped me tremendously during this really hard time, and I hope you all manage to do that as well.

One thing I’m looking forward to next week is the Instagram Live I’m doing on Monday, February 3rd at 1 pm Pacific/4 pm Eastern with Kennedy Ryan and Tia Williams, organized by the wonderful bookseller Destinee Hodge. (Just go to my Instagram at that time and you should be able to join!) I adore both Kennedy and Tia and I love their books and I can’t wait to talk about romance and writing and books we’re looking forward to! And I am looking forward to SO many books this year, some of which I’ve already read and am excited to be out in the world, and some that I haven’t read yet and can’t wait to get my hands on. A few that I’ve already read: Audre and Bash are Just Friends, by Tia Williams, On Her Terms, by Amy Spalding (I’ve loved everything Amy Spalding has ever written, and this is no exception), A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping, by Sangu Mandanna (I adored her first book, The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches), Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One, by Kristin Arnett (so so funny and interesting and thoughtful), And a few I haven’t read yet and am super excited for: Along Came Amor, by Alexis Daria, Atmosphere, by Taylor Jenkins Reid, If We Were a Movie, by Zakiya N. Jamal, Can’t Get Enough, by Kennedy Ryan, The Game is Afoot, by Elise Bryant (the sequel to It’s Elementary, which I loved!), You Didn’t Hear This From Me, by Kelsey McKinney of the best podcast ever created, Normal Gossip, and Original Sin, by Eve Ewing!

I am also very much looking forward to (as well as being deeply anxious about, as is always the case) is the release of Flirting Lessons, my ninth book, coming in just over two months! Here’s a little sneak peek of the book in People Magazine, if you missed it! It’s been on a number of most anticipated lists, including Vogue, People, USA Today, and two lists from Electric Literature! I will be traveling a bunch for this book, and I should have details about my book tour by my next newsletter, so stay tuned! My publisher is doing a giveaway for an advance copy of Flirting Lessons over on Goodreads, here! And I am doing a giveaway for an advance copy of Flirting Lessons right here in this newsletter! All you need to do is be a subscriber of the newsletter and leave a comment down below — let us know something you’re looking forward to this year, OR let us know something good someone else has done for you recently! Two people will win! (US only, apologies to subscribers from all other countries!) This will close on Wednesday, February 5th at noon Pacific time, and I’ll pop down in the comments and alert the winners.

It is forecast to be a rainy weekend here in the Bay Area (which is great for us because it hasn’t rained here since before Christmas, and given the disasters in LA, we are so grateful for the rain). When it’s chilly and rainy, I like to bake — I woke up early this morning and baked a muffin version of Smitten Kitchen’s Ultimate Banana Bread, and if you’ve ever wanted to make this recipe as muffins, I am here for you to tell you how to do it! (I’d always wanted to try making it as muffins and this was my experiment this week and it turned out great, so I’m sharing it). And muffins are much easier to share with with people you love!

Ultimate Banana Muffins

Makes 12-18 muffins

1/2 cup (4 ounces, 115 grams, 1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into chunks
1 cup (190 grams) packed light brown sugar
2ish cups mashed banana (510 grams or 4-5 bananas — I used five medium sized ones)
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon cinnamon
a few gratings of fresh nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon cardamom
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 cups (260 grams) all purpose flour
1 cup (120 grams) chopped nuts (optional)
3 tablespoons raw, turbinado, or brown sugar to sprinkle on top

Heat your oven to 350 degrees F. Line one to two muffin tins with muffin liners. Melt butter (either melt it in the bowl that you’re going to be mixing in, or melt it in a separate container and then pour into the bowl) and whisk with the brown sugar until smooth. Whisk in the mashed banana, and then the eggs and vanilla. In a separate bowl, combine the spices, salt, baking soda and powder, and the flour, (and the nuts, if using) and then sprinkle evenly over the banana mixture. Stir in slowly until it’s fully mixed, but be careful not to overmix.

Scoop into muffin tins — I like smaller muffins, so this made 18 muffins for me, but if you like big ones, it would make about a dozen. Sprinkle the sugar on top of the muffins, and bake for 17-20 minutes. (It took just about 18 minutes for me with the smaller muffins, so bigger ones would take a bit longer.)

Enjoy!

Have a great weekend!

xo

Jasmine