Friends! I have a very newsy newsletter for you today!
I have a bunch of events coming up with fantastic authors, and I hope you can join us (all virtual, hopefully someday in person events will come back!)! First, next week, I’ll be chatting with the wonderful writing pair Christina Lauren, moderated by Kate Spencer of the Forever 35 podcast, with Books and Books — we’ll talk about their new book, The Soulmate Equation, writing during a pandemic, and all sorts of other fun things. That’s on Wednesday, May 26th, at 4 pm Pacific/7 pm Eastern! Then, on Tuesday, June 1, at 5 pm Pacific/8 pm Eastern, I get to chat with Casey McQuiston and launch One Last Stop! You’ll find us on The Ripped Bodice’s Facebook page. And then the very next day, on Wednesday June 2, at 3 pm Pacific/6 pm Eastern, through the magic of webcams, I’ll be at Loyalty Books with Nicola Yoon, to discuss her wonderful book Instructions for Dancing. And a week later, on June 9, I’ll be back at Books and Books (at 5pm Pacific/8pm Eastern) to talk to Taylor Jenkins Reid about her new book Malibu Rising! And I will also be on a romance panel for the Bronx Book Festival in the weekend of June 11-13, with fantastic authors Alexis Daria, Adriana Herrera, and moderated by Priscilla Oliveras. I’m not positive when it’s scheduled to run yet, but I’ll keep you posted!
That’s it for now, but I’ll have more virtual events to tell you about soon, since While We Were Dating comes out in less than two months! Click that link to preorder from your retailer of choice, and if you want a signed copy — or a signed and personalized one! — order from East Bay Booksellers! (For those of you who ordered signed copies of Party of Two from East Bay Booksellers, this year we’re going to try to get the copies in earlier than last year, so I can sign them and they can send them out to you as close to the release date as possible! So preorder as soon as you can so that they can order the right number of books from the publisher).
And for all of you aspiring authors out there, Reese’s Book Club has a very exciting opportunity — the LitUp fellowship! It’s a writer’s fellowship for unpublished, underrepresented women, and offers access to mentorship, money, and marketing to help get your first book sold. It will provide five emerging writers with an all expenses paid retreat, a three month mentorship with a published author, and marketing support from Reese’s Book Club. The application deadline is coming up soon, it’s on May 30th, so go forth and apply! Click here for more information!
Okay, it’s time for me to finally recommend something I’ve spent a lot of time with over these past six or so months: my acupressure mat. I bought this sometime in the fall, I think, when I was stressed and sore and happened to see the wonderful writer R.O. Kwon mention hers on her Instagram story, so I asked her what kind she had and bought it. I’ve spent anywhere from ten to thirty minutes on it almost every night since, and it’s weird and prickly and I have to take a big deep breath before I get on or off of it, but it’s also weirdly soothing and helps my mind relax some and the other night when I was super sore when I got on, I felt a ton better when I got off. So maybe it’s all woo woo but then sometimes woo woo works, you know? I sometimes use it with the pillow it comes with, and then I sometimes use it with this weird neck thing that brilliant historian and writer Alexis Coe told me to buy (what can I say, I’m easily influenced by writers whose work I love!), and I have to say, my neck and shoulders feel a LOT better than they did before I spent ten minutes on that thing every night, so thank you, Alexis.
I have been in a weird mood lately — we are all…sort of…emerging from this past terrible time, but not *quite* and everything feels strange and unsettled and maybe like good things will happen sometime in the future maybe we hope, but not, exactly, right now. Anyway, this is all to say that I haven’t been cooking much over the past few weeks, but this weekend I’m going to try to shake all of this off and clean my kitchen and bake something I can tell you about next week. But for now, I’ll leave you with this sour cream coffee cake I made last fall and still love completely.
Have a great weekend, everyone!
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party, Royal Holiday, and Party of Two! And preorder While We Were Dating!