Happy Friday, friends! If you didn’t see from the header, Royal Holiday is now out in a gorgeous purple paperback! It’s available anywhere you buy books, or you can order a signed copy of it (and any of my other books, if you want signed copies of them!) from East Bay Booksellers, and they’ll send it out to you. I’ll even personalize them, just make a note in the comments field on your order page how you want it personalized. And if I do say so, it makes an excellent holiday gift! Buy books (especially) early this year for holiday shopping, because bookstores need you, and there have been a ton of printing issues with books since March, so if there’s a book you know you want for the holidays and you have the means to get it now, do so!
Also, my publisher is doing a great giveaway of Royal Holiday and some other fun romances — it’s only open until October 20, so go enter now!
And yes, I finished writing Book 6! Well, “finished” no book is really finished at this stage, but I turned it in to my editor earlier this week. I do not have a title or cover or release date to share with you yet (I’m not being coy — I only know a tentative title and know nothing at all about the other two) but hopefully soon I’ll be able to share more. I’ve been barely able to do anything other than work on it for the past few months (if you’ve emailed me for anything, sorry for my late response!), and I love it very much and am weirdly sad that I’ve turned it in and don’t have it to work on anymore. More on all of that to come!
Also, I haven’t read a word of new to me fiction since…August? I get like this sometimes when I’m deep into writing a book of my own, where I can’t absorb fiction in my mind anymore. Let me tell you, as a person who loves fiction and has read some every day for a very long time, this is frustrating! But I’ve recognized that this is what happens and so I stop trying — I’m hoping I can dive into something new this week, keep your fingers crossed. So I’ve been reading a lot of nonfiction over the past few months (because I have to read something!), and a book that I read and loved was The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down. Many of you have probably already read it, it came out over twenty years ago, but wow it’s still so absorbing and relevant and heartbreaking. It’s about a little Hmong girl and her family in the Central Valley of California, and her desperate need for medical care, and the cultural barriers that caused the family and the doctors to not understand one another, and so much more, and it’s just incredible. That edition linked above is the one I read — it’s the 15th anniversary edition, and there’s a really interesting afterword by the author.
I also have barely cooked a thing since…early September? To illustrate this: one of the things I was obsessive about having a ton of ever since the pandemic started were eggs. I eat eggs a lot (for breakfast most days, sometimes in other meals, I bake a lot, etc. all of that needs eggs). There was more than once when I had three dozen eggs in my fridge at a time, I didn’t feel comfortable unless I had at least two cartons in there. I live alone, by the way. For the past month or so, one of the few things I’d cook was a frittata with potatoes and eggs and maybe some cheese or other vegetables if I had them; I’d make it in the morning around ten-ish and eat wedges of it all day and finally get takeout for dinner. Well, over a week ago, I ran out of eggs, and I didn’t even see it coming nor did I freak out. That shows how weird things have been around Chez Jasmine. But don’t worry, as soon as this heat wave in the Bay Area is over, I’m going to make The Pizza again.
One last recommendation for you today: a foam roller. My shoulders and back and everything else have been incredibly tense because we’re in the midst of a pandemic that shows no sign of ending, our government couldn’t give a fuck about it or us, a presidential election that could lead to me losing my health insurance and ability to ever get health insurance again is in just a few weeks, and I can’t sleep through the night, but who’s counting, really? I wish I could get a massage, but see the pandemic part of that above sentence, and recently a friend said she’s been using her foam roller a lot, and then I took a very painful but very helpful foam rolling class here (on Zoom), and I’ve been using my foam roller lots this week, and it’s helped a lot. This is the foam roller I have, and I like it a lot, but that company also has other longer ones, and there are plenty of other types. If you are also very stressed right now, I recommend this!
Before I go, I just need to show you all this incredible birthday gift a friend made me: LOOK AT THIS, HOW BEAUTIFUL IS IT????
Have a good weekend, all! I hope you’re reading something good and eating something delicious.
xo
Jasmine
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Buy The Wedding Date, The Proposal, The Wedding Party, Royal Holiday, and Party of Two!