A hodgepodge of things (+ giveaway)

Hey, friends! A bit has happened since the last time I sent a newsletter, so I’m just going to smash everything together in a hodgepodge of an email. Pretend it has a lightly floral and comforting scent, like potpourri.

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Donut Summer announcement!

I was recently able to announce my YA debut, coming (hopefully) summer 2025 from Quill Tree Books.

Some things to expect from Donut Summer:

• Summer romance, as per the title (set between sophomore and junior years of high school)

• Small-town romance set in Oregon, in a made-up town between the real-life towns of Corvallis and Salem (south of Portland)

• My first single POV novel, told through the anxious, over-achieving brain of Penny Dexter

• Queer moms

• Older sibling of triplets [The seed of this story began when I was watching the perhaps toxic closeness of the triplets in This Is Us many years ago and thought, “Man, imagine if they had another random sibling who was just chillin’”]

• (Maybe) nemeses to people-who-like-each-other (I feel weird saying “lovers”? They’re sixteen. Please don’t ask me if the book is spicy.)

• (But also, if you’re like: can my kid read this one? There are making out scenes and honest discussions about sex, along with a healthy amount of cursing, because I wrote it. & some of that, like anything in this list, might change during editing! But as an educator who works with middle and high schoolers, I personally think it would be appropriate for 7th grade and up/basically all teens.)

• Climate change/the world is imploding Gen Z anxieties

• Driving lessons

• Having a crush on someone who’s real good at drawing (AMIRITE)

• Some gender and sexuality feels (again, I wrote it)

• A heated debate re: Boston cream donuts vs. apple fritters

I had a lot of fun writing this one, and that’s my main hope for the reading experience of it, too—that this is simply fun (with, of course, some angst thrown in).

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How You Get the Girl has been out for a month!

Julie and Elle’s book has been out for a month! I shared this on Instagram, but in case you didn’t see it, look at this absolutely perfect art from @queerente (aka Sarah) of these babes. <3

I’m sure I’ve shared in this newsletter how I experienced a good ol’ amount of burnout and insecurities while working on this one, so I’ve been genuinely moved at your excitement over How You Get the Girl. I know I’ve missed tags and DMs, so if you’ve reached out and I haven’t responded, I’m so sorry, but just know that I love all of your messages about Julie in particular. It’s really been a testament to me of how much more representation we need about ace-ness and/or just being a late awkward bloomer in romance. Your excitement over HYGTG even prompted a small second printing the first week of release! So thank you, thank you again.

As an extra thanks, I’ve been given some codes for free How You Get the Girl audiobook downloads from Google Play. To get one, simply respond to this email with a hi or a howdy, and I’ll select four random folks tomorrow, Friday the 15th, to email back with a download code.

This was my first dual narration audio of my Forever books, and I could not have asked for a better pairing than Lindsey Dorcus and Gail Shalan.

(And while we’re on the subject of HYGTG, I feel the need to say that there have been some fantastic women’s college basketball games happening this week as conference tournaments wrap up, and Selection Sunday is this weekend! Let’s go root for women!! <3)

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Something Wild and Wonderful eBook on sale!

This month also marks the year anniversary of the release of Something Wild & Wonderful, book of my heart. And because the Amazon gods decided to smile at me, it’s also on sale for $3.99 all month.

I bought this Lego bird kit months ago and told myself I’d put it together on SW&W’s year anniversary to celebrate, but guess what, I didn’t, because life. But one day soon!!

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Tucson Festival of Books!

I just returned from my first visit to the Tucson Festival of Books, and am frankly still recovering from two solid days of social interaction, but so much about it was incredible. The weather was perfect (I took so many photos of cacti), the festival was huge but so efficiently run, and a lot of it was spread out outside (it takes place on the University of Arizona campus), which helped my anxiety!

It was hard to choose just four photos for this roundup, but clockwise here we have:

• a queer romance author dinner with Helena Greer, Amy Spalding, Dominic Lim, and me, wherein Amy said something so funny at one point that I literally laughed until I cried;

• getting to hang out with one of my favorite people in the universe, Alicia Thompson (we got to sit next to each other on two panels!! my heart);

• Sarah T. Dubb (on bench; pre-order Birding With Benefits, it’s so good!!) thanking Jessica Pryde (in pink), the romance author coordinator for the festival and all-around incredible human being, in Sarah’s beyond-belief backyard;

• and a signed book from Beverly Jenkins, who I had the privilege of seeing speak multiple times throughout the weekend.

Honestly, listening to Ms. Bev—a woman who has written sixty books in thirty years and said, quote, “I’m still just havin’ fun”—was super inspiring to me, a person who has published a mere three books and three novellas and find myself pondering, Am I still having fun? just about every day. When I asked her at one of the panels how she keeps her creative well flowing, she talked about how she’s created universes so deep now that she has a constant cast of characters that she can keep playing with if she so chooses. She’s a woman who does what she wants and lets her characters lead the way, and it made me feel hopeful that if I can get my own head out of the way, maybe I can work on doing the same.

Even if I can’t, though, even if one day this fairytale writing life runs dry for me, I’ll still look back on this weekend of writer and reader community and feel grateful I got live this life for even a little while. Thank you again to Jessica for inviting me, to Mel from Steamy Lit for inviting me to sign at their booth, to Dominic Lim for definitely paying for like, a bunch of Lyft rides that I should have shared the cost for, to Rachel Ray Katz for chatting with me at multiple airports, to the açaí bowls at Rush Bowls and the tea lattes at Scented Leaf Teahouse, and to all the countless volunteers who help this massive event run. I’m sorry if I said anything weird or offensive to anyone at any point (especially during the Sapphic Sapphic Sapphic panel; I get perhaps too excited and comfortable talking about queer shit and really just start to say anything that pops into my head [to then obsess about later]).

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Other upcoming events!

I have a lot packed into the next few weeks, both to celebrate How You Get the Girl and a bunch of other forthcoming releases by other authors that I love with my whole heart.

• Thursday, March 21st @ Bishop and Wilde Bookstore; Portland, OR: HEA for the LGBTQIA+ Book Club, run by Grand Gesture Books! This will be my first in-person book club chat, and I’m so honored Katherine chose How You Get the Girl for her inaugural queer book club pick. If you’re in the Portland area, please check out all the other in-person book clubs Katherine is running with Grand Gesture—I’m so excited for the chance to build real community in this literary town that often looks down on our much-beloved genre. (I’m also looking forward to hanging with the Joyful Chaos book club next week virtually!)

• Tuesday, March 26th @ Parnassus Books; Nashville, TN: How You Get the Girl event with Kaitlyn Hill! I knew I had to return to Nashville to truly celebrate this book, and I am so thrilled beyond measure that I get to do it with Kaitlyn, another one of my favorite people in the world (pre-order Wild About You, it’s so good!!). Honestly, even though this book released a month ago, I feel like I’ve been waiting to get to Nashville to truly say goodbye to this series. So this event will mean a lot to me. Registration is required; please come so I don’t cry alone (although honestly crying alone in Parnassus Books also sounds like a good time).

AND THEN I GET TO DO ALL THESE AMAZING THINGS:

• Tuesday, April 2nd @ The Stacks Coffeehouse; Portland, OR: Celebrating the release of Alison Cochrun’s Here We Go Again, along with Karelia & Fay Stetz-Waters (authors of the upcoming Second Night Stand)

• Saturday, April 6th @ The Romance Era; Vancouver, WA: Celebrating the release of Jen Comfort’s What Is Love?, the trivia romance of my dreams

• Saturday, April 9th @ Powell’s Cedar Hills; Beaverton, OR: Celebrating the release of KT Hoffman’s The Prospects (a book that takes place IN BEAVERTON)

When I tell you these are three of the FINEST books that will be coming out THIS ENTIRE DAMN YEAR and I am vibrating with excitement to talk about ALL OF THEM. I WILL HAVE A LOT OF ADRENALINE IN EARLY APRIL. And would honestly love to see the Portland romance community at every one! Hope to see you there. <3

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& finally!

I’m hoping to release something brand new into the world later this year, the (adult) book I’ve been working on for the last year or so. While I have a lot of nerves about releasing it on my own, the first thing I’ve self-pubbed in a while, I also feel hopeful about it, knowing that I can release it on my own timeline, that I can include all the messy shit I want to include. It explores a lot of the queer themes I felt ready to explore next after finishing the Love & Other Disasters series (mostly, as just mentioned: more mess), and I hope those of you who have followed me this far will follow along to this new series.

While it’s still a bit early to say more, I’m hoping to tease more about it soon, and I’ll disclose any actual news to this newsletter first. So if you actually read this WHOLE potpourri of an email down to here, thanks for sticking with me! More in this space soon.

Hope you’ve all been taking care of yourselves as best you can (and remember to respond to this email if you want a chance at a free audiobook!),

xo

anita