Soulmatch Goodreads Giveaway!
With less than five months to go to Soulmatch’s release into the world, things are getting real!!
I won’t keep you hanging. Simon & Schuster is giving away 100 print ARCs (advance review copies) of Soulmatch on Goodreads. Head over there before March 17th and click to enter. It only takes a second! Since the drawing ends on St. Patty’s Day, I’m wishing you the luck o’ the Irish!
Here’s what else I’ve been up to this month!
Pass pages
Earlier today, I submitted comments on the pass pages for Soulmatch. Pass pages are a PDF document of the formatted manuscript. This version combined the edits we made during copy edits and proofreading. I printed out all 500 pages and read the entire book aloud. This helped me find a slew of word echoes I hadn’t noticed before, like using the word “hand” or “eyes” in back to back sentences. I also located some timeline inconsistencies and a handful of formatting issues, like double indents and extra spaces.
Most readers wouldn’t even notice, but I’m glad I had the opportunity to fix them before the book was published!
EVENT planning
I’ve started scheduling interviews and events, including my book launch! Thankfully, I have a couple of publicists at Simon & Schuster who are helping to arrange everything for me! To stay organized, I set up an Events page on my website. If you’d like to arrange or attend a book signing, I’ll keep an updated list there. But not to worry, I’ll also send the schedule of my signings to my newsletter subscribers prior to launch and will update my blog as well!
I have my first author chat for the MFA students at Drexel University this Sunday, and I’m so nervous!!
Barnes & Noble Top 10!
During the Barnes & Noble preorder sale, Soulmatch jumped into two of their top-10 lists! Dystopias & Utopias - Teen Fiction (#7!) and Romance - General - Teen Fiction (#6!). It’s currently sitting at #21 and #18 respectively, which is still incredible considering both categories have hundreds of books!! Here’s a video I took of the momentous occasion!
Book Two Submitted!
This was a HUGE win this month! Three weeks ago, I submitted the manuscript for my second contracted novel with Simon & Schuster. It is NOT a sequel to Soulmatch, but, like Soulmatch, it is a YA dystopian romance. The working title is Predictable. (Yes, as in, “this book is predictable.” wink wink)
I’m waiting to hear what my editor thinks (eep!), but my beta readers and critique partners seemed to really enjoy it! I don’t want to say much about it until I hear back, but the story is like a mashup of Minority Report and Stephen King’s Misery.
Reading!
I finally made a little bit of progress on my TBR this month, thanks to my two weeks “off” between submitting Predictable and receiving the Soulmatch pass pages. Here’s what I’ve been inhaling…
(affiliate links below)
Tried and True Authors
I finished Nisha Tuli’s incredible Artefacts of Ouranos romantasy series with Tale of the Heart Queen. I read this series on my Kindle and through Audible, but my Bookish Box special editions are supposed to arrive this month. I cannot wait!
I’m currently savoring my copy of S(kin) by Ibi Zoboi. I drove an hour into DC for her Politics & Prose event on February 18th, and it was so worth it! What an incredible evening hearing about her inspiration for this novel and the others she’s written. She was in conversation with Amber McBride and Maika Moulite, so I picked up a couple of their books as well. Cannot wait to read them!
Debut Authors
After I got my book deal, I joined a Discord group of other 2025 debuts, and we’ve been hyping up each other for the past couple of years. Now that their books are finally releasing, I’m going to have such a hard time keeping up! I managed to finish two this month and started a third this week.
Chanelle Desamour’s YA mystery, Needy Little Things, has such a cool premise - the main character can hear the objects people need—a talent that comes in useful (and doesn’t) when her best friend goes missing. The last line sent chills down my spine!
Jenni Howell’s Boys With Sharp Teeth has been high on my TBR since I read the title!! It secured its place at the top once I saw the cover art. I was thrilled to receive an ARC of the audiobook through NetGalley! This story would be perfect for fans of Cruel Intentions (anyone else watch the new series on Prime?) and dark, literary fiction like The Night Circus. Boys with Sharp Teeth releases next month!
I just started Jessica James’s For One Night Only this week, but I’m loving it! A rock star romance is exactly what my stressed-out heart needs right now.
