hi there -
this isn’t your normal bi-monthly(ish) edition of this newsletter. but my phone informed me (seriously, I got a notification from Apple Books) that my third book—Do Your Worst: an enemies-to-lovers adventure romcom that takes place in a cursed Scottish castle—is on sale for an indeterminate amount of time and I thought you might like to know.

as far as I can tell, the ebook is on sale across retailers in the U.S.
here are a few places you can grab it from:
to celebrate the sale, I thought you all might a little peek into some of its origin story.
first up, the title.
I will be honest, up until this book, I didn’t love any of my titles. they were more late-in-the-process sales strategies informed by my publisher, modeled after other well-performing romcoms at the time, than anything else. and hey, I consider myself very pragmatic but The Roommate was originally called *Never Have I Ever when we sold it and I was super attached to that name (as I imagine many debuts are with their first title) and had a hard time seeing the book as anything else.
*This was before the Mindy Kaling Netflix show came out, but in hindsight I’m glad we didn’t end up having to compete with that for SEO.
With the book that would become DYW, I was determined to think of a title earlier in the process and this time, I wanted a list of options I liked in case one got axed for whatever reason. as you can see below, as a title placeholder, I called the book “curse breaker” from its inception. the ones with the * were my preferences and after much informal polling, we settled on “Do Your Worst” (I’m glad no one voted for ‘Do Your Cursed’ smh).
I thought you might also like to see an alt cover sketch.
We worked with a new artist, Roxie Vizcarra for DYW (and also later for Fan Service) and I was blown away by how talented she is. She was able to combine elements of both of these sketches for us and to add in hand-lettering for the title, which is one of my favorite parts.
Okay that’s all for now. I hope you enjoyed this little BTS look! not to be alarmist, but if you wanna grab the book on sale, i’d act now because I have no idea how long this sale will last.
I’ll be back with a normal volume of tender, thirsty, ambitious later this month. Until then—stay soft of heart, lusty of mind, and when it comes to making art, always swing for the fences!
I loved this book so much! The title fits perfectly. That being said, I think coming up with a book title is such a Herculean task. It feels so important!
I just finished this book (borrowed from the library) and bought it as soon as I saw this email. It was such a fun, interesting read. I’m honestly a little sad that it wasn’t the beginning of a series! (Also there are some truly misguided people calling this insta-lust on Good Reads. Ridiculous.)