NEW BOOK ANNOUNCEMENT!!

Hi hi hi, everyone!

GUESS WHAT!!!

If you follow me on socials, you’ll have already seen this announcement earlier today, but I’m finally allowed to tell you about my next book, woohoo! (Or, one of them, at least!)

*Drum roll please*

I’m SO thrilled to share that my new YA contemporary action-adventure-survival-romance book is releasing NEXT YEAR (April 29th for AUS/NZ, May 20th for US/CAN, with more international dates coming soon) and I am soooooo excited that I can now start properly talking about it!

So!

The book is called Wandering Wild and it’s kind of a mashup between Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! and Romancing the Stone, with smidges of Survivor thrown in as well. (Oof, I’m really showing my age with those first two movies. Side note: if you haven’t seen them, absolutely do so, asap! They’re amazing! Romancing the Stone is one of my favourite adventure romances everrrrr, despite it coming out before I was born! And Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! is such a fun rom-com!)

… But back to Wandering Wild, here’s what I can tell you about it:

And here’s the official press release from the AUS/NZ side of things, which has some more added details:

Now, if you read all the info above, you may have noticed that PRH Australia has bought two other books of mine (eeee!), and that I’ve also sold those (and maybe a couple more (*winky wink*)) separately to PRH in the US and also in the UK, which is ridiculously exciting since it’ll be my first ever series all under the one global publishing house umbrella. The two books mentioned above are part of a brand new YA fantasy series, and I’ll be sharing more about it in the coming weeks, including all the official (and very, very exciting) announcements related to it. But since Wandering Wild is releasing first, my focus will be mostly staying on it for the moment (with a few other fun surprises along the way…).

Also, just to mention here, it hasn’t been officially announced yet, but since I’ve already said it earlier in this newsletter, yes, Wandering Wild has a US publisher! It sold to Blackstone Publishing and I have the most epic story of how that ended up happening (including my editor getting hit by a car on his way to the acquisitions meeting! For real!!), so I’ll look forward to sharing all the totally wild details at a later date!

For now, what more can I tell you about Wandering Wild? Well, to start, here’s a mood board I shared last year when I signed with my agent for this book:

All of these pics are very apt, if I do say so myself!

If you’ve been following my newsletter for a while, you’ll already know how much I love this book and how special it is to me. You’ll probably also know how absolutely terrified I am of you reading it, since I’m known for my fantasy books, and this is my first foray into the contemporary space, so I’m therefore very nervous about how it’ll be received. But that said, it still has everything all my fantasy books have — action, adventure, romance, death-defying tasks, found family, banter, high emotional and physical stakes, and a whole heap of other things. It also has some of my favourite tropes ever, like enemies-to-lovers (or, well, one-sided enemies-to-lovers, so really a combination of enemies-to-lovers mixed with grumpy vs sunshine, which was SO FUN to write!), and “there’s only one bed” (or in this case, “there’s only one tent” and “there’s only one cave” *snickers*)… and legit a huge chunk of the book is forced proximity, with our two leading protagonists lost in the wilderness alone together. (Again, SO MUCH FUN to write that!)

It’s also my first ever standalone book (though I maaaaaay have a few ideas marinating in my mind for some spin-off potentials featuring certain side characters…), and it’s my first ever dual POV book as well, told in first person, with one chapter from the male lead’s POV (Zander) and the next chapter from the female lead’s POV (Charlie).

So all up, it’s a lot of firsts, which, again, makes me super nervous, but, ugh, I just love this book sooooo much, and I’m so hopeful you will too! (*Crosses fingers and toes*)

Now that the news about Wandering Wild is out, I can’t wait to share more about it over the coming weeks and months, including the gorgeous cover, which I’ll be revealing next month! Yep, you read that right! NEXT MONTH! (As in, November!) Keep an eye on my socials over the next few weeks and be ready to feast your eyes on beauty! (Or beauties, I should say, since there’s not one, but two stunning covers for this book, depending on where you live!)

Until then, pre-orders are AVAILABLE NOW, and you can use the following links:

For AUS/NZ pre-orders, please click here for a list of retailers.

For US/CAN, we’re still waiting on all the retailer links to go live, but for now, you can pre-order from Barnes & Noble here, or directly from my publisher here.

(Alternatively, you can pre-order through your fave local or online bookstore!)

Just in case you don’t know this, pre-orders are hugely helpful to authors, since it tells bookstores that people are actually interested in the book, and the stores then order enough copies to make sure they’re available for others (which in turn tells publishers that people want to read the book, so they make sure there’s enough printed). When pre-orders are low, the assumption is that there’s no interest, so there’s much less bookseller support (which makes sense, since they only have so much room on their shelves, but the flip side is that less people can find the books organically, and when the demand is low, publishers sometimes stop printing them). So as the saying goes: if you love an author, pre-order their books! (Please and thank you!)

Oh! And one last thing! If you do happen to pre-order Wandering Wild, make sure you keep your receipts, and watch this space! (*Another winky wink*)

I’ll wrap this up here — I’m drowning in deadlines, so no newsletter from me this month (though this technically counts as news!) — but before I go, I’ll leave you with a teaser from Wandering Wild. I’ve been sharing little snippets over the last few months, but this time I can finally use character names and don’t have to redact things! Yay!

Catch you in a few weeks for the cover reveal(s)! Woo!

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