Hi friends! Happy February! February is a fun month for me (although admittedly much more so now that I live in the sunny tropics) for lots of reasons: the Super Bowl! My childhood best friend’s birthday! The perfect excuse to re-watch the cinematic masterpiece Valentine’s Day while enjoying chocolate! And this month, I have something even more special to add to the list: the paperback re-release of First Down. (!!!!!)
Read on to learn how you can snag exclusive Beyond the Play art (the 1st in a set of 4), help me out with a bonus content poll, hear me wax poetic about my new Béis bag, and look ahead to Wicked Serve ARCs. Cheers!
The timing feels absolutely perfect. The Taylor Swift NFL Era comes to a fever pitch on the 11th when Travis Kelce and the Chiefs take on the 49ers (my football predictions from my last newsletter were totally off, clearly) in the Super Bowl, and then the week after, when we’re all still in Football Romance Mode, you’ll be able to find James & Bex wherever books are sold! They’ll be in Barnes & Noble and Target and Walmart and Kroger and airports and your local indie, just to name a few!
With Avon taking over these books, I knew I wanted to do some sort of preorder campaign. My team has been so helpful and generous with setting up not one, but TWO preorder options for you, and both involve this lovely little art piece by @cozka_art! There will be separate campaigns for each book/art print (including Wicked Serve!), and by the end, you can collect a full print set of The Shirtless Art™️ (the Callahan tattoo gets me every time).


I can’t count the number of messages I’ve gotten about this art! I’m so glad that you love it as much as I do. I previously only shared prints of it in my PR boxes/giveaways, but it was always a goal of mine to make it more widely available! The art is exclusive to these ordering options:
Option 1: Order from The Novel Neighbor
If you’ve been looking for signed copies, this is it! Any paperback order from The Novel Neighbor will receive:
The new paperback with its long, spicy, fun bonus epilogue!
This lovely art print featuring James & Bex <3
A hand-signed bookplate!
You can order online from The Novel Neighbor’s website HERE. Check in on their shipping policies for specifics!
Option 2: Order from ANY retailer in ANY format
**US only, art print only**
If you already preordered a copy (thank you!) or have a specific retailer you prefer to order from (including other indie bookstores, Amazon, etc.—anything goes!), submit your receipt for the ebook OR paperback to Avon to receive the art print!
This option is ONLY for the art print, but does include ebook orders as well as paperback, for my ebook readers! I triple-checked with my team, and the ebook includes the cleaned up, shiny bonus material as well <3
Due to legal restrictions on Avon’s end, the art prints can only be shipped to US addresses.
You can submit your receipt HERE!
And, of course, you can order First Down HERE.
**Preorder campaigns for the other books will be coming throughout the year so you can collect a full art print set—we’re just doing it one at a time to hopefully make it as clean as possible. If you preorder all the books at once, 1) I love you and wish I could send you a basket of kittens and 2) please hold on to your receipts and watch this space!**
As a reminder, Breakaway’s paperback will be re-releasing on April 9th, with Stealing Home’s to follow on June 18th. Wicked Serve will be coming out on August 13th!
poll time!
I’d love to create some fun extras for my website, now that the extended epilogues have been published in the books themselves! What would you like to see from me?
the perfect weekender tote
I have a bit of travel coming up this year, starting next week, and I’ve been on the lookout for something stylish and functional to take along with me on shorter trips! After much debate, I settled on the Béis Weekender, which has a bottom compartment for shoes, an inner laptop pocket, tons of compartments and space, and of course, it’s super pretty! It comes in a ton of gorgeous colors and has fantastic reviews. I already want the matching suitcase and mini version!
If you have any suggestions on how to make travel easier, I’m all ears. I actually have way more driving anxiety than flying anxiety, but still, air travel feels like an art that I have not quite mastered yet! I’m excited to try, though—next week’s trip is to see one of my very best friends in the world, but future trips will hopefully be to see all of y’all as I dip my toes into events!
grace, what’s up with wicked serve?
Great question, lol. Okay SO yes, a version of the cover is floating around on retailer websites. Sometimes that happens in traditional publishing like, randomly, and I’m still figuring out how to work with my team in the smoothest way possible. (Although thank you to everyone who rushed into my DMs to be like HELLO GRACE ARE YOU AWARE OF THIS—I truly love and appreciate you!)
If you’ve seen it, that IS the cover, but the final version has brighter colors and won’t have the special edition tagline on it, since it’s a new release. The cover is being updated now, and once it’s all squared away, I’ll be arranging an official cover reveal (and hopefully e-ARC signup) through Valentine PR. I’m expecting it to be next week, but stay tuned! (I will update here once it’s live.)
E-ARCs will be available through Netgalley this time around, instead of BookFunnel, because it’s a traditionally published book, so please make sure you have a Netgalley account if you’re hoping to snag an e-ARC of my *ahem* super-fucking-spicy, super-fucking-emotional, super-fucking-dramatic series ender to Beyond the Play! It stands on its own like the others, of course, but when you read the epilogue… trust me, you’ll want to know the other couples first <3
Reader, I love you. I’ll be in touch soon with more updates!
I became a Beis convert last year and I am just slowly collecting their luggage now even though I have literally nowhere to go (the weekender is probably next). Also, happy re-release month!