cover reveal for THE ART OF CATCHING FEELINGS!

i love it and hope you do, too

It’s that time. The best time in a book’s life, if you ask me — the time when you have a cover to reveal, and it’s beautiful and perfect and since *you* didn’t make it you can accept any compliments toward it easily!! Artist Jenifer Prince and art director Colleen Reinhart continue to hit it out of the park each and every time, and I can’t say enough things about how much their work on my covers means to me.

So without further ado . . . here’s the cover for The Art of Catching Feelings!

That classic font! The baseball card vibe! Their foreheads touching! The hand placement! The way they’re *leaning*! Her hair! The little sneaker! The gradient sky! The stadium lights! Canonically her favorite color is yellow! (I don’t say that in the book, but now you know!) The blue of his jersey had to be tweaked a few times and now it’s the perfect shade of my fictional Carolina Battery and not the Texas Rangers, no offense to the Rangers who are doing just fine!!!! (World Series Game 4 ooooof)

Here’s the official description of the book:

A professional baseball player and his heckler prove that true love is worth going to bat for in the next swoony romance by USA Today bestselling author Alicia Thompson.

Daphne Brink doesn’t follow baseball, but watching “America’s Snoozefest” certainly beats sitting at home in the days after she signs her divorce papers. After one too many ballpark beers, she heckles Carolina Battery player Chris Kepler, who quickly proves there might actually be a little crying in baseball. Horrified, Daphne reaches out to Chris on social media to apologize . . . but forgets to identify herself as his heckler in her message.

Chris doesn’t usually respond to random fans on social media, but he’s grieving and fragile after an emotionally turbulent few months. When a DM from “Duckie” catches his eye, he impulsively messages back. Duckie is sweet, funny, and seems to understand him in a way no one else does.

Daphne isn’t sure how much longer she can keep lying to Chris, especially as she starts working with the team in real life and their feelings for each other deepen. When he finds out the truth, will it be three strikes, she’s out?

I think my favorite part about this back cover copy is that “America’s Snoozefest” was what I used to call baseball, back in my unenlightened days. I remember falling asleep on the couch to games on the TV, always feeling like I had no idea what was going on and really didn’t care. But then I WOKE UP (literally and metaphorically) just in time to follow the season where the Rays went to the World Series in 2008. And I’ve never looked back! Here I am, 15 years later, watching former Ray Evan Longoria make his second World Series appearance, this time with the Diamondbacks. If you’d told me there would be a time when I would not only watch baseball, but that I would love baseball, that I would follow it even when my team wasn’t in it anymore, that I would write an entire book about it . . . well, I wouldn’t have believed you.

The plot of this book is a little tricky, like explaining how pitch clock violations work the first time. But if we’re through a full season and the announcers no longer feel the need to stop everything to go over it again, then I trust I will eventually get to a place where I’ve come up with some pithy way to describe the plot of this book. Basically, she heckles him at a game and makes him cry; she DMs him to say sorry but fails to say that she is the heckler; they start talking online; then she starts working with the team in real life and he knows she’s his heckler (because he remembers her face, obviously), but what he doesn’t know is that she’s also the woman he’s been DMing/texting with. Make sense?

So with that being said, a few content warnings for this book: Daphne is recently divorced and that plays heavily into her storyline. Chris recently lost his brother to suicide, and that grief is part of his storyline. There is also some pregnancy/baby stuff with a side character.

Personally, I think baseball is hot (this is definitely my hottest book, spice-wise); cerebral (I built a logic puzzle into this book which I’ll tell you about at some point); petty (oh man some of the DIGS I worked in had me cackling); weird (this book is a little weird, I can’t help myself); and above all else, so full of the biggest feelings. I love Daphne and Chris so much; I really put them through it on their path to happily ever after; but the way a walkoff win hits when you spent that last inning with your heart in your throat, you know?

Preorder links can be found here. And I will definitely be doing some kind of signed preorder campaign through my local indie, Tombolo Books, so stay tuned for more on that! It’ll likely be very similar to previous campaigns I’ve done, where some kind of art print or other swag will be included with the book, and you can put any personalization requests in the comments for your order. Your name, a doodle, a quote, a song lyric, a message, whatever. I enjoy writing them.

I’m going to be revealing the cover on Instagram later today if you’re around!!! Until then, let’s keep this between us ;)

*btw, the link above for Jenifer Prince is for her Patreon, which I highly recommend! For $8/month I get emails with NSFW versions of her art, the chance to participate in polls about what fan ship she should draw next, etc. I love it!! So if you like her style, and especially if you like sapphic art, I would highly recommend signing up!

Currently reading . . . I’m reading an early copy of In a Not So Perfect World by Neely Tubati Alexander and it’s really charming me. There’s this quality to some romance novels I love — I can’t describe it very well, but I know it when I see it. There’s just an almost offbeat reality to them, where there’s this one line that makes you go, oh my god EXACTLY, or a reference that makes you go, I didn’t know anyone else thought of this, or something that almost makes you think, what is this doing in here? I’m surprised to see this in a book. Just little details that stick with you. My friend Jacqueline Firkins’ book The Predictable Heartbreaks of Imogen Finch also has this quality to it, and just came out yesterday!! I love a book that really feels like it comes from a singular mind, if that makes any sense. Sometimes as I read books I like to imagine the writer actually sitting at their desks and writing them, like to imagine the words in front of my eyes being pounded out on a laptop, deleted, typed again. You might think that would take me out of the reading experience, but it doesn’t.

watching . . . My family was in search of a new show and we started watching the live action ONE PIECE on Netflix. It’s good so far! The first episode was an hour long and I barely noticed the time passing, which is a big deal for me because I can get so restless while watching stuff for whatever reason.

listening to . . . My music has been a non-stop rotation of 1989 (Taylor’s Version), Noah Kahan’s Stick Season, and Britney Spears’ greatest hits. I keep changing my mind on which vault trick I love best but right now I think maybe “Is It Over Now?” If I told you recently “Now That We Don’t Talk,” I meant that. And if I told you recently, “Slut!,” I meant that, too. I think these vault tracks are all elite tbh. I’m also teaching myself “Stick Season” on guitar (the easy version I could find on YouTube lolol). Capo on the second fret, G, D, Em, C. I can handle that! If I see an F or B chord in the tabs I’m like, oh well, guess that song is unknowable!!!

(Wait, it might be “Say Don’t Go”? I genuinely can’t pick.)

(No, I think I’m sticking with “Is It Over Now?” That’s also the track playing literally right now, which is the top reason why I choose any particular one.)