Yours Truly, Theo: A Sequel to With Love, Juniper coming soon!

New and old friends return in this continuation from Theo Vervain's perspective.

This was just a small segment of the underbelly of Kingsborough society, and it offered Theo a short respite from the constant drive to do more, be better, carry on the legacy of the Vervain family and build upon it. Here, he was just another flier. An entertainer. Just...a person. Theo rarely ever felt he was given leave to simply be a person.

Many moons ago, actual years ago now, I was sitting at my desk in my apartment and working on my first draft of With Love, Juniper. I was feeling stumped and stagnant, staring at a page where Theo Vervain was being incredibly cruel.

I needed him to be cruel. I needed that cruelty to push Juniper and Oleander together, but something about it felt wrong. He felt evil for no reason, and while evil people exist, I needed to know what stopped Theo from being murderous and disgusting. I needed to know what his line was and why he wouldn’t cross it. Even then, I knew Theo deserved better than to be reduced to a plot device.

So, I took a bit of time to reflect on him and get to know him. What made a person obsessed with control? What made someone such a perfectionist that it wound up projected on the people around him?

The short answer is, of course, severe anxiety. Anxiety in a much different flavor than Juniper’s.

The long answer? Theo is someone who loves his family so fully and completely—someone who idolizes his mother and father to the point where he’s put this insane pressure on himself to be the perfect son. And when your father is a celebrated war hero and the chief captain of law enforcement, there is only so much you can do to surpass your father’s name and enhance his legacy. Nothing can go wrong. Nothing can be sub-par. To be mediocre is to undermine all of the work your father has done, all of the good he’s done for you directly.

Theo is a good man with a good heart. But he does not suffer anything that could mar his reputation, and by extension, the reputation of his parents who he loves more than himself.

It was the first and hopefully only time he had ever snapped at his mother, who kept encouraging him to put the files down and get some rest. He had been in such a state of focus that her gentle urgings registered more like the incessant buzzing of an insect. Yet, seeing his mother's eyes—his own eyes—crumple in hurt and worry was enough to make him regret it a hundred times over.

He was on the train two days later.

Once I learned this about him, I knew I would need to write his story. And I’m so excited to announce that my publisher, Inked in Gray Press, agreed with me. Theo’s story, to be called Yours Truly, Theo should be coming out sometime in 2027. I’m drafting it now, and I’m so excited to get into the darker side of this setting with you. I plan on doing a more official blurb reveal soon on my Instagram, but here is the gist.

Theo has thrown himself into his two passions: following in his father's footsteps by beginning his career in the Chaos and Crime department while moonlighting as a mysterious masked racer in the illicit underground Besom racing scene.

Yet, nothing seems to take his mind off of the his recent rejection from Juniper Harlow the way he hoped. Not as his father seems unlike himself while contending with a new string of ritual murders—the first they've seen since Oleander's father was killed. Not as he's placed on temporary suspension for disobeying orders and not when he loses to an irritating new arrival on the track who's using some strange kind of magic to beat him that he's never seen before.

When Juniper shows up on Theo's doorstep with Oleander in tow, delirious and cursed by chaos magic, intuition tells him all these things are connected. For the first time in his life, he may have to go against his father's wishes in order to help him.

This story is going to be less cozy than the last one. There’s gonna be mystery, violence, and a peek into the grittier sides of the setting. It’s also going to be a deeper look into Oleander’s murky past and what comes for him in his present.

It’s also going to have a super adorable non binary love interest that loves to irritate Theo.

If this sounds like a blast to you, and you want to be the first to get access to this book as a beta or ARC reader you should check out this interest form.

So excited to bring you along with me on this journey! I’ll hopefully have new information for you soon!!

See you soon!

Amanda