Guest post written by Pot Shot author Laura Piper Lee
Laura Piper Lee has wanted to be an author since she was a kid. Well, she first wanted to be a mermaid, but that didn’t work out. She enjoys making people laugh, flirting, and avoiding exercise, so writing romantic comedies is pretty much a perfect career choice. She lives with her partner and their son in Philadelphia. If anyone’s rolling by the bagel shop, she’ll have an everything toasted with butter.
About Pot Shot: To open her cannabis dispensary, a chronically ill woman must defeat the surly doctor next door in this hilarious and steamy romantic comedy. Out May 19th 2026.
I have always, always loved stoner comedy. From Dazed and Confused to Grandma’s Boy to Friday to the criminally underappreciated masterpiece we can all relate to—Dude, Where’s My Car?, there’s something irresistible about watching men dumb with dopamine try, and fail, to navigate real life. It’s a special brand of himbo, a peaceful, fun-loving, temporary idiocy, and one sorely missing from genre romance, if you ask me.
But as nostalgic as I am for Super Troopers and Seth Rogen’s early oeuvre, I’ve always been disappointed by the lack of good female representation in the stoner comedy art form. It wasn’t until Broad City, perhaps the funniest TV show of all time, that I felt truly seen and appreciated as a ridiculous lady stoner in her thirties. Has female friendship ever been so poignantly depicted as the scene where Ilana teaches Abbi how to hide a bag of weed in “nature’s pocket”? I think not. Even today, when recreational cannabis has been legalized in twenty-four states and counting, it’s still a male-dominated industry and pastime, with many women too apprehensive to explore cannabis due to toxic weed-bro culture.
I want to challenge that, and I’m doing it with a stoner rom-com all my own.
POT SHOT centers Nomi Wyeth, former valedictorian and current pothead, as she strives to open the first cannabis dispensary in lovely Sparrow Nook, New Jersey, and the all-out feud this engenders with her high school rival, Dr. Julian D’Angelo, the straitlaced, melodramatic try-hard who works at the family clinic next door. As Nomi and Julian duke it out in a Parks and Recreation-esque community war, there are hijinks, hilarious conversations, and relevant to the romance genre, vigorous appreciation for horny pot as they first fight and then fall hopelessly in love.
The story is also deeply personal because, like Nomi, I have Crohn’s disease, and have been, at different times in my life, an unrepentant stoner—partly to deal with the debilitating pain of Crohn’s and partly because it’s fun as hell. As Nomi says, “Cannabis is for anyone old enough to legally partake, whether it’s for a good time or to make what time you still have good.” In POT SHOT, I’ve depicted cannabis positively for both its recreational and medicinal value, and characters from all walks of life are portrayed using it responsibly and without stigma, especially women. The book’s not even out yet, and already I’ve been floored by the number of women who’ve reached out to thank me for writing a book about weed and chronic illness.
We’re out there, and now, there’s a book for us, too.
POT SHOT releases from Union Square & Co. on May 19th, 2026.
