Bookin' with Bingo: LET'S GET COZY! CURSE OF THE PTA: A PREVIEW AND GIVEAWAY

GIVEAWAY ENDED

CURSE OF THE PTA

A PTA Mystery

BY LAURA ALDEN

ABOUT THE BOOK:

As the new PTA president, Beth Kennedy wants to make a difference in the lives of the students and faculty at Tarver Elementary. But with a killer on the loose, staying alive is the first order of business...

With the book sales from their Story Project, the PTA has come into some money. Now they just have to decide how to spend it. With different factions vying for their own interests, Beth brings in financial consultant Dennis Halpern. But before they can come to a resolve, Dennis comes to his final end—shot to death right in the school.

With the doors to the building unlocked, virtually anyone could have done the deed. And they soon discover that Dennis had plenty of secrets. Now locals are whispering that the PTA is cursed, and it’s up to Beth to catch the killer before she gets cashed out.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR IN HER OWN WORDS:

I grew up in Grand Haven, Michigan, where I spent summers picking blueberries and winters falling down on skis.

In the early 80’s I graduated from Eastern Michigan University with a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. While my pursuit of the degree was interesting, a knowledge of how biaxial crystals behave in convergent polarized light has proven completely useless in my various careers. Ah, well.

Except for a year spent in Connecticut, I’ve lived in Michigan all my life. Currently, I live on a lake with my husband and two cats. Which means I now spend winters and summers falling down on skis.

My Life as a Writer

Once upon a time, I won an elementary school poetry contest. The prize was getting up in front of the entire school to read my poem aloud. If the intention was to frighten me from publicly admitting I wrote, it worked like a charm.

The B minus in my college creative writing class didn’t help.

Despite a lifetime of rapacious reading, writing my own novel didn’t occur to me until the ripe old age of thirty seven. I’d just left a management job and taken a position in which I had very few responsibilities. Within two months, I was writing daily, devouring books on writing, soaking up Julia Cameron’s three pages a day advice and following Robert Ray’s schedule in The Weekend Novelist.

A year later, I had a novel in hand — a romance with elements of mysticism. I told the tale of Cinderella after the ball. I wrote of disparate cultures and loneliness and hard-won joy. I wrote and wrote and wrote.
And it was rotten. But, hey, I’d finished a novel! And I don’t read that many romances, anyway. I chose that genre only because I thought it would be easier (hah!) than writing what I love to read. Mysteries.

So I wrote book number 2. A mystery. That, too, sucked. Not as badly as my failed romance, but a sucky book is a sucky book. Next!

(For books number 3 and 4, see above paragraph.)

Numbers 5 and 6, a thriller and a mainstream novel, do not suck. I have high hopes for both books. With any luck an agent and a publisher will think so, too.

SOME OTHER BOOKS BY LAURA ALDEN:

GIVEAWAY

THANKS TO KAYLEIGH AND THE GOOD FOLKS

AT OBSIDIAN AND PENGUIN BOOKS,

I HAVE ONE COPY OF CURSE OF THE PTA,

TO GIVE AWAY TO A LUCKY READER

--U.S. RESIDENTS ONLY
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