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Laura Alden
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.
Books:
 Foul Play at the PTA, July 2011
Murder at the PTA, October 2010
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