Laura Van Wormer

Best-selling author Laura Van Wormer has been a force in fiction since the publication of "Riverside Drive" in 1988. She is the author of fourteen novels which can be grouped according to heroine and/or genre. All the novels in which the anchorwoman Alexandra Waring appear are often referred to as "The Alexandra Chronicles". Those books are, in order: RIVERSIDE DRIVE (mainstream fiction, long book) WEST END (mainstream fiction, her longest book) ANY GIVEN MOMENT (mainstream fiction, long book) TALK (mainstream fiction, long book) EXPOSE (#1 Sally Harrington mystery, long book) THE LAST LOVER (#2 Sally Harrington mystery, shorter book) TROUBLE BECOMES HER (#3 Sally Harrington mystery, shorter book) THE BAD WITNESS (#4 Sally Harrington mystery, shorter book) THE KILL FEE (#5 Sally Harrington mystery, shorter book) MR. MURDER (#6 Sally Harrington mystery, shorter book) RIVERSIDE PARK (mainstream fiction, average novel length) The Sally Harrington Mysteries are listed above. They are shorter, a mix of romance, thriller, mystery and comedy, and are the only books Laura has written in the first person. Her other 3 novels have their own following: BENEDICT CANYON (mainstream novel, long book, about TV production in LA) JURY DUTY (mainstream novel which ended up on mystery bestseller lists) JUST FOR THE SUMMER (mainstream Hamptons novel, mystery following) Her life story? She was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and moved to Darien, Connecticut at 10 months old. After graduating from Darien High School Laura spent a year at the University of Arizona before transferring to Syracuse University, from where she received a B.S. in Public Communications from the S.I. Newhouse School. Laura then went on to New York, looking for a job in television, but landed a job instead as secretary to the editor-in-chief of Doubleday & Company. "Every day my head was spinning," Laura says. "Everyone from Leon Uris to William F. Buckley, Jr., Victoria Holt to Phyllis Whitney, Edna O'Brien to Stephen King, Arthur and Alex Hailey to Allen Drury were all publishing with Doubleday at that time." Laura rose through the editorial ranks somewhat specializing in celebrity and mass media-related books. Caught in a deadline crunch one year, Doubleday and 20th Century Fox flew Laura out to the West Coast to create a book based on the hit TV series, "Dynasty". Upon her return to New York an offer was made to her to create a book for the rival hit TV show, "Dallas". Laura ended up leaving Doubleday and accepting the "Dallas" assignment to support herself while writing a first novel. The novel took four years to write. To keep body and soul together Laura became "The Official Dallas Historian" (!) and helped to create a "Dallas" board game for Lorimar. She then took on "Knots Landing" as a book project, and after that, again to keep body and soul together while she worked on her novel, wrote advertising copy, copy for the back of jigsaw puzzles and even had a brief career as a board-game creator. She finally finished her first novel, "Riverside Drive", which is going into its 8th edition. Laura is a longtime member of the Authors Guild of America, the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime. In 2011 Laura and her partners founded Author & Company, the electronic publishing and internet marketing company, of which she is CEO. Her identity is all mixed up now and you can visit the author at LauraVanWormer.com and the publisher at AuthorandCompany.com. In either venue know that she loves hearing from readers.