Blog Tour: Pretty in Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton (Guest Post + Giveaway!)

Happy Wednesday and welcome to my stop on the Pretty in Punxsutawney blog tour!! I’m so excited to be on this tour, and I’m even more excited for you to read about what inspired Laurie Boyle Crompton to write this book! Read on to find out more about the author, book, and tour, plus enter a HUGE Blink YA giveaway!!!

Pretty in Punxsutawney by Laurie Boyle Crompton
Published on January 15, 2019 by Blink
Genres: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 304
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A Groundhog Day meets Pretty in Pink mashup from author Laurie Boyle Crompton, Pretty in Punxsutawney tells the tale of a girl willing to look beneath the surface to see people for who they really are.

Andie is the type of girl who always comes up with the perfect thing to say…after it’s too late to say it. She’s addicted to romance movies—okay, all movies—but has yet to experience her first kiss. After a move to Punxsutawney, PA, for her senior year, she gets caught in an endless loop of her first day at her new school, reliving those 24 hours again and again.

Convinced the curse will be broken when she meets her true love, Andie embarks on a mission: infiltrating the various cliques to find the one boy who can break the spell. What she discovers along the way is that people who seem completely different can often share the very same hopes, dreams, and hang-ups. And that even a day that has been lived over and over can be filled with unexpected connections and plenty of happy endings.

What inspired you to write this book?

I love being a YA author and feel so lucky when I say Pretty in Punxsutawney is my fifth stand-alone young adult novel! My sixth book comes out with Blink in February so I spend a lot of time pinching myself to make sure I’m not dreaming. I tr?

y to tackle at least one specific new challenge with each book I write in order to keep things fresh and to continue to grow as an author. For instance, for my third book Adrenaline Crush I wrote about an adrenaline junkie which is something I very much am NOT. I had to turn to research in order to get into my main character’s head and I even took my family rock climbing to see just how that felt. I can tell you, rock climbing felt terrifying and my daughter’s fear of heights can perhaps be traced back to that adventure. For my fourth book, Love and Vandalism, I wanted to attempt something a little less “bad-parenting-like” so decided to try writing a major surprise plot twist. I was thrilled when one of my early readers texted me in the middle of the night saying, “OMG!! Wait WHAT?? So her mother is…[spoilery comment omitted]?? Wow!” That perfect response made me so happy—Plot Twist Achievement Level Unlocked!

For Pretty in Punxsutawney I dared myself to tackle a story with an element of the supernatural, something I’d never even considered before. Realistic YA has always been a comfortable fit for me, but everyone knows all the magic things happen outside our comfort zone and I felt ready for a new challenge. I decided it would be interesting to see what kinds of fun experiences a girl could have if she was stuck reliving her first day at a new school over and over. I envisioned Andie’s ‘slow motion strut down the hallway’ flipping between completely different looks from day to day like a movie montage and immediately wanted to write that book. And so, I did!

Pretty in Punxsutawney also required a ton of research on 80s movies which follows my method of picking fun topics and then constructing a reason to research them. So far, I’ve done it with superhero comics, reality television, spray-painting graffiti art and the aforementioned (and ill-conceived) rock climbing! My next book, Freaky in Fresno involves a very cool drive-in movie theater because I am obsessed with going to the drive-in! Freaky in Fresno also features two estranged cousins who couldn’t be more opposite who swap bodies for a day. Talk about a fresh challenge! Ricki and Lana must figure out how to unswap themselves while keeping things on track for both their lives and their love lives. Oh, and there’s also an evil Chihuahua who seems determined to ruin everything! Freaky in Fresno is told from Ricki’s point of view as she switches to her cousin’s body and tries to get back into her own. Keeping everything straight when she was speaking with, and reacting to, and even wrestling her cousin in her own body was, well… freaky! Freaky in Fresno comes out in February and was loads of fun to write. And my family is extremely happy that I’m keeping my daredevil challenges strictly on the page… for now!

Laurie Boyle Crompton is the YA author of the upcoming PRETTY IN PUNXSUTAWNEY (Blink/HarperCollins 2019) as well as ADRENALINE CRUSH (Macmillan/2014, Square Fish/2016), BLAZE (or Love in the Time of Supervillains), THE REAL PROM QUEENS OF WESTFIELD HIGH and LOVE AND VANDALISM (Sourcebooks/2013, 2014, 2017). Growing up in ‘Pennsyltucky’ in the 1980s, Laurie couldn’t wait to escape rural life. After saving up her tips from waitressing at a local greasy spoon at 18 she packed up her acid wash jeans and moved to NY. Where everyone else had stopped wearing acid wash.

She graduated first in her class from St. John’s University with a BA in English and Journalism. Since then she’s written for national magazines like ALLURE, survived a teaching stint at an all-boy high school, and appeared on Good Day New York several times as a Toy Expert. And yes, ‘toy expert’ is an actual profession. Really.

She has lived in places like Orlando, Florida where she and her husband spent all of their spare time and money visiting theme parks before moving to the Cotswolds in England for six months, which was every bit as cool as that sounds. The Cromptons are now back in New York where their two children resent never going to Disney.

Laurie occasionally enjoys hanging out in fields of blooming flowers and also refering to herself in the third person.

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