Larissa Hoffman, a Peachtree City resident and former World History teacher at Sandy Creek High School, writes under the pen name Larissa Reinhart. Next Tuesday, “Portrait of a Dead Guy,” the first book in her Cherry Tucker Mystery series, will be released. She’ll celebrate with a signing at Johnny’s Pizza on Crosstown Dr. in Peachtree City from 7-9 p.m. Books are available for purchase. For customers coming for the signing, Johnny’s has offered 10% off their order.
“We eat there every week and my husband asked the owner if we could have a book signing there,” Hoffman said. “There is nothing about pizza in the book, but it is a good local place to do it.”
“Portrait of a Dead Guy” is a humorous mystery. When a local family wants to memorialize their murdered son in a coffin portrait, Cherry, an artist from Halo, Georgia, scrambles to win their patronage from her small town rival. But as the clock ticks toward the deadline, Cherry faces more trouble than just a controversial subject. Between ex-boyfriends, her flaky family, an illegal gambling ring, and outwitting a killer on a spree, Cherry finds herself painted into a corner she’ll be lucky to survive.
Hoffman wrote the book while living in Japan for a few years. Her children were both in school and she had time to write. Upon returning to Georgia, she received a publishing deal with Henery Press. The signing event at Johnny’s Pizza will be the first of a number events that Hoffman has coming up. She will be at the Decatur Book Festival next weekend, speaking as part of the Emerging Writers, and signing books Saturday, Sept. 1 at 10 a.m. She will also take part at an Emerging Writers event at the Barnes and Noble in Newnan on Sept. 27.
Copies of “Portrait of a Dead Guy,” will be available at Johnny’s next Tuesday, when the book will also be released on Amazon, barnesandnoble.com and for a number of different ebook formats (Kindle, Nook, etc.). Hoffman is hard at work on the second book in the Cherry Tucker series, which should be released in the spring. She also has ideas for numerous other books.
“I’d like to do a historical series set in Georgia, a romance novel about a Georgia girl in Japan and a paranormal romantic suspense book set in the North Georgia mountains,” Hoffman said.
For more information on “Portrait of a Dead Guy,” visit LarissaReinhart.com.
