After spending six years researching and writing her first novel, St. Paul–based Public Radio International writer and producer Heather McElhatton was crushed to have her agent dub the book “unsellable.”
Trying to figure out where she’d gone wrong, McElhatton began mapping out all of her life decisions on, of all things, a 10-by-10-inch square of linoleum from her mother’s attic. It was the genesis of a new book: Pretty Little Mistakes: A Do-Over Novel. Based on the popular Choose Your Own Adventure books for children, Pretty Little Mistakes lets readers choose between storylines, resulting in more than 150 possible endings. The decidedly grown-up novel, featured in Playgirl, Newsweek, and Vanity Fair, is likely to spawn a host of copycats.
