Zoe Chase, Entrepreneur! by J.J. Cook

You know, I never really thought of myself as the entrepreneurial type. I was mostly happy at my banking job. It was what everyone wanted me to do when I got out of college. I knew I could do more, but I thought that would happen as I went along.

Inside, I always wanted to make good food for people – the way my Uncle Saul did when I was a kid. He had this wonderful restaurant in my hometown, Mobile, Alabama. Everyone ate there. He gave it up one day – walked out. Some people said it was because of a woman!

I just never thought of going into business for myself. I wasn’t even sure where to start.

Then that terrible day came when a younger man – barely out of college – took the promotion that should have been mine at the bank. I trained him! How could he be better at the job than me?

It didn’t help that I was about to turn thirty. And this wasn’t the first time I was passed up for promotion at the bank. I checked my makeup, and freshened my naturally curly hair, before I went in to demand to know why my supervisor had passed me up again.

I’ll never forget the look on his face when I asked him to stop practicing his golf swing and look at me. You’d think I was a fly on the wall. There was no real reason I was passed over, he told me. I was just better suited to train other people.

Excuse me?

I went right home that night to my cat, Crème Brulee, and told him all about it. We made some ditalini with almond pesto for dinner, and that was when I decided to quit.

Everyone is all in a dither about it, of course. I don’t care. I’m a very good cook, and I know my future is having a restaurant that will make me as famous as Paula Deen. People will come all the way from Atlanta to eat there. Wait and see!

First, I have to fix up the old diner I bought. To do that, I bought and set up an old Airstream as a food truck. My most famous invention yet – the deep fried biscuit bowl – is going to make me rich and famous!

There has been a few snags, but there always is, right? And I’ve met some great people along the way – Ollie and Delia. And now, Miguel, who is the lawyer who helped me when I was being questioned for murder.

Oh, the murder? Well, honey, that’s another story!

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You can read more about Zoe in Death on Eat Street, the first book in the “Biscuit Bowl Food Truck” mystery series, published by Berkley Prime Crime. Books are available at retail and online booksellers.

GIVEAWAY
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Meet the author
J.J. Cook writes award-winning, bestselling mystery fiction as themselves, Joyce and Jim Lavene, and Ellie Grant. They have written and published more than 70 novels for Harlequin, Berkley, Amazon, and Gallery Books along with hundreds of non-fiction articles for national and regional publications. They live in rural North Carolina with their family. Visit them at www.jjcook.net

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