Jennifer Sturman - The Jinx

As for Emma, she announced over dessert that she was moving into Matthew’s apartment in Boston. I turned to her, saddened that my best friend would be living in a different city. “Don’t worry,” she said. “It’s just a shuttle flight away.”

I didn’t worry. I knew that we would talk just as often as we usually did. Besides, I would be busy as well in the upcoming months. Peter would be moving to New York, and I definitely didn’t have enough closet space for two. We would have to find a bigger apartment to share. And I had a wedding to plan, a date to set, a venue to find, a band and caterers and florists to hire, and…

“What are you thinking?” Peter asked me in a low voice, pulling me close.

“That I’m the luckiest person in the world.”

“Careful. You don’t want to jinx yourself, now.”

“You know what I say to the Jinxing Gods?”

“No. What?” His eyes met mine, their rich chocolate color deep and warm.

“Jinx away.”

Like the heroine of her first novel, The Pact, Jennifer Sturman grew up in Shaker Heights, Ohio, the birthplace of another fictional character, Ward Cleaver. She also attended the same school as actress Margaret Hamilton, the Cleveland native who played the Wicked Witch of the West in The Wizard of Oz. Ms. Hamilton visited her alma mater when Ms. Sturman was in the fourth grade and told the students how she melted. While sworn to secrecy, Ms. Sturman does offer the following hint: trapdoor.

Ms. Sturman graduated from Harvard College with a degree in History and Literature, magna cum laude. She began her business career as a financial analyst in mergers and acquisitions at Goldman, Sachs. Unlike her heroine, Ms. Sturman did not thrive on the all-nighters and number crunching demanded by Wall Street, although she managed to sustain herself by consuming a steady stream of Diet Coke. After two years, she enrolled at Harvard Business School where, with the aid of yet more Diet Coke, she earned her MBA with distinction. She then joined McKinsey & Company as a management consultant, advising clients in media, consumer packaged goods and retail on a broad range of strategic issues. She now works in corporate strategy at Time Warner, but she does not get free cable.

Ms. Sturman resides in Manhattan. She has no free time, but if she did, she would probably spend it doing the New York Times crossword puzzle, watching bad teen movies from the '80s and sipping drinks that come with little umbrellas in them.