Lucille, the Communist Mother-in-Law from Hell
By Lois Winston
And now
for something completely different…
I’ve started off with the above phrase because
this guest post isn’t about Western or Native American romance or mysteries.
I’m a city girl whose only experience on a horse has been limited to the
painted wooden ones on carousels.
Writers generally write what they know (unless
they absolutely love to spend hours, days, weeks, months, or even years
researching subjects they know nothing about before putting pen to paper—or
fingers to keyboard.) I write the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, a mystery
series with a protagonist whose life mirrors my own—to some extent.
Except I don’t have a husband who dropped dead
in a casino in Las Vegas, leaving my two teenage sons and me dead broke. Thank
goodness for that, right?
And I haven’t discovered even a single dead
body, let alone as many as Anastasia does on what seems like an almost daily
basis. For that, too, I am extremely grateful.
And luckier still, no one has ever tried to
kill me.
Those exceptions aside, Anastasia and I have a
good deal in common, from our careers to our communist mothers-in-law. Yes, you
read that right. My mother-in-law was a card-carrying commie. Beyond that, she
was someone who valued no opinion other than her own. No one knew as much as
she did—on any subject. People didn’t have conversations with her. It was
impossible because conversation quickly segued into a lecture. And she always
had to get in the last word.
When my agent suggested I write a crafting
cozy, I knew I wanted to write a humorous one. I’d started out writing dark
romantic suspense, but after September 11th I found I could no
longer write dark. Living mere miles from Ground Zero, I was witnessing too
much dark all around me. I found myself gravitating toward books that made me
laugh because I so needed something
that would lift the darkness. I figured others probably felt the same way.
So I created Anastasia Pollack, a woman who is
suddenly dealt a really crappy hand but manages to persevere with spunk and
humor. Her husband has gambled away all their money and not only left her
deeply in debt, he’s also left her with Lucille, his semi-invalid commie mother
as a permanent houseguest. I gave her my mother-in-law’s personality. But I
didn’t stop there. I also gave Anastasia a mother who claims to descend from
Russian nobility, and Mama, too, is now living with Anastasia and her sons.
Worse yet, she and Lucille must share a bedroom. Conflict, anyone?
I’ve also populated the household with a dog
named Manifesto (for the communist treatise), a cat named Catherine the Great,
and a Shakespeare-quoting parrot named Ralph.
Oh, and did I mention the Mafia? Something else
Anastasia and I have in common. Growing up in New Jersey, I went to school with
quite a few Mafia princes and princesses. For all I know, they’ve whacked a few
people themselves since I last saw them. For obvious reasons, we haven’t kept
in touch.
All of this becomes the backdrop for Anastasia
becoming an extremely reluctant amateur sleuth who keeps getting drawn into
murder investigations. I’m not totally mean to her, though. With everything
I’ve dumped on Anastasia, I had to give her something to put a smile on her
face. Enter photojournalist Zack Barnes, except Anastasia suspects he may also
be a government operative. Hey, I couldn’t make it too easy for her, right?
There are now six books in the Anastasia
Pollack Crafting Mystery series, along with three novellas. Scrapbook of Mystery is the latest
release.
Scrapbook
of Murder
An
Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 6
Crafts and murder don’t normally go
hand-in-hand, but normal deserted craft editor Anastasia
Pollack’s world nearly a year ago. Now, tripping over dead bodies seems to be
the “new normal” for this reluctant amateur sleuth.
When the daughter of a murdered neighbor asks
Anastasia to create a family scrapbook from old photographs and memorabilia
discovered in a battered suitcase, she agrees—not only out of friendship but
also from a sense of guilt over the older woman’s death. However, as Anastasia
begins sorting through the contents of the suitcase, she discovers a letter
revealing a fifty-year-old secret, one that unearths a long-buried scandal and
unleashes a killer. Suddenly Anastasia is back in sleuthing mode as she races
to prevent a suitcase full of trouble from leading to more deaths.
Buy
Links:
Bio:
USA
Today bestselling and
award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense,
chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her
own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus
Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery
series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition,
Lois is an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and
plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.
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