An Update by Anastasia Pollack

Hello, everyone! Dru kindly invited me to drop by and catch all of you up on what’s been going on in my life. Those of you who are longtime readers of Dru’s Book Musings may remember that I first made an appearance way back in 2011. That’s when Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the eponymous Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries by Lois Winston debuted. I returned in 2019 after the release of Handmade Ho-Ho Homicide, the eighth book in the series.

Here it is 2023, and much has happened in my life and in my author’s life over the past four years. For one thing, the world was engulfed in a years-long pandemic. Some authors have incorporated the pandemic into their books. I told Lois that I’d go on strike and take all the other characters—plus her muse—with me if she dared introduce Covid into my fictional world. Aren’t constant dead bodies, a communist mother-in-law, and paying off whopping debt incurred by my Dead Louse of a Spouse enough? I certainly think so!

Luckily, Lois agreed with me. She was dealing with her own Covid upheaval. In the middle of the pandemic, she and her husband sold their home in NJ and moved to a Nashville suburb. Like me, Lois is a bridge-and-tunnel Jersey girl, born and bred just across the Hudson River from Manhattan. However, when their younger son and his family moved to Nashville a few years ago, she and her husband no longer had a family support system in the NY Metro area. It was time to move—either to Tennessee or California where their other son and his family live. They chose Tennessee, both for financial reasons and to help with the much younger grandkids.

Ever since, readers have been asking Lois when my family and I would make the move to Tennessee. “Don’t you dare!” I told her. Although Tennessee is a beautiful state (as Dru can attest, having vacationed there last summer,) it’s not home. It not only took the threat of another strike to make Lois see things my way, but I had to close the deal by suggesting Tennesseans would never survive Lucille Pollack, the communist mother-in-law from Hades. Sometimes you have to play dirty to win.

Anyway, we eventually reached a compromise. I had to give up a planned honeymoon in Barcelona to get my way, but it was worth it. Instead of uprooting us, Lois decided to send Zack and me to Tennessee wine country for a few days. She got even with me, though. Within hours of arriving at the B&B winery where she’d booked us, she had me stumble across yet another dead body. As New Jersey’s favorite son Yogi Berra would say, “Déjà vu all over again!” You can read all about my latest exploits as a reluctant amateur sleuth in the recently released A Crafty Collage of Crime, the twelfth book in the series.

A Crafty Collage of Crime, An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Book #12
Genre: Cozy
Release: June 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Links:               Amazon        Apple Books        Barnes & Noble        Kobo

Wherever crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack goes, murder and mayhem follow. Her honeymoon is no exception. She and new husband, photojournalist (and possible spy) Zachary Barnes, are enjoying a walk in the Tennessee woods when they stumble upon a body on the side of a creek. The dead man is the husband of one of the three sisters who own the winery and guest cottages where Anastasia and Zack are vacationing.

When the local sheriff sets his sights on the widow as the prime suspect, her sisters close ranks around her. The three siblings are true-crime junkies, and thanks to a podcaster who has produced an unauthorized series about her, Anastasia’s reputation for solving murders has preceded her to the bucolic hamlet. The sisters plead for her help in finding the real killer. As Anastasia learns more about the women and their business, a host of suspects emerge, including several relatives, a relentless land developer, and even the sisters themselves.

Meanwhile, Anastasia becomes obsessed with discovering the podcaster’s identity. Along with knowing about Anastasia’s life as a reluctant amateur sleuth, the podcaster has divulged details of Anastasia’s personal life. Someone has betrayed Anastasia’s trust, and she’s out to discover the identity of the culprit.

Craft project included.

About the author
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous fish-out-of-water novel about a small-town girl going off to the big city and the mother who had other ideas. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception.

Then Lois’s writing segued into the world of amateur sleuths with her humorous Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” The series now includes twelve novels and three novellas.

To date Lois has published twenty-one novels, five novellas, several short stories, one children’s chapter book, and one nonfiction book on writing.

Loiswinston.com | Newsletter | Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog | Pinterest | Twitter | Goodreads | Bookbub

All comments are welcomed.