AGING CHARACTERS by Lois Winston
When I was first asked to write a crafting cozy mystery series, I decided my amateur sleuth would be in her early forties and have two teenage sons. Having older children would give her more sleuthing flexibility. She wouldn’t have to rely on childcare when she set out investigating a crime, and she could rely on her kids to pull a casserole out of the fridge and pop it in the oven when she was running late.
What I didn’t think about until the series sold was that those teenagers would go off to college sooner rather than later if I allowed the books to progress in real time. I not only wanted to keep the kids around for as long as possible, but I also wanted to keep them in their teens. Anyone who has ever raised teenage boys will realize the character and plot potential that can be mined from the average teenage boy.
However, in my series, Alex and Nick are dealing with more than run-of-mill teenage angst, rebellion, and hormones. The series opens with their father having just dropped dead in a Las Vegas casino. Bad enough. But this dear old dad also gambled away the family savings and left his family with debt greater than the GNP of Uzbekistan. And did I mention his not-so-friendly neighborhood loan shark doesn’t care if the guy is now dead? He still wants his money. Or else.
How would you feel if you woke up one morning and discovered your father wasn’t who you thought he was? Anastasia’s sons provide tension, conflict, and humor as they deal with their changed circumstances and interact with their mother and the other members of their family, both two-legged and four-legged. In addition, they also must come to terms with another new reality in their lives—all the dead bodies that start showing up around their mother. This is, after all, a mystery series.
After mulling over the problem, I decided my only option was to have as little time as possible elapse between books. The first book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, debuted January 2011. The tenth book in the series, Stitch, Bake, Die!, recently released, but the characters have only aged a little more than a year.
If only I could say the same for myself…
Stitch, Bake, Die!
An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 10
With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the New Jersey chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.
The sweet little old ladies Anastasia is expecting to meet are definitely old, and some of them are little, but all are anything but sweet. She’s stepped into a vipers’ den that starts with bribery and ends with murder. When an ice storm forces Anastasia and Cloris to spend the night at the Chateau, Anastasia discovers evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and a bevy of suspects.
Can she piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?
Crafting tips included.
Buy
Links
Paperback
https://amzn.to/2YiodcR
Kindle
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Apple
Books https://books.apple.com/us/book/stitch-bake-die/id1582066729
Kobo
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/stitch-bake-die
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