by Lois Winston
Writers are often advised to “write what you know.”
Anastasia Pollack, the reluctant amateur sleuth of my Anastasia Pollack
Crafting Mystery series, is the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. I’ve been a
crafts editor for a craft book publisher and also freelanced as a designer for various
women’s magazines. However, I was never a magazine editor. Still, I know enough
about the world of magazine publishing that I feel I’ve done credible justice to
my character’s profession.
When I was mulling over plot ideas for the fourth
book in the series, I chose a familiar setting. At one point in my career, I
worked several craft industry trade and consumer shows each year. Once at a
trade show in Las Vegas our shipping case of models disappeared after being
received at the loading dock. Trade shows are extremely costly, and the
manufacturer I was working for lost thousands of dollars in business because
she had no product to display. Then, at the end of the five-day show, when our
empty cases were returned to us to pack up our bare booth, the shipping case of
models magically appeared. Of course the convention center refused to take
responsibility for the snafu.
This old memory got me thinking. What if the shipping
case had been returned, not filled with craft models, but with a dead body? And
thus was born the plot for Decoupage Can
Be Deadly.
I wasn’t too far into the writing process when I
learned about the hot new beauty crafting trend of Vajazzling. Of course, my
curiosity was instantly piqued. I did a Google search and came across a video on the art of Vajazzling.
This is definitely one craft Anastasia won’t be doing
any time soon. But it fit perfectly into the plot I was developing for the
book. So I ran with it.
If you’d like to see how I incorporated both a
consumer show at a convention center and the art of Vajazzling into Decoupage Can Be Deadly, you can read
the first chapter here.
Decoupage
Can Be Deadly
Anastasia and her fellow American Woman editors are steaming mad when minutes before the
opening of a consumer show, they discover half their booth usurped by Bling!, their publisher’s newest
magazine. CEO Alfred Gruenwald is sporting new arm candy—rapper-turned-entrepreneur
and Bling! executive editor, the
first-name-only Philomena. During the consumer show, Gruenwald’s wife serves
Philomena with an alienation of affection lawsuit, but Philomena doesn’t live
long enough to make an appearance in court. She’s found dead days later,
stuffed in the shipping case that held Anastasia’s decoupage crafts. When
Gruenwald makes cash-strapped Anastasia an offer she can’t refuse, she wonders,
does he really want to find Philomena’s killer or is he harboring a hidden agenda?
Buy Links
Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romance, romantic suspense, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Visit Lois at www.loiswinston.com, visit Emma atwww.emmacarlyle.com, and visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog,www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. Follow everyone on Twitter @anasleuth.
