LUCILLE UNMASKED

An interviewer once told my author Lois Winston that she loved me, the reluctant amateur sleuth of herAnastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. However, the character she really, really loved was my communist mother-in-law. “You write the best antagonists!” she said, then asked Lois where she came up with the idea of giving me a communist mother-in-law. 

Ever since Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, debuted in 2011, Lucille Pollack has been the character readers love to hate. Maybe it’s because so many of them have their own mother-in-law issues.

 

Or maybe it’s because Lucille is such an over-the-top unbelievable character. I’m sure there are many readers who think so, but here’s a little secret: Unlike all the other characters in the series, Lucille didn’t spring from my author’s imagination. The woman who makes the Wicked Witch of the West look like Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm is based almost entirely on Lois’s own communist mother-in-law.

 

Yes, you read that correctly. Lois’s mother-in-law was a card-carrying commie. Beyond that, though, she was nasty—really nasty—especially if you dared to have an opinion that differed from hers. According to Lois, her mother-in-law was a self-proclaimed expert on every subject. And she was always right—about everything. No one else’s opinions mattered because everyone else was always wrong. You didn’t have conversations with her; you were lectured—on every subject under the sun. Moreover, on the rare occasions when she failed at something, it was always someone or something else’s fault. Never hers.

 

A couple Lois knew and whom her father-in-law had befriended, once called her the day after they had dinner with her in-laws. They wanted to know how she put up with “that woman.”

 

Even Lois’s father-in-law, who had always seen his wife through rose-colored glasses, eventually woke up to her true nature. Toward the end of his life, when he needed her most, she was too selfish and too self-centered to be bothered.

 

The thing about antagonistic people, though, is that, although they’re insufferable in real life, they make great antagonists on the page. Lois’s mother-in-law grew increasingly nastier the older she got. Lois dealt by bringing her doppelganger to life in the form of Lucille Pollack, my communist mother-in-law. 

 

Of course, I have to ask, what did I ever do to Lois that she’d stick me with the fictional communist mother-in-law from Hades? I’m still waiting for an answer.

Do you know someone who would make a great antagonist? Post a comment for a chance to win a promo code for a free audiobook (US or UK only) of A Sew Deadly Cruise, the ninth book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, or any one of the other eight titles now available as audiobooks.