WEIRD NEIGHBORS MAKE FOR GREAT CHARACTERS

Artwork from Depositphotos and Pixabay

My author, Lois Winston, has recently penned the next book in the series she writes about me. Sorry, Knot Sorry is the thirteenth book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. Thirteen novels and three novellas, and that woman hasn’t let up with the murder and mayhem.

The other day, I asked her to explain why me? Why not pick on someone else for a change? She shrugged and said, “Sorry, not sorry.” Or perhaps she was trying to be funny. Lois has a thing for puns.

 

She also has a thing for weird, interesting people and often puts them in her books. Look no further than the communist mother-in-law she saddled me with, based on her own communist mother-in-law. Other characters have been inspired by various people she’s either known or observed, but usually they’re a composite of several people molded into one character.

 

Now that the latest book is finished and up for preorder, Lois is looking ahead to the next book in the series. In one of the previous books, the house across the street from me was torn down and replaced with a McMansion. That plot thread began in A Stitch to Die For, the fifth book in the series, and has been mentioned in various other books, most recently in Sorry, Knot Sorry. However, I have yet to meet my new neighbors.

 

Recently, I’ve noticed Lois is thinking quite a bit about the neighbors who used to live in the actual teardown across from where she lived. Since I know what goes on in her brain, I now know the full story.

 

Years ago, when Lois and her husband purchased their home in New Jersey, she suspected an elderly, infirmed couple on a limited income lived in the dilapidated house across the street. Much to her surprise, she discovered the owners were a couple in their late thirties or early forties.

 

She began to refer to them as the Stoop Sitters because they’d camp out on the top step of their landing for hours at a time, either together or individually. Just sitting and smoking and often drinking beer, but never conversing with each other. Often the husband would remove his shirt and lie back on the concrete porch, his massive stomach pointing heavenward. He’d remain that way for hours, apparently napping.

 

When Mr. Stoop Sitter wasn’t sprawled bare-chested on the landing, he’d spend hours mowing his lawn. Except, the “lawn” was a barren patch of packed dirt and weeds. Yet, he’d constantly walk behind his mower, trimming the nonexistent grass of his extremely small front yard. Back and forth over the same square footage until the mower ran out of gas. The next day, after refilling the mower, the scene would repeat. This went on every day except during rainstorms or winter snows.

 

Lois assures me she’s no voyeur. She worked from home in an office at the front of her house, her desk positioned in front of the window. It was impossible not to notice the Stoop Sitters.

 

One day, her concentration was broken by a cat fight. Not a cat fight between two cats, though, but between two women. And it was over a man. Mrs. Stoop Sitter was accusing the other woman of trying to steal her husband.

 

The scene was right out of a reality TV show, minus the camera crew. Eventually, Mrs. Stoop Sitter hurled one last warning, stormed up the steps and entered her house, slamming the door behind her. The other woman turned around and walked down the street. 

 

Lois assures me Mr. Stoop Sitter was no one’s idea of a catch, but the scene outside her window proved otherwise. Obviously, there’s someone for everyone.

 

Eventually, the Stoop Sitters sold their house to a developer who tore it down and built a McMansion on the postage-size plot of land. I have a feeling Lois is mulling over introducing Mr. and Mrs. Stoop Sitter to the world in her next book. Will I wind up investigating their deaths? Or perhaps the death of Mr. Stoop Sitter’s girlfriend? There are lots of ideas churning around in my author’s brain. I guess I’ll have to see what she comes up with this time. All I know for sure is I’ll be involved, whether I like it or not.

 

Have you ever come across people you think would make great characters in a mystery? Post a comment for a chance to win a promo code for a free audiobook download of one of the first nine Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries currently available.

 

Sorry, Knot Sorry

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 13

 

Magazine crafts editor Anastasia Pollack may finally be able to pay off the remaining debt she found herself saddled with when her duplicitous first husband dropped dead in a Las Vegas casino. But as Anastasia has discovered, nothing in her life is ever straightforward. Strings are always attached. Thanks to the success of an unauthorized true crime podcast, a television production company wants to option her life—warts and all—as a reluctant amateur sleuth. 

 

Is such exposure worth a clean financial slate? Anastasia isn’t sure, but at the same time, rumors are flying about layoffs at the office. Whether she wants national exposure or not, Anastasia may be forced to sign on the dotted line to keep from standing in the unemployment line. But the dead bodies keep coming, and they’re not in the script.

 

Craft tips included.

 

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