Halloween is only eight days away. The holiday has
become big business with consumers spending nearly 8 billion dollars annually,
2 billion of which is spent on decorations, another 2 billion + on candy.
Adults spend over a billion and a half dollars on costumes for themselves,
slightly less for their kids. Nearly 70% of the population will celebrate
Halloween in some way. Count me in the minority.
I hate Halloween. There, I’ve said it. Need me to
repeat it? I can shout it if you prefer: ANASTASIA POLLACK HATES HALLOWEEN!
Am I a curmudgeon? Anyone who knows me (with the
exception of my mother-in-law who actually is a curmudgeon—and a communist one
to boot) will tell you that’s not the case.
My feelings about Halloween hearken back to my
childhood. I was a shy child, painfully shy. Do you have any idea how difficult
it is for a shy child to ring a stranger’s doorbell and beg for candy treats?
That wasn’t the worst of it, though.
The worst part of Halloween for me was the roving
bands of teenagers who would lurk in the bushes and bombard unsuspecting trick
or treaters with raw eggs. Egg shampoos might be good for your hair but not
when they’re forced upon you in the dark, complete with the shells.
How I dreaded October 31st! And still do.
Of course it hasn’t helped that a psycho killer recently set his sights on my
normally quiet street. Somehow I managed to survive, but the experience has
served to reinforce my feelings about Halloween.
You can read all about it in A Stitch To Die For and the events precipitated by one of those
killings in Scrapbook of Murder.
Meanwhile, if anyone knows how I can escape Halloween
this year (keeping in mind I have absolutely no discretionary income, thanks to Dead Louse of a Spouse), I’m open to suggestions.
A Stitch To
Die For
An Anastasia
Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 5
Ever since her husband died
and left her in debt equal to the gross national product of Uzbekistan,
magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack has
stumbled across one dead body after another—but always in work-related
settings. When a killer targets the elderly nasty neighbor who lives across the
street from her, murder strikes too close to home. Couple that with a series of
unsettling events days before Halloween, and Anastasia begins to wonder if
someone is sending her a deadly message.
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Scrapbook
of Murder
An Anastasia
Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 6
Crafts and murder don’t normally go hand-in-hand, but normal deserted magazine crafts editor Anastasia Pollack’s world nearly a year ago. Now, tripping over dead bodies seems to be the “new normal” for this reluctant amateur sleuth.
When the daughter of a murdered neighbor asks Anastasia to create a family scrapbook from old photographs and memorabilia discovered in a battered suitcase, she agrees—not only out of friendship but also from a sense of guilt over the older woman’s death. However, as Anastasia begins sorting through the contents of the suitcase, she discovers a letter revealing a fifty-year-old secret, one that unearths a long-buried scandal and unleashes a killer. Suddenly Anastasia is back in sleuthing mode as she races to prevent a suitcase full of trouble from leading to more deaths.
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