#COOKING WITH CLORIS -- PISTACHIO CHOCOLATE CHIP BANANA MUFFINS RECIPE

Those of you familiar with the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries know that I can’t start my workday without an infusion of coffee and something sweet, courtesy of food editor and my bestie Cloris McWerther. Author Lois Winston recently began writing the latest installment in the series (because she takes such joy in dropping dead bodies into my life,) and she asked Cloris to come up with a new muffin recipe. (Did she really think this would make me forget she’s planning to add more murder and mayhem into my future?) 

 

I must admit, though, this muffin is delicious, and because it’s not overly sweet, I didn’t feel guilty helping myself to a second. But muffins are not just for starting the day. Grab your beverage of choice and curl up at any time with this newest baked creation and Seams Like the Perfect Crime, the latest Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery. 

 

Spoiler alert: I do survive to experience whatever torments Lois has planned for me in the next book.

 

Pistachio Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins

Yield: 12 muffins

 

Ingredients:

1-1/2 C. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

3 lg. ripe bananas, mashed

6 T. unsalted butter, melted

1 lg. egg, room temperature

1 tsp. vanilla extract

2 T. milk

2/3 C. packed brown sugar (lt. or dark)

1 C. mini chocolate chips

1/2 C. salted pistachio meats

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Line a 12-ct. muffin tin with cupcake liners.

 

In a med. Size bowl, whisk together first five ingredients and set aside.

 

In stand mixer on med. speed, beat together mashed bananas, melted butter, egg, vanilla, milk, and egg.

 

Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients, beating until combined. Fold in chocolate chips and pistachios.

 

Divide batter evenly into liners. Batter should fill liners to the top.

 

Bake at 435 degrees F. for five minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees F. and continue baking for 16 minutes or until toothpick stuck in center of muffins comes out clean. Allow muffins to cool in tin for five minutes, then transfer to wire rack.

Check out all the books Lois Winston has written about me and more at her website.

NEW ANASTASIA POLLACK CRAFTING MYSTERY BUNDLE

Guilty as Framed and A Crafty Collage of Crime, the 11^th and 12^th books in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, are now available as a 2-ebook set.

Guilty as Framed

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 11

 

Inspired by the true-crime cold case of the largest art heist in history

 

When an elderly man shows up at the home of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack, she’s drawn into the unsolved mystery of the greatest art heist in history. 

 

Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy has recently been released from prison. He refuses to believe Anastasia’s assertion that the man he’s looking for doesn’t live at her address and attempts to muscle his way into her home. His efforts are thwarted by Anastasia’s fiancé Zack Barnes. 

 

A week later, a stolen SUV containing a dead body appears in Anastasia’s driveway. Anastasia believes Murphy is sending her a message. It’s only the first in a series of alarming incidents, including a mugging, a break-in, another murder, and the discovery of a cache of jewelry and an etching from the largest museum burglary in history.

 

But will Anastasia solve the mystery behind these shocking events before she falls victim to a couple of desperate thugs who will stop at nothing to get what they want?

 

Crafts projects included.

 

A Crafty Collage of Crime

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 12

 

Winner of the 2024 Killer Nashville Silver Falchion Award for Best Comedy

 

When an elderly man shows up at the home of reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack, she’s drawn into the unsolved mystery of the greatest art heist in history. 

 

Boston mob boss Cormac Murphy has recently been released from prison. He refuses to believe Anastasia’s assertion that the man he’s looking for doesn’t live at her address and attempts to muscle his way into her home. His efforts are thwarted by Anastasia’s fiancé Zack Barnes. 

 

A week later, a stolen SUV containing a dead body appears in Anastasia’s driveway. Anastasia believes Murphy is sending her a message. It’s only the first in a series of alarming incidents, including a mugging, a break-in, another murder, and the discovery of a cache of jewelry and an etching from the largest museum burglary in history.

 

But will Anastasia solve the mystery behind these shocking events before she falls victim to a couple of desperate thugs who will stop at nothing to get what they want?

 

Crafts projects included.

 

Wherever crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack goes, murder and mayhem follow. Her honeymoon is no exception. She and new husband, photojournalist (and possible spy) Zachary Barnes, are enjoying a walk in the Tennessee woods when they stumble upon a body on the side of a creek. The dead man is the husband of one of the three sisters who own the winery and guest cottages where Anastasia and Zack are vacationing.

 

When the local sheriff sets his sights on the widow as the prime suspect, her sisters close ranks around her. The three siblings are true-crime junkies, and thanks to a podcaster who has produced an unauthorized series about her, Anastasia’s reputation for solving murders has preceded her to the bucolic hamlet. The sisters plead for her help in finding the real killer. As Anastasia learns more about the women and their business, a host of suspects emerge, including several relatives, a relentless land developer, and even the sisters themselves.

 

Meanwhile, Anastasia becomes obsessed with discovering the podcaster’s identity. Along with knowing about Anastasia’s life as a reluctant amateur sleuth, the podcaster has divulged details of Anastasia’s personal life. Someone has betrayed Anastasia’s trust, and she’s out to discover the identity of the culprit.

​

Craft projects included.

 

Buy Links

Kindle

Kobo

Nook

Apple Books

Books2Read Universal Link to Other Sites

FOURTEEN AND COUNTING + A VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR WITH RECIPES, CRAFTS, AND GIVEAWAYS

Today is the official release day for Seams Like the Perfect Crime, the fourteenth book in that series author Lois Winston writes about me—otherwise known as the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries.

My author has always created stories about me based on real-life events she’s either read about, seen on the news, or experienced. For instance, in Guilty as Framed, the eleventh book in the series, she wove a plot around the actual 1990 unsolved museum heist at the Isabella Stewart Gardiner Museum in Boston. To this day, it’s the largest theft of artworks in history and none have ever been recovered.

 

A Crafty Collage of Crime, the award-winning twelfth book in the series, was inspired by her move in 2021 from New Jersey to Tennessee. Many of our readers wanted to know when I would also move to the South, but being a diehard Jersey Girl, I dug in my heels and threatened to kidnap her muse if she dared transplant me. We compromised by Lois sending me on a trip to Tennessee wine country (yes, it’s a thing) and, of course, within hours of arriving, I stumbled across a dead body.

 

In Seams Like the Perfect Crime Lois once again gave me one of her own experiences, this one involving some very odd neighbors who used to live across the street from her back in the late 1990s and early 2000s. These neighbors were so odd, that Lois didn’t have to do much in the way of embellishing what she saw from her own window. When you read the short synopsis of the plot, your first reaction will be, she had to have made up those people. Trust me, she didn’t. 

 

Well, she did make up some of the tertiary characters in the book, and none of the real-life characters were ever murdered, but many of the characters in this book are a perfect example of truth being stranger than fiction.

 

Seams Like the Perfect Crime

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 14

 

When staffing shortages continue to hamper the Union County homicide squad, Detective Sam Spader once again turns to his secret weapon, reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. How can she and husband Zack Barnes refuse when the victim is their new neighbor?

 

Revolutionary War reenactor Barry Sumner had the odd habit of spending hours mowing a small patch of packed dirt and weeds until his mower ran out of gas. He’d then guzzle beer on his front porch until he passed out. That’s where Anastasia’s son Nick discovers his body three days after the victim and his family moved into the newly built mini-McMansion across the street.

 

After a melee breaks out at the viewing, Spader zeroes in on the widow as his prime suspect. However, Anastasia has her doubts. There are other possible suspects, including a woman who’d had an affair with the victim, his ex-wife, the man overseeing the widow’s trust fund, a drug dealer, and the reenactors who were blackmailing the widow and victim.

 

When another reenactor is murdered, Spader suspects they’re dealing with a serial killer, but Anastasia wonders if the killer is attempting to misdirect the investigation. As she narrows down the suspects, will she jeopardize her own life to learn the truth?

 

Craft projects included.

 

Buy Links

Amazon

Kobo

Nook

Apple Books

Lois and I will also be on a Great Escapes Virtual Book Tour Feb. 4-17. Visit each stop on the tour for some fun posts, recipes, and crafts and to enter the Rafflecopter for a chance to win a copy of Seams Like the Perfect Crime.

February 4 – Jody's Bookish Haven – Spotlight

February 4 – Ascroft, eh? – Author guest post

February 5 – Socrates Book Reviews – Spotlight 

February 5 – Sapphyria's Book Reviews – Spotlight 

February 6 – Cinnamon, Sugar, and a Little Bit of Murder – Review & Recipe

February 6 – Baroness Book Trove – Spotlight 

February 7 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – Craft post 

February 7 – Eskimo Princess Book Reviews - Spotlight

February 8 – Boys' Mom Reads! – Recipe 

February 8 – Ruff Drafts – Spotlight 

February 9 – Cozy Up With Kathy – Character guest post 

February 9 – FUONLYKNEW – Spotlight 

February 10 – Elizabeth McKenna - Author – Spotlight 

February 11 – Christy's Cozy Corners – Author guest post 

February 12 – Novels Alive – Review 

February 13 – Jane Reads – Character guest post 

February 14 – Deal Sharing Aunt – Author guest post 

February 15 – Frugal Freelancer – Author interview 

February 16 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – Spotlight 

February 17 – Maureen's Musings – Spotlight

MYSTERY AND PARANORMAL ROMANCE AUTHOR MICHELE DRIER ON ADDING LOVE TO THE MIX

Michele Drier is a fifth generation Californian. During her career in journalism at daily newspapers in California, she won awards for investigative series. She started out writing mysteries with the Amy Hobbes series then segued into paranormal romance—short on the violence, long on the romance—with her eleven-book series The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles. She’s also a book editor and teaches basic writing skills. Learn more about Michele and her books at her website.

Is Love the End?

 

Writing a series has its good and bad. Good because the characters have backstory that doesn’t need to be recreated in each book, and this allows them to grow.

 

Bad because they may never be able to have a Happily Ever After. The emotional and sexual tension between the protag and his or her love interest has kept the series fresh. Will a HEA release that tension?

 

I didn’t set out to write mysteries with a romantic subtext, but somehow there was always an attractive man (my protags are usually women) hanging around, wanting to be acknowledged. And the protags are all women who have never counted commitment as a need in their lives.

 

In my paranormal romance series, The Kandesky Vampire Chronicles, I managed to keep this tension going through the first nine books, but finally Maxie Gwenoch, the protag, had to make a decision. And now, as I set out to write the twelfth book, the tension has shifted but love and sex is still there.

 

In my mystery series, The Amy Hobbes Newspaper Mysteries and the Stained Glass Mysteries, both protags seem to be moving toward commitment, so will the subtext shift or will the couple become like the wise-cracking Thin Man series, with wit and humor keeping the zeitgeist alive?

 

In July, the third book in the Stained Glass series, Resurrection of the Roses, will see the light of day and a new female attraction will be introduced. How will this affect the budding relationship between Roz and Liam? Or has the murder of Roz’ husband affected her so deeply that she can’t entertain even having another relationship?

 

There are times when, as an author, my decision to leave the question of “will she or won’t she” up to the reader, has backfired. My readers have all wanted to know! And they wanted a HEA.

 

One of the reasons I started writing mysteries, and why the genre still attracts me, is that I love puzzles. Reading and solving a mystery has such a sense of satisfaction that even the romantic subplot needs a resolution, even if it’s a HFN (happily for now).

 

I think most of us are creatures of gratification, and wrapping up a mystery or relationship question gives us a feeling of making the world right again.

 

How about you? As a reader do you want the book (or series) to end on a HEA, or are you satisfied when the author leaves some ambiguity?

 

Resurrection of the Roses, the third book in The Stained Glass Mysteries, will be available in July.

 

Resurrection of the Roses

The Stained Glass Mysteries, Book 3

 

When Roz Duke receives an invitation to speak on stained glass at a medieval crafts conference in Paris, she’s torn about accepting. Then her friend Liam spots the invitation and conjures up a summer touring France, a lure Roz can’t resist.  Before the conference officially kicks off, though, the body of a man, impaled on a large shard of ruby red stained glass, stops her. Once again, she’s the finder of dead bodies. Who is the dead man? And why her? One of the first police officers on the site is a beautiful French Surete inspector, Celie Lejeune, who instantly homes in on Liam. 

 

Set against the vineyards and wineries of Burgundy, Roz, Liam and her rescue greyhound Tut, learn about making stained glass, wine and medieval crafts, but another body turns up and a couple of French cathedrals burn down. Arson? 

 

Roz and Liam’s idyllic French summer takes on a distinct menacing tone, dogged by an inscrutable French policewoman. Does she have designs on Liam? Or is it Roz in her sights? 

Preorder Link

SORRY, KNOT SORRY VIRTUAL BOOK TOUR

Today marks the start of the Great Escapes virtual book tour for Sorry, Knot Sorry, the 13th book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. Join me and my author at each of the participating sites for some fun posts and a chance to win a copy of the book by entering the Rafflecopter at each stop. The more sites you visit and enter, the greater your chance of winning one of copies author Lois Winston will be giving away at the end of the tour.

TOUR PARTICIPANTS

June 10 – Maureen’s Musings – SPOTLIGHT

June 10 – Sapphyria’s Book Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

June 11 – Mystery, Thrillers, and Suspense – SPOTLIGHT

June 12 – Jane Reads – AUTHOR GUEST POST  

June 13 – Christy’s Cozy Corners – CHARACTER GUEST POST

June 14 – Reading, Writing & Stitch-Metic – CRAFT POST

June 15 – StoreyBook Reviews – AUTHOR GUEST POST

June 16 – Celticlady’s Reviews – SPOTLIGHT

June 17 – Literary Gold – SPOTLIGHT

June 18 – Elizabeth McKenna – Author – SPOTLIGHT

June 19 – Ruff Drafts – SPOTLIGHT

June 19 – FUONLYKNEW – SPOTLIGHT

June 20 – MJB Reviewers – SPOTLIGHT

June 20 – Baroness Book Trove – SPOTLIGHT

June 21 – Ascroft, eh? – CHARACTER GUEST POST

June 22 – Boys’ Mom Reads! – AUTHOR GUEST POST

June 22 – Escape With Dollycas Into A Good Book – SPOTLIGHT

June 23 – eBook Addicts – SPOTLIGHT

You can also find all the information on the Great Escapes Tour Page. 

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.

 

Buy Links

Amazon 

Kobo 

Nook 

Apple Books

Books2Read Universal Link to Other Sites 

FROM MID-CENTURY MODERN TO PODCASTS TO AI, OH MY!

Today marks the release of Sorry, Knot Sorry, the thirteenth book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series. Lucky number thirteen for my author, not so lucky number thirteen for me because once again, author Lois Winston has wreaked havoc in my life with yet another dead body. This one, gunned down in front of my house. Right after the guy left my house! So, it’s not like I can shrug my shoulders and say there was no connection between the two of us.

Lois is a news junkie who likes to draw on current and newsworthy events when developing the plots for the books in the series about me. In Sorry, Knot Sorry she weaves together such disparate topics as podcasts, artificial intelligence, and the current trend for all things mid-century modern, including a nod to tie-dye and macramé. After all, this is a crafting cozy series.

 

Speaking of artificial intelligence, did you hear about my author’s experiment, using me as a guinea pig? When AI hit the news full force several months ago, worry began to mount among authors. Would they all become obsolete in the not-too-distant future? Lois decided to ask Chat GPT to create a novel for the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. She wanted to test just how intelligent this artificial intelligence is to see if her days as an author really were numbered.

 

Now keep in mind that you can find information about me, as well as the stories Lois has created about me, all over the Internet. A short synopsis of each book, along with the first chapter, are not only available on her website, but also on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iTunes, Books-a-Million, Audible, and countless other e-tailers. You’d think with all that available information, Chat GPT would scan the Internet cosmos and come up with something that bore some resemblance to me, my family, and the world Lois has created for us.

 

Think again! The results were so off base that they were laughable. The not-so-intelligent artificial intelligence transformed Ralph, my African Grey parrot into my uncle. My mother’s Persian cat, Catherine the Great, morphed into my employee. Instead of working as the crafts editor at a women’s magazine, AI made me the owner of a knitting shop. Worst of all? There was absolutely nothing funny in any of the pages that AI had generated. Lois writes humorous amateur sleuth mysteries. I get through all she dumps on me by relying on my sense of humor. But apparently, this new technology lacks a funny bone and is both incapable of seeing humor or generating it.

 

This has turned out to be a good news/bad news situation. Good news for Lois because she now feels she can rest easier, knowing her career won’t be usurped by a bunch of algorithms anytime soon. Bad news for me, though, because Lois is already plotting how she can wreak more havoc in the life of this reluctant amateur sleuth for Book Fourteen. And you can be sure, there will be more dead bodies.

 

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.

 

Buy Links

Amazon

Kobo

Nook

Apple Books

MYSTERY AUTHOR BARBARA EMODI ON HOW SEWING A GARMENT IS LIKE WRITING A BOOK

Gasper's Cove

Barbara Emodi writes sewing and craft-related cozy mysteries and sewing how-to books. Often when she sewed, she thought of the people she’s known and the stories she could tell. So now she writes mysteries. Learn more about Barbara and her books at her website and on Substack at How to be an Older Woman for Beginners.

Before I started writing fiction, I published two how-to sewing books, SEW…the garment-making book of knowledge and Stress-Free Sewing Solutions: a no-fail guide for the modern sewist.

 

With such a practical background, some members of my family were surprised at the switch from how to put-in-a-zipper to murder and mystery in the fictional (but extremely real to me) community of Gasper’s Cove, Nova Scotia.

 

It is interesting that not one of my sewing, crafty, or creative friends questioned my new direction. For them, as for me, the worlds of making things and solving crimes use parallel skills. The transition from non-fiction to fiction in my world has been seamless.

 

Let me show you what I mean. Let’s profile a typical sewist or crafter who:

· Could probably buy whatever she needs but prefers to make it herself, despite the cost, effort, and occasional frustration. She can’t help herself.

· Is a non-linear thinker, very good at making connections or at seeing potential in things other folks miss. That old sheet you were going to throw out? It’s really a rug, just rip it into 2” strips and get out the loom I happen to have in the basement …

· Never misses a detail. Did you use a twin-needle on that hem?

· Works best, is most creative, when faced with adversity or restrictions. A Depression era Dresden plate quilt?  I rest my case.

· Likes to solve other people’s problems. Your mother-in-law’s here. Where’s the mending?

 

The real question for me is how does anyone write a mystery, particularly a cozy mystery without crafty characters? Obviously, we are all born investigators and detectives.

 

Writing these stories has also given me a place to locate the many bits of interesting information I have picked up in the sewing classes I have taught for more than thirty years. The student whose pastor was a young seaman in a U-boat off the Nova Scotia coast in WWII? The one who looked up a periscope and thought to himself “What a beautiful place. If I ever get out of here alive, that’s where I am going to go and start a new life?”

 

The real crime would be if that bit of shared information was not allowed to inspire a mystery story. And it did. Book four of my Gasper’s Cove Mysteries, due out later this year is called Crafting a Getaway. 

 

A lot of my own life is in my books, too. Once I had a job as a press secretary for a senior political leader. (How I got that job is still a mystery to me.) In that position, I had to travel on the campaign bus during several elections. It was a strange experience that I survived only with the help of the sewing machine I kept hidden in my computer bag. The relationship of a crafty woman in that world gave me the material and the humor of my next release, coming out this month, Crafting with Slander. I had such a good time writing that book.

 

Gasper’s Cove is my own getaway, a place where I go to visit and see what the locals are up to. In addition to the four books so far in the Gasper’s Cove Mysteries, I also published four seasonal novellas in 2023. These are Spring – Panic in the Pansies, Summer – Inspection Deception, Fall- Potions and Notions and Holiday – Last Stitch Effort. I wrote them because I was so in love with some of the minor characters in the larger series that I wanted to have a place to tell their stories, too.

 

The theme of everything I write is that there is nothing ordinary about ordinary people. I would love for you to visit Gasper’s Cove with me. If you do, please drop me a line. I write for my readers.

 

Crafting with Slander

A Gasper’s Cove Mystery, Book 3

 

Corruption, chaos, and murder―Valerie Rankin is faced with a killer as crafty as she is.

 

Valerie Rankin is back in Gasper's Cove as a mayoral election brings chaos to the small town. A corrupt political scheme controls the town, and Valerie's cousin, Darlene, an ex-hairdresser, decides to run for mayor. With the help of Valerie and the Gasper's crafters, the group crafts a successful campaign. However, false rumors quickly spread about Darlene. Valerie moves to confront mayoral opponent Mighty Mike Murphy only to find him dead with one of her own stenciled campaign signs next to his body. Afraid that she or Darlene could be framed for his murder, Valerie must hunt down a killer before it's too late.

 

Preorder (available May 25^th)

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.

 

Buy Links (preorder now. Available June 4^th)

Amazon

Kobo

Nook

Apple Books

Paperback and Hardcover editions available after June 4^th.