Influencers (Not the Internet Kind!)
By Lois Winston
For many years my husband and I were “Bridge and Tunnel” New Yorkers, so named because we lived in New Jersey in one of the many towns where people commuted into Manhattan via the George Washington Bridge or one of several train or car tunnels under the Hudson River. Because we were so close to the city, real estate prices were much higher than in many other parts of the country. For this reason, when my husband came across a real estate listing for a home several blocks from us, it piqued our curiosity.
HOUSE FOR SALE
$341,100
5 beds 2.5 baths, built in 1957
nearly 9,000 sq. ft. lot with pool
estimated value: $742,495
Great opportunity to own in Westfield for way under market. Interior condition is unknown. Interior and exterior inspections are not available, and the property is being sold as-is. Property is occupied. Inspections not available. Contact with occupants is prohibited. Buyer is responsible for all inspections & municipal certificates, including certificate of occupancy.
Why would anyone sell a house for less than half its value? We walked over to take a look. From the outside the home appeared well maintained. No peeling paint. No deteriorating roof. No piles of trash in the yard. The lawn was neatly trimmed, the leaves raked, the shrubs pruned.
The mystery writer in me immediately began churning possible scenarios. Was this listing the result of a nasty divorce? An estate sale with feuding siblings? A rental property occupied by squatters the owner couldn’t evict? Did the house sit over a massive termite colony? Had there been a meth lab operating inside? Whatever the situation, it seemed evident the owner was attempting to unload a massive problem onto some unsuspecting bargain hunter. If he succeeded, would the new owner retaliate in some way once he realized the scope of the problem?
Authors are often asked where we get the ideas for our stories and characters. My ideas often come from my own personal experiences or events I’ve witnessed, read about, or seen on the news. However, even though one of the maxims of fiction is to write what you know, I never realized how much my own life impacted my stories until I looked at all my books.
To date, I’ve published twenty-three novels, five novellas, several short stories and one children’s chapter book. Whether mystery, romance, romantic suspense or fantasy (as in the case of the children’s book), elements of my own experiences, newsworthy events, and people who have impacted me are present. Some of this was deliberate. Other times it was subliminal.
These influences run the gamut from minor references in scenes to major characters and plots. For instance, in the late 90s when a suburban Philadelphia salesman was convicted of strangling his lawyer wife, it turned out he’d been leading a double life.
Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, my second award-winning novel, isn’t directly based on the murder, but the case inspired the book in several ways.
A few years later, I accompanied a recently divorced friend to a local bookstore. This was several years before online dating sites. My friend was feeling vulnerable and unsure how to get back into the dating pool. She purchased an armload of how-to-catch-a-man advice books to learn how to snag her next husband. I left the bookstore with the idea for my award-winning romantic comedy Hooking Mr. Right.
My humorous Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series is influenced the most by my own experiences. Anastasia is forced to share her home with her communist mother-in-law. For six long years I shared a home with my own communist mother-in-law. I’m still not sure whether creating Lucille was catharsis or revenge or simply a case of turning lemons into lemonade, but Lucille Pollack is the character my readers love to hate.
Anastasia is the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. For many years I worked as a craft designer and editor for magazines, book publishers, and kit manufacturers. Although I’ve often had to research various aspects of my plots, I’m able to draw from my own experiences for Anastasia’s job.
Seams Like the Perfect Crime is the fourteenth and latest book in the series. Once again, I’ve relied on my own observations. When my husband and I lived in New Jersey, I became mesmerized by the unusual behavior of the man who lived across the street from us. In the back of my mind, I always knew he’d one day show up as a character in one of my books. Now he has. Unfortunately for him, he becomes the victim of a killer. Fortunately, this fate didn’t befall the neighbor in real life. Not that I know, at least. He eventually moved. A developer bulldozed the house and built the mini-McMansion where my story takes place.
I still haven’t incorporated the bargain mystery house into one of my books, but I’m sure it will show up at some point in a future novel. Truth may be stranger than fiction, but in my life, it provides a treasure trove of plot and character ideas.
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: https://amzn.to/49KvjaG
Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/seams-like-the-perfect-crime
Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/seams-like-the-perfect-crime-lois-winston/1146583329?ean=2940184679983
Apple Books: https://books.apple.com/us/book/seams-like-the-perfect-crime/id6738502932
Books2Read Universal Link to Other Sites: https://books2read.com/u/3LXa1e
Biography
USA Today and Amazon bestselling author Lois Winston began her award-winning writing career with Talk Gertie to Me, a humorous fish-out-of-water novel about a small-town girl going off to the big city and the mother determined to bring her home to marry the boy next door. That was followed by the romantic suspense Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception.
Then Lois’s writing segued unexpectedly into the world of humorous amateur sleuth mysteries, thanks to a conversation her agent had with an editor looking for craft-themed mysteries. In her day job, Lois was an award-winning craft and needlework designer, and although she’d never written a mystery—or had even thought about writing a mystery—her agent decided she was the perfect person to pen a series for this editor. Thus, was born the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, which Kirkus Reviews dubbed “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.”
Learn more about Lois and her books at www.loiswinston.com where you can find links for her other social media sites and sign up for her newsletter to receive a free download of an Anastasia Pollack Mini-Mystery.
Let Me Tell It
by
Jane Tesh
As a writer, one of the main questions I get asked all the time is where do you get your ideas?
My answer is, well, I sit down at my computer, my characters start talking, and I write down what they say, which doesn’t really explain anything to the people who ask that question because I can’t honestly explain it myself. I have an idea of what my characters might say in a particular scene, but when they get there, they start talking and the story unfolds in the direction I think it should go.
That’s usually what happens, but sometimes my characters have very different ideas.
My Grace Street mystery series is set in the fictional city of Parkland, North Carolina. Dealing with the loss of his little daughter Lindsey, my main character PI David Randall comes to live in his friend Camden’s boarding house at 302 Grace Street. Cam is a gifted psychic, but has trouble accepting his gift. His girlfriend, Ellin Belton, produces shows for the Psychic Service Network and longs to be psychic. At 302 Grace, Randall meets Kary Ingram, the woman who will become the love of his life. Having lost the ability to have children due to a teenage pregnancy and botched abortion, Kary longs for a baby, something she and Randall will have to work out over the course of the series.
But when I first started writing Stolen Hearts, book one in the series, David Randall was not the main character. He was one of Cam’s boarders, a balding, paunchy, washed-up salesman, who was ornery and fairly useless. I tried writing the story from Cam’s point of view, but that didn’t work. I wanted his visions to be something a detective could interpret as clues to his cases. Then I tried writing from Ellin’s point of view, but her focus was too narrow and her ambition too strong. Again, the story stalled.
Then one day I was in my office wondering how I could make everything work when clear as day, I saw Randall walk in. He slouched against the doorframe, took a few puffs of his cigarette, scratched his fat stomach, and said, “It’s my story. Let me tell it.”
I agreed to let him have a try.
“Let’s get one thing straight first,” he said, and pointed the cigarette at me. “If this is my story, I’m going to be a damned sight more handsome.”
The minute he started telling me the story from his point of view, the whole book took off.
“I didn’t expect a murder to happen right down the street from my second wife’s house, but then, I didn’t expect a lot of things, including sleeping in my car. Admittedly, there’s plenty of room in the back seat of a ’67 Plymouth Fury, but October in Parkland, North Carolina, can be pretty steamy, even at dawn, so I was awake when the sirens and flashing lights came by. When I first heard the sirens, I was in that odd state of not quite awake not quite asleep, and my heart jumped, thinking I was back on that hillside twelve years ago searching for Lindsey through clouds of black smoke, not realizing my world was about to end.”
As promised, I made him tall, dark, and handsome, with the ability to see and hear Lindsey’s little spirit as she helps him with his cases. I live for moments like this, the unexplainable bursts of creativity, the unplanned dialogue, the sudden metamorphosis of a secondary character into the hero of what is now a series of ten books with three more adventures to come. Not bad for a former washed-up salesman!
Stolen Hearts
A seemingly minor case involving the recovery of a missing songbook leads PI David Randall into a full-blown murder investigation. Complications arise when his psychic friend Camden is possessed by the composer’s restless spirit. Hearts are broken and healed and ghosts confronted as Randall searches for answers, family, and forgiveness.
Jane Tesh
Jane Tesh, a retired media specialist, lives in Mt. Airy, North Carolina, Andy Griffith’s home town, the real Mayberry. She is the author of the Madeline Maclin Mysteries, featuring former beauty queen, Madeline “Mac” Maclin and her reformed con man husband, Jerry Fairweather, and the Grace Street Mystery Series, featuring struggling PI David Randall, his psychic friend, Camden, and an array of tenants who move in and out of Cam’s boarding house at 302 Grace Street. Ghost Light is her first standalone mystery and the first to feature an asexual heroine. She has also published six fantasy novels. When she isn’t writing, Jane plays the piano and conducts the orchestra for productions at the Andy Griffith Playhouse.
Visit at Jane’s website and her Facebook page, Facebook page
