ABOUT THE BOOK
Anastasia Pollack’s son Alex is dating Sophie Lambert, the new kid in town. For their community service project, the high school seniors have chosen to raise money for the county food bank. Anastasia taps her craft industry contacts to donate materials for the students to make Christmas ornaments they’ll sell at the town’s annual Holiday Crafts Fair.At the fair Anastasia meets Sophie’s father, Shane Lambert, who strikes her as a man with secrets. She also notices a woman eavesdropping on their conversation. Later that evening when the woman turns up dead, Sophie’s father is arrested for her murder.
Alex and Sophie beg Anastasia to find the real killer, but Anastasia has had her fill of dead bodies. She’s also not convinced of Shane’s innocence. Besides, she’s promised younger son Nick she’ll stop risking her life. But how can she say no to Alex?
Book Details:
Title: Drop Dead Ornaments
Author’s name: Lois Winston
Genre: cozy mystery
Series: Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 7
Publisher: Indie published, (10/22/18)
Print length: 283 pages
On tour with: Great Escapes Book Tours
INTERVIEW WITH LOIS WINSTON
Q: Lois, what’s the story behind the title of your book?
A: Since this is a Christmas-themed story that involves Christmas ornaments and a murder, I wanted to combine the two elements in the title. Thus, Drop Dead Ornaments.
Q: Tell us about your series. Is this book a standalone, or do readers need to read the series in order?
A: Anastasia Pollack is the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. When the first book in the series (Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun) opens, she’s been recently widowed. Her husband has left her with staggering debt, a loan shark breathing down her neck, and her communist mother-in-law as a permanent and unwelcome houseguest. Anastasia is forced to moonlight to earn extra money to keep from losing her home. She’s hampered in her efforts by the dead bodies that appear at regular intervals since her husband’s demise. Although this is a series, and I would recommend reading the books in order, but they can be read as standalones.
Q: Where’s home for you?
A: I’m a Jersey girl, born and bred a short train ride from Manhattan.
Q: If you had an extra $100 a week to spend on yourself, what would you buy?
A: Theater tickets. I’d take in a show every night if I could afford to, but I’d need an extra thousand dollars a week for that.
Q: What do you love about where you live?
A: Being a short commute into New York City.
Q: Have you been in any natural disasters?
A: We lost power for nine days during and after Hurricane/Superstorm Sandy, but as inconvenient as it was, many people had it far worse. In hindsight, we were relatively lucky.
Q: What is the most daring thing you've done?
A: When I was nineteen, I backpacked across Europe with a friend.
Q: What is the stupidest thing you've ever done?
A: Allowing myself to be talked into selling my home and moving in with my in-laws. It was six years of pure hell.
Q: What makes you bored?
A: People who talk incessantly about themselves.
Q: What choices in life would you like to have a redo on?
A: I should have chosen to go to my second choice college instead of my first choice.
Q: If you could only save one thing from your house, what would it be?
A: I’d grab my laptop.
Q: What would your main character say about you?
A: She’d complain about the mess I’ve gotten her into. She was living a very comfortable middle-class life before I came along.
Q: Are any of your characters inspired by real people?
A: Anastasia’s mother-in-law is inspired by my own communist mother-in-law, the main difference being my mother-in-law didn’t own a dog.
Q: Are you like any of your characters?
A: I think Anastasia and I share a common outlook on life, but I’m not about to put my life in danger to solve a murder—except on paper.
Q: One of your characters has just found out you’re about to kill him off. He/she decides to beat you to the punch. How would he kill you?
A: I’m allergic to lilacs and eucalyptus. All he or she would have to do is lock me in a room filled with both.
Q: What book are you currently reading and in what format?
A: The 100 Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared by Jonas Johasson in e-book format.
Q: What’s the best compliment you’ve ever received about your writing?
A: Kirkus Reviews called Anastasia “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.”
Q: You can be any fictional character for one day. Who would you be?
A: Supergirl. I’d love to be able to fly, and some of her other superpowers would be totally cool, as well.
Q: What would your dream office look like?
A: It would be on an upper floor of a pre-war building overlooking Central Park and have floor-to-ceiling bookcases, not that I’ll ever have enough money for that dream to come true. Do you have any idea of the price of New York real estate?
Q: Why did you decide to self-publish?
A: My publisher and I had a parting of the ways when they wanted to revert to a boilerplate contract instead of the agency contract that was hammered out for the first three books in the series. I walked away from two additional contracts that were on the table, one for more books in the current series and one for a second series, and decided to go indie.
OTHER BOOKS IN THE SERIES:
Assault With a Deadly Glue GunDeath by Killer Mop Doll
Revenge of the Crafty Corpse
Decoupage Can Be Deadly
A Stitch to Die For
Scrapbook of Murder
Drop Dead Ornaments
Crafty Crimes
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Connect with Lois:
Website | Blog | Twitter | Goodreads | Pinterest | Newsletter
Buy the book:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | iTunes | Bookbub
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5th in Series
Cozy Mystery
• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Lois Winston (July 7, 2015)
