I’m often asked where I get my ideas. That’s an easy question for me to answer. I’m a news junkie, and most of my plots and subplots sprout from seeds of real-life events. I’ll see something on the news or read a newspaper account of either a crime or an event, and my imagination begins to play the “what if?” game.
Updating her “1950s suburban rancher” is long overdue, but accepting the kindness of strangers, namely her fiancé and her neighbor, is a challenge. Although when a tattered man, jawing a cigar, and wearing a fedora demands to see Johnnie D ‘cause “he’s got something of mine,” accepting a forceful hand to block the man’s entrance is a no-brainer.
For the eleventh book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery Series, I created a story where I incorporate an actual crime that took place more than three decades ago. In 1990, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston was burglarized. To this day, it is still considered the largest art heist in history. None of the stolen artworks, including the miniature Rembrandt self-portrait that plays a role in Guilty as Framed, have ever been recovered, and most of the suspects and persons of interest have since died.
One of the most common questions authors are asked is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Because I started out my writing career penning romance and romantic suspense, I’d often find myself confronted with a variation of that question—most often at my husband’s annual company Christmas party after some bozo had hit the eggnog one time too many. To the chagrin of the long-suffering wife standing beside him, he’d ask me where I got the ideas for my sex scenes.
Here is your weekly reminder that there are also new articles up on our other website KRL News & Reviews! Every week there will be book reviews and giveaways, plus sometimes pet articles, theatre articles, and more! And listen to our new podcast!
Shortly after the pandemic hit this past spring, writers began asking each other how they were going to handle Covid-19 in their books. Should we incorporate self-quarantining, social distancing, and mask wearing into our stories, especially for those of us who write ongoing series?
Social distancing. It’s a term most of us had never heard of prior to a few weeks ago. I’m betting the Oxford English Dictionary will name it the Word of the Year for 2020, even if, technically, it’s two words.
It may be the Christmas season, for sure, but when your house is the victim of an overzealous “Secret Elf” named Ira, it seems enough should be enough! But, when taking the decorations back to the “Elf,” they discover another over-the-top Christmas display with a blinding lights and loud music, gawkers choking the streets, and Anastasia’s late husband’s half-brother, Ira Pollack, in the middle of some angry neighbors!
Anastasia Pollack was first introduced in 2011 by author Lois Winston with Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun. Anastasia is a recently windowed mother of two teenage sons hounded by a loan shark wanting repayment of her husband's debts. She also pretty much inherits her mother-in-law with whom she has a bittersweet relationship.
Back when I penned my first novel at the end of the last century, I thought that being an author meant sitting at my desk writing books. I also thought it was the publisher’s job to promote those books so that we both made money. Silly me! Once upon a time that was true, but by the time I sold my first book, publishers had abdicated this responsibility for all but a handful of their authors. Promotional efforts had become the responsibility of authors.
