WHY DOESN’T THAT AUTHOR PICK ON SOMEONE ELSE FOR A CHANGE?

by Anastasia Pollack from Death By Killer Mop Doll, the second book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series by Lois Winston

That Lois Winston! She’s done it to me again. Really, I don’t know what I ever did to her that she’s got it in for me. It was bad enough that in Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, she nearly got me killed. Now she’s done it again.

At first, I thought in this new book she’d changed her ways. I was living a nice middleclass life until she came along. Good job. Husband. Two kids. Nice house in the ‘burbs. She enters my life, and all of a sudden my husband turns out to be a closet gambler who’s decimated our bank accounts and racked up debt like you wouldn’t believe. And did I mention he’s got his own personal loan shark? Of course, I knew nothing about any of this until she had my dearly beloved drop dead onto a roulette wheel in Las Vegas when he was supposed to be at a sales meeting in Harrisburg, PA. I not only inherited all the debt, I also inherited Ricardo the loan shark.

That was the first book in the series, and I’ve been dealing with the aftermath ever since. So when Lois opened Death By Killer Mop Doll with Mama announcing that she’d solved my financial problems, I thought, my author had seen the error of her ways and was making up for all the misery she’d inflicted on me in Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun. Boy, was I wrong!

Let me tell you about the trouble she’s causing me this time.

It’s not bad enough that I’m dealing with overdue bills and constant mother vs. mother-in-law battles between Mama and Lucille the curmudgeonly communist. My stress level maxes out when my fellow American Woman editors and I get roped into unpaid gigs for a revamped morning TV show -- thanks to Mama’s meddling. Of course, Mama had the best of intentions. She always does. But you know what they say about hell being paved with good intentions. Mama thought we’d all get paid for the additional work. Too bad she didn’t know about that clause in our contracts…

Then, before the glue is dry on my mop dolls, morning TV turns crime drama when the studio is trashed and a member of the production team is murdered. The former co-hosts, sleazy D-list celebrities, stand out among a lengthy lineup of suspects, all furious over the show's new format, but Lois makes me start snooping around, and the next thing I know, she lands me directly in the killer's unforgiving spotlight!

I ask you, what did I ever do to deserve this?

I don’t think my troubles will be ending any time soon, either. Lois has already turned in the third book in the series, and rumor has it that she’s been offered a contract for books 4 and 5. I hope I survive!

Meanwhile, at least Lois is nice to her readers. She’s on a blog tour right now and is giving away 5 signed copies of Death By Killer Mop Doll. All you have to do to enter is post a comment to this blog or any of the other blogs on the tour. But you’d better hurry. The tour ends tomorrow. You can find the tour schedule at her website and my Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog . She’s also giving away 3 additional copies on Goodreads.