I enjoy welcoming author Lois Winston back to the blog. She always has a fun article. Today’s guest post provides the background for her latest Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Stitch, Bake, Die! (Be happy you don’t know these women!) Thank you, Lois.

Those Not So Nice Little Old Ladies

By Lois Winston

Throughout the course of my professional life, I’ve attended many conferences, both as a designer and as a writer. I count several of the people I’ve met at these conferences as some of my dearest friends. However, there was one organization I once belonged to where there was more backstabbing than networking among the attendees. Rather than working together toward a common goal, too many of the women in that organization had a “my way or the highway” attitude. If you offered a differing opinion or worse yet, dared to question their self-imposed authority, they went out of their way to make your life miserable.

I hadn’t experienced this sort of behavior since dealing with the “mean girls” back in junior high and high school. I didn’t remain in the organization for very long. Life is too short to have to deal with people like that unless you absolutely have no other choice. Luckily, I had a choice.

In each of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, I place Anastasia in a different setting. Most of them have something to do with her job as the crafts editor at a women’s magazine. As I was mulling over a plot for the tenth book in the series, I decided Anastasia and food editor Cloris McWerther should be assigned to speak at a conference.

This was not just any conference, though. It was a conference for an organization of retired women executives. As I developed the characters at the conference, I realized that most of them would have the personalities of the women from the organization I belonged to years ago, even though they’d be much older. Mostly in their seventies and eighties, the conference attendees in my story had broken through the glass ceiling at a time when many of their contemporaries had few career options beyond working as secretaries, clerks, nurses, teachers, or librarians. They were women who had clawed their way to the top in male-dominated fields, developing aggressive personalities to reach their goals. Those traits were so embedded in their DNA that even once they had retired, their competitive natures prevented them from enjoying their golden years.

And that’s where the trouble begins. Even before Anastasia and Cloris set foot inside the conference venue, they suspect this won’t be a typical conference. They quickly learn their suspicions are well-founded when they meet the attendees. However, they didn’t expect to have to deal with murder.

Stitch, Bake, Die!

An Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery, Book 10

With massive debt, a communist mother-in-law, a Shakespeare-quoting parrot, and a photojournalist boyfriend who may or may not be a spy, crafts editor Anastasia Pollack already juggles too much in her life. So she’s not thrilled when her magazine volunteers her to present workshops and judge a needlework contest at the inaugural conference of the New Jersey chapter of the Stitch and Bake Society, a national organization of retired professional women. At least her best friend and cooking editor Cloris McWerther has also been roped into similar duties for the culinary side of the 3-day event taking place on the grounds of the exclusive Beckwith Chateau Country Club.

The sweet little old ladies Anastasia is expecting to meet are definitely old, and some of them are little, but all are anything but sweet. She’s stepped into a vipers’ den that starts with bribery and ends with murder. When an ice storm forces Anastasia and Cloris to spend the night at the Chateau, Anastasia discovers evidence of insurance scams, medical fraud, an opioid ring, long-buried family secrets, and a bevy of suspects.

Can she piece together the various clues before she becomes the killer’s next target?

Crafting tips included.

Buy Links

Paperback https://amzn.to/2YiodcR

Kindle https://amzn.to/3ylMivw

Apple Books https://books.apple.com/us/book/stitch-bake-die/id1582066729

Kobo https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/stitch-bake-die

Nook https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/stitch-bake-die-lois-winston/1140036766;jsessionid=25A7F9659AD9C525D5EAB0BECCEA6D09.prodny_store02-atgap06?ean=2940162610267

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USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry.

Website: www.loiswinston.com

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Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com