Guest Blogger Lois Winston

[Peg Herring]

Today I welcome Lois Winston, author of the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries. I've certainly HURT myself with a glue gun, but "deadly"? That's her title, and here's her story.

THE FINE ARE OF EAVESDROPPING
By Lois Winston

Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, my latest book and the first book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series, came out the beginning of January. Since its release, I’ve had many people ask me how I came up with the characters and plot for the book. Death by glue gun is certainly not an everyday occurrence, even within the world of amateur sleuth mysteries. Having lost count of all the times I’ve burned myself with a glue gun, the idea didn’t seem all that far-fetched to me. However, the questions got me thinking about the various ways I’ve come up with ideas for my books, and I thought I’d share one of them with you today.

Have you ever thought about how much time you spend waiting? Every day. We stand in line at the supermarket, the post office or motor vehicle, waiting to be waited on. We while away countless hours in doctor and dentist waiting rooms, waiting for someone to jab something cold and uncomfortable into our nether regions or perform root canal. And then we sit or lie there waiting for the procedure du jour to end. We freeze our butts off in the bleachers while our kids kick around a soccer ball or toss a football. We hang around the multiplex lobby, waiting for the previous movie to let out, then hunker down in our seats and wait some more for the next feature to begin. We sit like zombies every morning and evening as the train or bus carries us to and from work. We stand around waiting to be seated in restaurants, then wait for the waiter to take our order and bring our food.

I’ve put all that waiting to good use by eavesdropping. Who among us doesn’t love to eavesdrop? Don’t deny it. We all do it. Forget baseball. Eavesdropping is the national pastime. Since the onset of cell phones, we can eavesdrop with abandon. Try going anywhere without hearing someone’s personal phone conversation. You can’t. Whether you’re in a restaurant, on a train, in a hotel lobby, walking down the street, on line at the supermarket, or even in a public restroom, I guarantee there will be somebody nearby carrying on a highly personal phone conversation in a voice loud enough for everyone within a block’s radius to hear. There’s something about cell phones that makes people raise their voices. Conversations that would normally be held in hushed whispers are broadcast wirelessly like sports announcers booming play-by-play.

Over the last few years I have been privy to the most private details of total strangers, thanks to Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T. All those conversations become fodder for characters and plots. Some have made their way into the pages of Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun. Some will be in Mop Doll Murders, the next book in the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series. And still more will be in future books. So next time you’re carrying on a personal phone conversation in a public setting, you might want to think about who could be listening. You may wind up in some author’s next book.

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Lois Winston is an award-winning author and designer as well as an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency. Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

Buy Link for Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0738723479?ie=UTF8&tag=loiswin...(An%20Anastasia%20Pollack%20Crafting%20Mystery)%3C/a%3E%3Cimg