Cozy Mystery Week ~ Recap With 6 Top Notch Authors

This series of posts was a smash hit, so I decided to repost everything and put them all in one place so it would be easier to find for new readers or those who wanted to read these stellar authors' posts. So if you love cozy mysteries, and I DO, check out their articles and their books.

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Lois Winston on Can Murder Be Funny?

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Marilyn Leach on Cooking Up Delicious Red Herrings

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Paty Jager on Location, Location, Location for a Cozy Mystery

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Nancy Haddock on Cozy Cover Artistry

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Kathleen Kaska on Cozy On Up

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Cynthia Hickey on The Love Of A Mystery

Cozy Mystery Week ~ Lois Winston on Can Murder Be Funny?

I've brought in some of the best cozy authors out there to share their secrets and their insights about the booming genre of Cozy Mysteries. 

Can Murder Be Funny?

by Lois Winston

People are very opinionated. It’s the nature of the beast, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I happen to prefer people with strong opinions, even if their opinions differ considerably from my own. One of my best friends is my polar opposite when it comes to politics. We simply agree to disagree on certain topics.

I came to the mystery genre via romance, where I’d previously published two books. Romance authors can be very opinionated about their genre. When some romance authors embraced women’s fiction and chick-lit back in the late 90’s and early 2000’s, it created a huge uproar within Romance Writers of America, dividing authors into two camps, the purists who wanted to exclude anyone not writing traditional romance and those who were open to a broader interpretation of the genre.

When I switched from writing romance to writing mystery, I once again found myself in the middle of what apparently was an old argument. You see, I write humorous mysteries. Some people have very strong opinions against this particular sub-genre because they find nothing humorous about murder. Actually, neither do I. However, I do find that it usually helps to have a sense of humor to get through much of what life throws at you, and I try to convey that in the way my characters approach life. (I also prefer to read books that make me laugh, rather than have me constantly checking the locks on all my windows and doors!)

So when I began writing mysteries, I knew I wanted to write humorous amateur sleuth mysteries, not police procedurals, thrillers about terrorists who want to blow up cities, or dark, gritty serial killer fare. I get enough of all that reading my daily newspaper and watching the evening news.

However, I firmly believe that there’s a place and a readership for all sub-genres of mystery. Taste is very subjective, and I respect whatever someone else’s particular taste in mysteries is. If someone likes to read or write stories that scare the stuffing out of people, that’s their choice.

Me? I like to make my readers laugh, even if they’re reading about a murder investigation. That’s why when I planned my first murder, the death of the fashion editor in Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun (Book One of my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series), I did it with (duh!) a hot glue gun. After all, anyone can kill someone with a Glock, a kitchen knife, or a vial of arsenic, but how many killers use a glue gun?

My mystery series is also populated with a cast of zany characters. I love taking polar opposites and throwing them together to create conflict. In the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, my protagonist has a mother who believes she descends from Russian royalty and a mother-in-law who’s a staunch communist. Not only are they both living under Anastasia’s roof, they’re forced to share a bedroom. Zany characters + conflict = humor, even though it’s in the confines of a murder mystery.

The problem with writing humor, though, is that you never know if your readership will “get it.” For me, writing humor is the second hardest part of writing a mystery. The first part is creating a story where you keep your reader guessing as to the identity of the killer. As the author, I have to know who the killer is. So it’s difficult for me to be objective. Did I leave too many clues? Not enough? The worst thing in the world is to have your readers figure out whodunit by the third or fourth chapter into the book.

Humor is very subjective, though. I’ve written scenes where I’ve laughed out loud as I’ve typed, then again each time I reread the scene. However, I never know if others will find those scenes funny. So I always hold my breath, fingers crossed, waiting to hear what readers have to say. Some will laugh; some won’t. All I can hope for is that more laugh than don’t.

So you can imagine how absolutely thrilled I was when I received the following starred review from Booklist: “Winston has hit a home run with this hilarious, laugh-until-your-sides-hurt tale. Oddball characters, uproariously funny situations, and a heroine with a strong sense of irony will delight fans of Janet Evanovich, Jess Lourey, and Kathleen Bacus. May this be the first of many in Winston's Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series.”

By George, they got it!

A Stitch To Die For is the newest Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery. I’m currently working on the sixth full-length book in the series. At this point my readers know what to expect from me in the way of humor. My task is to live up to their expectations. With each new book I hold my breath, hoping that I’ve succeeded.

A Stitch To Die For

Ever since her husband died and left her in debt equal to the gross national product of Uzbekistan, magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack has stumbled across one dead body after another—but always in work-related settings. When a killer targets the elderly nasty neighbor who lives across the street from her, murder strikes too close to home. Couple that with a series of unsettling events days before Halloween, and Anastasia begins to wonder if someone is sending her a deadly message.

Buy:

Paperback | Kindle | Nook | Kobo | iTunes | Google Play

The Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries

Anastasia Pollack’s comfortable middle-class life comes crashing down around her when her husband, Karl Marx Pollack, dies suddenly, and she discovers his well-hidden gambling addiction. Karl leaves her with two teenage sons, no savings, enormous debt, and Lucille, the communist mother-in-law from Hell. As she attempts to dig her way out of debt, Anastasia finds herself stumbling across one dead body after another, forcing her to become a reluctant amateur sleuth.

Books in the series include:

Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun

Death By Killer Mop Doll

Revenge of the Crafty Corpse

Decoupage Can Be Deadly

A Stitch To Die For

Crafty Crimes (Three Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mini-Mysteries)

The Empty Nest Mysteries

When her career is outsourced to Asia, fledgling romance author and empty-nester Gracie Elliott seeks a job that will allow her time to write. However, she soon discovers no one wants to hire her. Undaunted, she starts her own business, only to discover her path to success littered with dead bodies.

Books in the series include:

Definitely Dead

Literally Dead

Bio: USA Today 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 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. 

Visit Lois/Emma at www.loiswinston.com and Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog, www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. Follow everyone on Pinterest at www.pinterest.com/anasleuth and onTwitter at https://twitter.com/Anasleuth. Sign up for her newsletter at https://app.mailerlite.com/webforms/landing/z1z1u5

Author Spotlight Featuring Cozy Mystery Author Lois Winston and her new book: Literally Dead

Lois Winston has been a favorite author of mine and she really supports her author friends.  I'm pleased to have her and her latest release with us today.

Hi Lois, please introduce yourself to our readers.

Thanks for having me as a repeat guest on your blog, L.A. I love playing the “What if?” game. It’s how I come up with characters and plots for my books. Many of my stories are based on people and things I’ve either observed or read about in the news, but I like to put a unique spin on them.

For instance, a few years ago I binge-watched all the Thin Man movies after I stumbled upon one while channel surfing. I loved the chemistry that William Powell and Myrna Loy were able to achieve in their portrayal of Nick and Nora Charles. At the time I was toying with the idea of starting a new amateur sleuth series. However, I prefer to write female-centric books. So I wondered, what if I created characters similar to Nick and Nora but had my “Nora” character as the amateur sleuth?

I wanted my sleuth to march to the tune of a slightly off-kilter drummer, though. So I made her a little bit ditzy (think Gracie Allen from the old 1950’s Burns & Allen sitcom) with a unique personality and sense of humor.

Gracie Elliott is a once-successful fabric designer who’s lost her job and her pension but not her penchant for designer handbags and footwear. She’s bound and determined to find a new career that will provide her with the kind of income she once earned.

In Definitely Dead, the first book in my Empty Nest Mystery series, Gracie starts a business as a wing-woman for the senior set. In Literally Dead, my newest release, she’s hoping to become a successful romance author. Husband Blake, a college professor, works hard at keeping Gracie grounded, not an easy task once Gracie begins tripping over dead bodies and feels obliged to find the killers.

Excerpt:  

As I hauled myself up the first set of steps, that old adage about the road to hell being paved with good intentions popped into my head. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea, especially given all the alcohol I’d consumed over the course of the evening.

By the time I reached the first landing, my heart pounded and my pulse raced. Jeez! Was I ever out of shape! I leaned up against the wall to catch my breath and wondered how many calories I’d burned climbing one flight of stairs. Probably nowhere near the number of calories in a frozen margarita. While I waited for my heart to slow down to normal, I pulled out my iPhone to ask Siri, only to discover I had no cell service in the stairwell.

I slipped my phone back inside my clutch bag. At least five minutes passed before I’d regained enough energy to continue. Grabbing hold of the railing, I inhaled a deep breath of fortitude and started my ascent up the next flight. No matter the number of calories, I was burning more than if I copped out and took the elevator the remainder of the way.

Halfway up the third set of stairs I heard what sounded like the fire door slamming open against the concrete-block wall of the stairwell. A split second later a bloodcurdling scream echoed above me. I looked up to find a billowing mass of tie-dyed rainbow chiffon plummeting toward me. As I flattened myself against the wall, Lovinia Darling’s body landed with a bone-shattering thud at my feet.

I didn’t need a degree in forensics to know Lovinia Darling was dead. The top half of her body sprawled upside-down on the steps in front of me, her lower half splayed across the landing above. Dull, lifeless eyes stared up at me. Blood flowed from a large gash in her skull where her head had hit the metal edge of the concrete step and dripped toward me. I quickly descended two steps to avoid the spatter.

My entire body shook as realization hit me. If I’d rested a second less on the landing earlier, Lovinia would have fallen directly on top of me, most likely killing us both.

I’d already come too close to death once this year, thanks to Sidney Mandelbaum. Once was more than one time too many, but did the universe take my needs into consideration? I stared at Lovinia. Apparently not.

I fought to keep my legs from collapsing under me. I knew I had to move. My phone didn’t work in the stairwell. Holding onto the railing for dear life, I inched my way back down the stairs to the floor below.

Once in the corridor, I crumbled into a heap on the floor. This particular corridor was in mid-remodel, the carpet already pulled up but new flooring not yet laid. I was too freaked out and tired to care about the plaster dust and assorted yuck covering the bare concrete and the damage it might do to my favorite little black dress. I fumbled for my phone, and with unsteady hands, managed to call 911.

Buy:

Amazon | Kobo  | iTunes 

The Blurb:

Literally Dead

An Empty Nest Mystery, Book 2

After her last disastrous episode as an amateur sleuth, Gracie Elliott is back. The budding romance writer has spent the past year crafting her first novel. Her hard work and determination pay off when her manuscript wins the Cream of the Crop award, a contest for unpublished writers, sponsored by the Society of American Romance Authors. First place entitles her to attend the organization’s annual conference, normally open only to published authors.

With husband Blake in tow, a starry-eyed Gracie experiences the ultimate fan-girl moment upon entering the hotel. Her favorite authors are everywhere. However, within minutes she learns Lovinia Darling, the Queen of Romance, is hardly the embodiment of the sweet heroines she creates. Gracie realizes she’s stepped into a romance vipers’ den of backstabbing, deceit, and plagiarism, but she finds a friend and mentor in bestselling author Paisley Prentiss.

Hours later, when Gracie discovers Lovinia’s body in the hotel stairwell, a victim of an apparent fall, Gracie is not convinced her death was an accident. Too many other authors had reason to want Lovinia dead. Ignoring Blake’s advice to “let the police handle it,” Gracie, aided by Paisley, begins her own investigation into the death. Romance has never been so deadly.

Bio:

USA Today 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 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.

Find Lois:

Website | Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog | 

Pinterest  | Twitter  |  Newsletter Sign-up 

Excerpt from Hooking Mister Right by Lois Winston w/a Emma Carlyle

 

HOOKING MR. RIGHT, a romance with recipes

By Emma Carlyle (aka Lois Winston)

Blurb: 

Can a butt-ugly alley cat named Cupid bring together two people driven apart by secrets and lies?

After writing a doctoral thesis that exposed fraud in the pop-psychology genre, thirty-two year old professor Althea Chandler has to sacrifice her professional integrity to save her family from financial disaster. She secretly becomes best-selling romance guru Dr. Trulee Lovejoy, a self-proclaimed expert on how to catch a man, even though Thea’s a miserable failure when it comes to relationships—especially those with the opposite sex.

Burned by a failed marriage, Luke Bennett finds himself pursued by Dr. Lovejoy toting women after a gossip columnist dubs him New York’s most eligible bachelor. When he at first mistakes Thea for one of the women out to snare him, sparks fly, but the two soon find themselves battling sparks of a less hostile nature, thanks in part to an alley cat named Cupid.
 

Luke believes he’s finally found an honest woman. Unfortunately, Thea is anything but honest. She’s got more secrets than the CIA and a desperate gossip columnist out to expose her. Cupid definitely has his work cut out for him.

Excerpt:

“The trouble lies in the Y chromosome.” Thea took a sip of her coffee and glared across the black Formica-topped desk at her editor, waiting to pounce on Grace if she challenged her statement.

“How so?” Grace leaned back in her chair and sipped her own coffee. Over the rim of the cup an amused expression played across her face.

“Simple genetics, really. Women have two X chromosomes. Men have an X and a Y. Do you know what the definition of Y is?”

Grace set her coffee cup on her desk and raised her eyebrows. “No, but I suppose you’re about to tell me.”

“Y is an X with a broken leg.”

Grace stared at her as if Thea had lost more than a suitcase in her recent, abrupt move from San Francisco to New York. “And your point?”

“Broken! Don’t you get it? Defective!” Thea slammed her hand onto a pile of unread manuscripts teetering on the corner of her editor’s desk, nearly toppling the unwieldy stack onto the floor.

Grace grabbed for her cup, barely averting a brown tidal wave.

“Ergo,” continued Thea, waving her hand in the air to punctuate her explanation, “there is no doubt that women are superior to men. No defective genes. Obviously, man was a rough prototype. God looked at Adam and said, ‘I can do better than that.’ Then he created Eve.” She placed her cup on the edge of the desk, leaned back in her chair, crossed her arms over her chest, and offered her editor a triumphant smile.

“So this explains why you cancelled your wedding and high-tailed it out of San Francisco? Defective male genes?” Grace shuddered. “Do me a favor, will you, Dr. Love? Keep these newly developed, radical theories to yourself. Unless, of course, you want to go from the New York Times Bestseller List back to an auditorium-size classroom packed with bored freshmen.”

Doctor Love. Thea winced at the nickname the press had dubbed her secret alter ego, Dr. Trulee Lovejoy. In truth, she did wish she could return to the classroom and the comforting monotony of teaching Sociology 101 to less-than-eager first year students. Not that she possessed an all-consuming passion for her chosen career in academia, but with everything she had lost over the past few years, at least she’d still have her integrity. However, she could no more turn back the clock and regain her compromised professional ethics than she could restore her family’s lost fortune. At least her popular how-to guides for finding the perfect mate had kept the collection agencies at bay.

“Some love expert! I couldn’t even keep my own fiancé from sleeping with my sister.” Thea raised her head and challenged Grace. “Now aren’t you glad I chose to publish under a pseudonym? Think of the public relations disaster I’ve averted. News flash: Doctor Love Causes Coitus Interuptus after Catching Sister and Fiancé in Flagrante Delicto on Eve of Wedding. Update at eleven.”

“Too erudite and wordy.” Grace brushed away the imaginary headline with a wave of her hand. “Who’d understand all that Latin?”

Thea grimaced. “I can think of at least two people.” Her brainy, Stanford-educated younger sister came to mind. As did her sister’s equally brainy, MIT-educated research partner who also happened to be Thea’s ex-fiancé. Too late Thea had discovered Steve and Madeline were engaged in far more than metaphysical debates while researching distant solar systems and spatial anomalies. 

 “Yes, well...” Grace fidgeted in her chair, her gaze dropping to her lap.

“It’s okay, Grace. I’m dealing with it. Putting three thousand miles between myself and them helps.”

“Out of sight, out of mind?” Grace raised her chin and met Thea’s eyes. “Come on, I know you better than that. You’re hurting.”

Thea exhaled a deep sigh and shrugged. “Guilty as charged.” She glanced over at the large scheduling calendar covering half of one wall in Grace’s office and laughed. The sound hung in the room, echoing with pain and resonating with irony.

“Just think, three weeks ago today my biggest concern was that the rehearsal dinner was getting cold because Steve was off in some corner deconstructing the theory of relativity. I used to dream we’d someday travel to Stockholm to pick up his Nobel Prize.” She leaned forward, propped her elbows on the desk and scowled at her nearly empty mug. “It just never occurred to me that the award would be for causing my world to stop spinning on its axis.”

Grace reached across her desk and patted Thea’s hand. “Trust me. You’re better off finding out the truth before the wedding rather than afterwards.”

“Speaking from experience?”

“More than I like to admit. Maybe I should take some of Trulee’s advice.”

“Get real! If you have any sense, Grace, you’ll let me out of my contract and forget about that third book. Finding Mr. Right? Hooking Mr. Right? I’m a fraud. I don’t know the first thing about how to get a man and keep him. I’m a thirty-two year old sociologist with a lousy track record when it comes to the male species. How can you trust me to write credible books on the subject when I can’t even trust my own judgment where men are concerned?”

Grace shrugged. “Maybe we both need to follow your advice. Others do and swear by your books. Besides, I’m not letting you out of your contract. Trulee Lovejoy is the best thing to happen to this company in years.”

“Trulee Lovejoy.” Thea shook her head. “What was I thinking? How did I ever let you talk me into that awful pseudonym?”

“If I remember correctly, I had a little help from a lady named Margarita. Several ladies named Margarita, actually. Besides, I’m hurt. You insisted on an alias, and I came up with the perfect nom de plume for you. After all, who would you believe when it came to matters of the heart, Dr. Trulee Lovejoy or Dr. Althea Chandler?”

Thea scowled. “Right now I’d suggest you might have better luck with Lassie.”

Buy Links:

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B008E95NPG/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B008E95NPG&linkCode=as2&tag=loiswins-20

B&N Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hooking-mr-right-emma-carlyle/1112998331?ean=2940015629224

Apple iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/au/book/hooking-mr.-right/id566134935?mt=11

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/search/search.html?q=hooking+mr.+right

Sony eReader: https://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/emma-carlyle/hooking-mr-right/_/R-400000000000000831376

Smashwords: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/238981

 

  

 BIO: Lois Winston is both an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency and the author of the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Other books in the series include Death By Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, and the ebook novelettes Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem.

Lois is also published in romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name.

Visit Lois at http://www.loiswinston.com,

Visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com,

Visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com. 

Follow Lois on Twitter @anasleuth.

 

My Hybrid Life, Meet Lois Winston / Emma Carlyle

I'm so pleased to bring you this post by Lois Winston also writing as Emma Carlyle. It has candid  insights into indie publishing.

 

Please welcome Lois, and don't forget the excerpt on Saturday of Hooking Mr. Right

 

My Hybrid Life

Publishing is changing at the speed of light. With all the changes over the past few years comes a new type of author—the hybrid. No, we don’t run on both gasoline and electricity. We’re authors who have published both traditionally and independently. I’m a relative hybrid newbie. I published my first indie novel, Hooking Mr. Right, a little over a year ago. I’ll be the first to admit I won’t be retiring any time soon from my indie sales.

Still, I’m glad I jumped into the indie pool. Each month Amazon, and occasionally one of the other online retailers, electronically deposits a modest sum into my bank account. Do I wish it were more? Heck, yes! But something is better than nothing, right?

So why are my indie books not selling like gangbusters? Well, some of it is my own fault, and some of it is circumstances beyond my control. First, in hindsight I’m convinced I made a huge mistake by taking a pen name for my five original indie ebooks. These were older manuscripts that had *almost* sold but never did, mostly because publishing houses merged, lines folded, or the editors who loved the books changed jobs or couldn’t convince their editorial boards to take a chance on them.

 
Because I’ve been building my mystery name and the indie books were romance, romantic suspense, and chick lit, I was advised to put them out under a different name. Thus, Emma Carlyle was born. But Emma is an unknown in the world of publishing. Lois Winston may not be a household name, but as Lois Winston, I’ve been published traditional since 2006, and I do have my share of fans and name recognition.

 

If I had it to do all over again, I’d stick with Lois Winston. There are five Emma Carlyle books available: Hooking Mr. Right, Finding Hope, Lost in Manhattan, Someone to Watch Over Me, and Four Uncles and a Wedding. There won’t be anymore, and at some point, I plan to have my covers redesigned to read “by Lois Winston, writing as Emma Carlyle.” Hopefully, that will help spur sales.

 

I’ve since also indie published several books under my own name. Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem (available soon) are mini-mysteries connected to my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. Elementary, My Dear Gertie is a novella sequel to Talk Gertie to Me, my first traditionally published novel and also now available as an indie ebook. Once Upon a Romance is a collection of previously published short stories. Top Ten Reasons Your Novel is Rejected is a writing advice book based on my experiences as a writing instructor and literary agent. In addition, Love, Lies and a Double Shot of Deception, another of my previously published traditional books, is also now available as an indie ebook.

The second mistake I believe I made was waiting too long to begin my indie career. My unscientific research tells me that erotica, erotic romance, and super sexy romances do very well, no matter when the author first begins her indie career and whether or not she was previously traditionally published. But I don’t write in those genres. For other genres, it seems those cutting edge authors who jumped in a few years ago are the ones who have built huge followings. I wish I’d had their foresight, but for a long time the stigma of “self-published” kept me away. I’d worked too hard for too long to become traditionally published. That stigma blinded me to the potential others saw and were capitalizing on.

 

This isn’t sour grapes; it is what it is. However, who among us hasn’t wished she could turn back the clock and make some changes to her life?

 

I also mentioned circumstances beyond my control working against me, and the big one there is the enormous volume of indie books now flooding the market. Some days it seems  like everyone in the country, whether they can write or not, is indie publishing. How on earth are readers supposed to find my books? Blog posts, interviews, websites, and social media often feel like shouting into a tsunami.

 

There are places to advertise indie books where some authors have had great success, but they’re very costly, and there are no guarantees. For every author I know who has sold thousands of books because of these ads, there are many more who don’t even recoup the cost of the ad. In addition, most of these sites require you to have anywhere from 10-25 Amazon reviews with an average 4.5 rating before they’ll consider accepting your book. Even if I wanted to gamble my hard-earned dollars, my books wouldn’t make the cut. I don’t have the requisite number of reviews.

 

What I’m doing to help my indie career is following the same advice I’ve given my students and clients: the best way to grow your career is write the next book. Hopefully, eventually enough people will read and like my books that word-of-mouth will take over and create more sales. The only problem is that it’s very hard to type when your fingers are crossed!

 

So what’s the moral to this story? If you’re thinking of indie publishing, go ahead. You really have nothing to lose, especially if you have the skills to format your own books and make your own covers. And you might have a lot to gain. Just be aware that the vast majority of indie published authors are like me, selling a book or two a day at most. That still adds up over time, though. And you might be one of the luckier ones who breaks out and strike it rich in indie publishing. You’ll never know unless you try.

 

 

 

 

 

BIO: Lois Winston is both an agent with the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency and the author of the critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, the first book in the series, received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Other books in the series include Death By Killer Mop Doll, Revenge of the Crafty Corpse, and the ebook novelettes Crewel Intentions and Mosaic Mayhem. Lois is also published in romance, romantic suspense, women’s fiction, and non-fiction under her own name and her Emma Carlyle pen name.

Visit Lois  at http://www.loiswinston.com,

Visit Emma at http://www.emmacarlyle.com

Visit Anastasia at the Killer Crafts & Crafty Killers blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.

Follow Lois on Twitter @anasleuth.