Today’s guest blogger is author Lois Winston, whose newest book is Assault with a Deadly Glue Gun. You’ll love this romp with protagonist Anastasia Pollack!

CHERRY GARCIA VS. CHOCOLATE PEANUT BUTTER SWIRL
by Lois Winston

I’ve been thinking quite a bit lately about how subjective taste is.  Reading reviews of my book tends to do that to me. What makes one person love something that another person has a hard time swallowing, let alone enjoying?  The other night my husband and I sat down to watch a movie.  After fifteen minutes he left the room to watch a hockey game on another television.  I continued to watch the movie.  It wasn’t the best movie I’d ever seen, but it wasn’t the worst, either.  I found the character studies fascinating, even if the plot left a bit to be desired.  And I enjoyed the movie enough to want to sit through it until the end to see how the conflicts were resolved.

Sometimes that happens to me with a book.  I’ll continue reading one I don’t particularly love because I either a) find enough enjoyable about it that I want to finish it, b) am hoping it gets better, or c) am hoping that even though I figured out whodunit by chapter three, the author will prove me wrong and give me a totally different ending I didn’t see coming (and man, when that happens, I love it!)

But there are other times when I pick up a book and toss it aside after a chapter or two.  Often it’s a book that has gotten rave reviews.  Sometimes it’s even a book by an author I’ve read and enjoyed previously.  When this happens, one of two reactions occur.  I either a) wonder if there’s something wrong with me that I don’t get what everyone else sees in the book, or b) scratch my head, wondering why everyone else can’t see the flaws in plot and character that jump off the page at me.

Then there are times when I fall in love with a book and recommend it to friends, only to have them question my taste.  Or worse yet, my sanity.

For many people peanut butter is the perfect food.  For me it sets off my gag reflexes.  I’m more a Cherry Garcia kind of girl.  Taste.  It’s one of the unsolved mysteries of the universe.

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Award-winning author Lois Winston writes the Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries series featuring magazine crafts editor and reluctant amateur sleuth Anastasia Pollack. Assault With a Deadly Glue Gun, a January 2011 release, is the first book in the series and has received starred reviews from both Publishers Weekly and Booklist. Kirkus Reviews dubbed it, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” Lois is also published in women’s fiction, romantic suspense, and non-fiction as well as being an award-winning crafts and needlework designer and an associate of the Ashley Grayson Literary Agency.  Visit Lois at her website: http://www.loiswinston.com and visit Anastasia at her blog: http://www.anastasiapollack.blogspot.com.