Like the protagonist in my Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, I am a ladies’ swimwear sales exec in the greater Los Angeles area. From the beginning of my career, I have kept a daily journal chronicling the interesting, quirky, and sometimes quite challenging people I have encountered as well as the crazy situations I’ve gotten myself into and out of. My daily journal entries are the foundation of everything I write.
As a female who has succeeded in a historically male-dominated industry, it was important to me to write about the apparel business from a woman’s point of view. Sarcastic, irreverent Holly Schlivnik, the continuing main character of The Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, is based on me with some poetic license taken, of course. Holly is the me I always wanted to be. All of my characters are based on real people, and the central characters are all strong, successful women who have beaten the odds and broken the glass ceiling. My stories all take place in the fast-paced, at times cutthroat Los Angeles ladies’ apparel industry and give readers an insider’s view of how the latest designs really end up on the rack in their favorite stores.
The premise of Death by Pins and Needles is Lissa Charney, a thoroughly despicable showroom manager on the swimwear aisle in the California Apparel Mart, has stepped on countless people as she climbed the precarious steps of corporate ladder and cheated her way to the top. The Charney character is based on a real person with a dreadful, but well-earned reputation. There is no shortage of competitors who would have loved nothing more than to help Lissa fall off the ladder and plunge to her death. The potential murder suspects are also based on real people who would have given their right arm to eliminate the real life Ms. Charney.
Susie is offering a free download of a swimsuit fitting guide for everyone reading this post. You can get it here:
Since Lissa Charney didn’t think any of the rules applied to her, she had no problem breaking them all. From job stealing to dumping a boyfriend when he needed her the most, selfish and self-centered Lissa’s list of enemies rivaled those of Al Capone. So, when Lissa is murdered, no one on the swimwear aisle in the California Apparel Mart was particularly surprised…the only surprise was what had taken so long. Who wanted Lissa Charney dead? The list was as long as your arm….but which one actually killed her? The last thing Mermaid Swimwear sales exec Holly Schlivnik expected to find when she opened the closet door was nasty competitor Lissa Charney’s battered corpse nailed to the wall. When Holly’s colleague is wrongly arrested for Lissa’s murder, the wise-cracking, irreverent amateur sleuth sticks her nose everywhere it doesn’t belong to sniff out the real killer. Nothing turns out the way she thinks it will as Holly matches wits with a heartless killer hellbent for revenge
Buy link: https://books2read.com/Death-by-Pins-and-Needles
Named Best US Author of the Year by N. N. Lights Book Heaven, award-winning cozy mystery author Susie Black was born in the Big Apple but now calls sunny Southern California home. Like the protagonist in her Holly Swimsuit Mystery Series, Susie is a successful apparel sales executive. Susie began telling stories as soon as she learned to talk. Now she’s telling all the stories from her garment industry experiences in humorous mysteries.
She reads, writes, and speaks Spanish, albeit with an accent that sounds like Mildred from Michigan went on a Mexican vacation and is trying to fit in with the locals. Since life without pizza and ice cream as her core food groups wouldn’t be worth living, she’s a dedicated walker to keep her girlish figure. A voracious reader, she’s also an avid stamp collector. Susie lives with a highly intelligent man and has one incredibly brainy but smart-aleck adult son who inexplicably blames his sarcasm on an inherited genetic defect.
Looking for more? Contact Susie at:
Website: www.authorsusieblack.com
E-mail: mysteries_@authorsusieblack.com
Ladies of Mystery 
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