By Elaine Viets

          Wondering what to get your favorite writer for the holidays? (Psst. It’s OK to include yourself.)  I’ve put together this list when I was supposed to be writing. As of this writing, all of these items could be delivered in time for Christmas.

Writers’ Tears Copper Pot Whiskey

Some writers get maudlin after a few too many. Writers’ Tears seems to honor that tradition. Walsh Whiskey’s website says that “19th and early 20th century Ireland was a golden era both for Irish whiskey and, perhaps coincidentally, for great Irish novelists, poets and playwrights.” It kinda-sorta says if you are knocking back Writers’ Tears, you may join the ranks of Irish literary giants from George Bernard Shaw to Bram Stoker. Writers’ Tears also “been to Ian Buxton’s publication 101 Whiskeys to try before you die.

For pricing and more information, go to https://tinyurl.com/bd58e7ua

A Writer’s T-shirt that says, “I am a writer – anything you say or do may be used in a story.”

One holiday, my Aunt Betty announced at dinner, “This meal is off the record.”

I promised Betty nothing said at that meal would wind up in a book or blog. This shirt is fair warning for friends and family. It’s  $10.19 at Etsy, and has options for writers, bookworms and journalists.  https://tinyurl.com/mut3y4hh

PS: I wear a women’s large in the V-neck style.

Fahrney’s Pens

Some people can happily spend the day wandering around a hardware store. I feel the same way about pen stores. When I got my first real, live contract with a publisher, I bought a Mont Blanc to sign the contract. Now most publishing contracts are signed electronically, but I still love pens. I’ve been eyeing this Smithsonian dinosaur fossil rollerball pen for $53.60.  https://tinyurl.com/3n7kd7b8

 Leather bound notebook

Your favorite writer can plot their bestseller in a leather-bound notebook. Jenni Bick has a collection starting at $11 This Savona Italian leather notebook is $25.60 https://tinyurl.com/4dm9v752. You’ll also find good deals for leather notebooks on Etsy.

 Writing a mystery is a complicated puzzle

That may be why many writers enjoy jigsaw puzzles.  Here’s a 500-piece Murdle in The Mystery Mansion puzzle at Strand Books for $19.95.

https://www.strandbooks.com/puzzle-murdle-in-the-mystery-mansion-500-piece-jigsaw-puzzle-9781797235691.html

 Get holiday felines with this 500-piece puzzle

Happy Hanukcats by Galison

It’s $14.53 at Thriftbooks. https://tinyurl.com/252um7b6

 Get the holiday felines with this 500-piece puzzle

Writer Fuel

For the coffee lover

A ground coffee tasting kit. The 9 coffee flavors include Amaretto, breakfast blend, Irish Cream, French Vanilla and hazelnut. Amazon. $23.99 https://tinyurl.com/3swjavpy

For the hot chocolate drinker

A disco ball hot chocolate cocoa bomb with star-shaped marshmallows.

From Target. $4 each. https://tinyurl.com/4zujrb28

For the tea drinker

A tea sampler from the Republic of Tea.

Tea drinkers can try 7 different flavors including Hydration Watermelon and Hydration Blueberry Lime. $11. https://www.republicoftea.com/single-sips-sampler/p/v20473/

More quick gift ideas

Donate to a favorite charity in your friend’s name.

Give a gift basket.

Give a meal service.

Give free babysitting.

Give a gift card.

This is my last blog of 2025. Happy holidays, however you celebrate.

Enjoy my new Florida Beach mystery, “Sex and Death on the Beach.” https://tinyurl.com/492ffwa8

By John Gilstrap (Only my wife still calls me Johnny)

Last Saturday was the night of our annual Christmas party. It’s a catered event in our home where we host about 100 friends for an evening of food, drink and frivolity. Things were just getting started–I was taking coats at door and directing people to the various bars and food stations–when my wife’s urgent cries drew my attention to a 12-inch-high patch of flames on the dining room table.

“Oh, bother,” I said–or something like that. A lit taper had fallen from its base and had set the linen table runner alight. Linen burns pretty well with a bit of paraffin accelerant. However, it extinguishes quickly when you drown it with the water from a chafing dish. Thinking quickly, the caterer then covered the burn mark with a serving dish and the party was back on track.

About 18 hours have passed as I write this, and I realize that some blog topics are ordained. So buckle up as I set my writing creds aside and return to my previous line of work. For newcomers, that means 15 years in the fire and rescue service and 35 years as a safety engineer specializing in things that burn.

First, this video is mandatory. The first ten seconds or so will do. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

Welcome back. Nothing about that video was doctored. Dry pine burns almost explosively, and it doesn’t care if it’s part of a tree, a wreath or a centerpiece. It also burns very hot. If the fire in the video had been in a real house, those superheated gases would have ignited all the furniture and wall coverings, creating an even hotter plume of gases that would have mushroomed along the ceiling to the rest of the house, self-propagating by all the additional items and structural members it ignited along the way. If it were a two-story house, the stairway would have been the internal chimney, and the Beast would have fed on everything up there.

Sobering Fact #1: You don’t have time. The Beast is coming, and you can’t stop it. Even if it’s not true in your one-off case, you have to assume it is true. If it’s after bedtime, and the smoke detector sounds, your reflex should be to call 9-1-1. If you live in an area that has “enhanced 9-1-1” service, you don’t even need to speak to anyone. The computer will know your address and the audio will tell the call taker everything they need to know. If it turns out to be a nothing burger of a call, well, that’s good news for everyone. Your house won’t have burned and the firefighters won’t have had to clean their equipment.

Sobering Fact #2: Everybody’s instincts are wrong.

• You keep your and the kids’ bedroom doors open because you want to hear problems. Remember the Beast in the hallway? He kills with his breath, not with his claws. Not only is he consuming all of the oxygen from the air, but the products of combustion from all that furniture and structural material are toxifying it with carbon monoxide and phosgene and oxides of nitrogen and God knows what else. Some of these gases are toxic at parts per billion, and if bedroom doors are open, they’re rolling right in. A closed bedroom door adds as much as 10 minutes of survival time in a house fire. Give the firefighters a chance to make a rescue instead of a recovery.
• You think you’re going to have time to rescue your kids from down the hall. You’re wrong. At least, you have to plan to be wrong. See everything written above. Honestly, you don’t comprehend how geometrically the Beast grows once he gets started. Dying in the hallway during a rescue attempt is not a rescue. It’s a tragedy. Likely part of a larger one.
• Your kids are going to run to you for help when things get scary. I don’t even want to write the rest. Read the paragraph above and extrapolate. Hands down, the worst day of my fire service life was when I found the bodies of two children under their parents’ bed. A part of me broke that night that still hasn’t healed.

Elements of a Fire Evacuation Plan 

• Every room has a way out–ideally, two.
  • If the CLOSED bedroom door is hot to the touch, the Beast is out there waiting to kill you. Don’t open it.
    • OPTION 1: If it’s safe, climb out a window.
      • Are your kids big enough/strong enough to open the window?
      • Do they know it’s okay to break the window if they can’t open it? (You need to tell them very specifically that it is permissible because you’ve spent their whole lives making it clear that windows are NOT to be broken.)
      • Is there a designated implement nearby that they can use to break the window?
    • OPTION 2: If the Beast is outside the door and window egress is unsafe, the only option is to stay put and await rescue.
      • Stay low and in plain sight
      • Make lots of noise. (Bedside whistles are a great idea.)
• Establish a meeting place outside and once there, stay there. 
• Do not hesitate. Hear the smoke detector, activate the plan.

Please consider this post to be my Christmas message of love.

We’re all extended family here at the Killzone Blog, and it so happens that the season of God’s greatest gift to mankind coincides in the Northern Hemisphere with the time of year when we stack the rules of chemistry and physics against ourselves by placing uniquely combustible fuels in close proximity to efficient ignition sources. There’s a reason why first responders refer to this time of year as Fire Season.

I don’t want to stress you out, but I do want all of you to take a look at every single display in your home. If having a real tree is important to you (or any real greens for that matter), make sure that they are moist and well away from direct sources of heat. Keep a pitcher of water near the fireplace in case a log falls out. You just have to cool it off enough to get it back into the fire box with the tongs. There’s no need to extinguish the fire in the fire box before you go to bed, but make sure that the logs are stable and won’t fall.

Candles out before bed. All of them. Don’t make me come over there and give you a talking to.

With all that lecturing behind me, I wish you all a wonderful Holiday Season, and I will see you on the far side of our annual hiatus!

You can swim all day in the Sea of Knowledge and not get wet. — Milo in The Phantom Tollbooth

By PJ Parrish

I spent yesterday in the cold rain hanging Christmas lights on my shrubs. And then they didn’t work. Yeah, yeah…I checked them all first. But they pulled a Griswald on me and only half of them went on. An hour later, a yanked them off and tossed them in the trash. Bah humbug.

So I decked the hounds in boughs of holly,  made a Hendricks Floradora martini and, like my lights, got half-lit.

.

Ever wonder where the word humbug came from? It wasn’t Dickens, by the way. It goes back to 1750, first appearing in The Student where it is called “a word very much in vogue with the people of taste and fashion.” This makes me feel marginally better.

A humbug is a deception, a lie. According to The Vulgar Tongue by Francis Grose — dontcha love that title, so E.L. James? — to hum in English originally meant “‘to deceive.” It could also come from the Italian uomo bugiardo, which literally means “lying man.”

In the 1961 children’s book The Phantom Tollboth, there’s a large beetle-like insect known as the Humbug, who is a consummate liar. I had never heard of this book before a friend mentioned it in passing recently as one of his favorites and lent me his copy. Bah humbug…okay, so I read it .

The story concerns a sad kid named Milo who, bored to death at school — and by life — gets a mysterious package. Inside is a small tollbooth and a map of the Lands Beyond, leading to the Kingdom of Wisdom. There’s a note — “For Milo, who has plenty of time.” Milo begins a fantasical journey where he meets a companion dog Tock (so named for the alarmclocks in his fur), He leaves behind The Doldrums, and goes to the Word Market, where he mets the Spelling Bee and the lying Humbug, and then on to Dictionopolis. In the Mountains of Ignorance, they fight The Gelatinous Giant. The giant is a green Jello blob who takes a lot of naps, can change shapes on a whim, eats people, bugs and dogs. His weakness is he is afraid of new ideas because they make him sick to his stomach. Milo uses The Box of Words to defeat the giant.

I’m tempted, but I can’t recount it all here — it’s incredibly dense with the kind of details kids adore and double entendre lessons adults should heed. And writers would get  kick out of it. All ends well for Milo. He goes back through the tollbooth, “awakening” back in his bedroom, but convinced his trip was real. He finds a new note — “For Milo, who now knows the way.” The note say that the tollbooth is being sent to another kid who needs help finding direction in life.

So, crime dogs, on this holiday eve, as we look to a new year with hope, I wish you health, happiness with your loved ones, and sanity wherever you can find it. And that your Christmas lights work. Oh yeah, and that you keep writing. May you pick up some good stuff at the Word Market, find your way out of The Doldrums and keep marching on toward the Kingdom of Wisdom. As The Phantom Tollbooth told me:

“Milo continued to think of all sorts of things; of the many detours and wrong turns that were so easy to take, of how fine it was to be moving and, most of all, of how much could be accomplished with just a little thought.”

How fine is it just to be moving.

Over the years, I’ve judged several writing contests, local and nationwide. It’s an enjoyable way to give back to those organizations and the reading community, exposes me to new writers, and is an eye-opening experience. Today I’d like to briefly discuss what makes an award-winning novel.

It has to be outstanding, towering over the other submissions.

It should be simple, but barely five pages into any book, I can tell if it’s a quality publication, or one that falls short. You’re on your way if I’m engaged after the first five pages, but grab me on page one. Think Stephen King, the man who can catch me within the first paragraph, or James Lee Burke, whose writing voice is as smooth as a glass of good whiskey.

To help you along, here are a few suggestions.

• First, find your writing Voice, and try to make it unique. This has been discussed ad nauseum here on the Killzone Blog, so do a search and read what the Masters have offered.
• Please, please, I beg you, please avoid as many adverbs as possible. Yep, we’ve plowed that ground before, but really, “He peered around the bush sneakily.”

Good Lord. Just read that again. Her peered around the bush sneakily. Makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little. Or this one, “he crossed the tarmac staggeringly,” is going to charge up my Crap Meter and if there are many more of these stinking piles, it goes into the “Nope” box after it bounces off the wall.

• Let’s get this out of the way, too. At this stage in the evolution of AI, I can almost always (99%) of the time tell if it was written by a program and not a real person. For understanding, refer to those horrible emails you likely get each week that tries to extract money from your bank account by offering to promote your novel for mere pennies on the dollar.

“Dear Reavis, your book, The Texas Job is an excellent example of western noir, but it’s languishing in an unread desert like a tumbleweed in a western ghost town, but we can help with that. Let’s get this tumbleweed rolling toward potential readers….”

Or “I hope you’re doing well. I’m Natashia Smith and represent  Hagia, organiser at The Best Writers Life, a vibrant community of 1,500+ passionate readers, writers, and creators who love immersive historical fiction, powerful characters, and richly detailed frontier stories….”

I’m afraid AI will someday learn to cloak itself, but right now this style is as obvious as a Texas twister on the windswept plains…sorry about that.

But back to contest entries.

• Find the proper starting point of your novel.

Many authors (and I was guilty of this as well way back when) begin with a Prologue, a device which used to work back in the days of John Saul, but hasn’t aged well. Though it’s possible to weave it properly, it can, and does work sometimes, but not often. Prologues are usually designed to bring tension and/or excitement at the outset, likely knowing in the back of the authors mind that the true beginning is slow.

Dig back into you manuscript and find where a scene truly grabs your readers attention without resorting to devices. Start there at the moment where action or tension arises.

And to build on that theme, your first sentence or paragraph should grab the reader by the throat!

Charlaine Harris opened Dead Until Dark like this. “I’d been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.”

“The morning burned so August-hot, the marsh’s moist breath hung the oaks and pines with fog.” Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing.

“All this happened, more or less.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

Yep, that’ll get my attention. Why do I bring that up? Because as contest entries trickle in at the beginning, I’ll have time to sit back and hope the author will develop the plot and characters without wasting any more time, even though the beginning is rough. By the time the deadline rolls around, entries arrive at my doorstep in droves, and with the judges’ deadline looming, the book has to capture my attention, and that of the other judges, as soon as we open it up.

• Give me something I haven’t seen a hundred times.
• I need strong pacing and clean prose. For a Masters Course in both categories, read Texas author James Wade. He’s pushing Cormac McCarthy and Larry McMurtry out the back door.

• Dialogue should be crisp, and mean something. I don’t need pages of two characters chatting each other up over tea and cookies about last night’s dinner party, unless it is the jumping off point of the novel. Save that for real life. Let’s get to the meat of the plot to keep me engaged.
• No three-page info dumps or looooong descriptions of characters features and clothes. Scatter that necessary information throughout the novel so that it blends in and doesn’t stand out.
• Less is more, when it comes to those same descriptions. John GIlstrap is the man to copy when it comes to his protagonist Jonathan Graves. He doesn’t give us details, but I know what the guy looks. like and would recognize him at an airport…along with Boxers. (Read his books to meet those guys.)
• How about a fresh angle on a familiar genre. Tooting my own horn here, but I hope when Comancheria is in the hands of judges next year, they’ll see a different kind of western.

• Judges will remember how a book makes them feel.

That last bullet point brings us to the aforementioned Cormac McCarthy who wrote Blood Meridian. I had to take a shower after the last page.

Florida Roadkill by Tim Dorsey left me reeling because of the plot, twists, and pure fun. It is one of the few books I immediately dove back into after The End. The second was Jeffery Deaver’s The October List. They both made me feel like I’d experienced something special and because they were so good, I almost raced through them too fast. I had to go back to truly absorb the brilliance of those two novels.

• Lift your vocabulary. I don’t mean keep a thesaurus open on your computer or desk, but avoid common words. See above for the word “read.” Yep, I read those books, but found a different way to say it. I “experienced” them, “absorbed them,” and “raced through the stories because the action and pacing were perfect.
• If sentences sound awkward, re-structure them.
• Go line by line and delete or re-write every passive sentence you can find. “The tiles are delivered and the backsplash will be finished by this evening.” Or, “Safety glasses are worn by the entire crew to minimize the risk of injury.”

How about: The tiles arrived just in time to finish the backsplash by sundown.

Or: The crew wears safety glasses at all times while on the job.

Where did those two examples come from? Most HGTV programs. Listening to the narrator on many of these series is a crash course in passive sentences.

And finally, highlight the following.

• The entry should be polished to excess, with no typos or layout problems.

That sounds simple, and typos get through in even the most carefully edited novels, but you’d be surprised how many times published works contain “their” or “there” for “they are.” Some say typos have no bearing on the quality of the story, but it’s the entire package an author should be concerned with, and run-on or misspelled words shriek a message of laziness and disrespect for the reader and their hard-earned cash.

Pure typos or misplaced apostrophes leap out at the reader. Sometimes I feel as if the author finished his or her manuscript without doing much more than a quick read then sent it on to be self-published. No fault if you want to go that route, many successful authors are self published, but find and pay an experience d editor to clean up your work.

These are just a few of the problems I’ve seen.

• One additional note (and it has nothing to do with the quality of the novel itself), but the cover is my first introduction to your submission. If it looks like a second grader used clip art to wrap your novel, it won’t make a good impression. I know, that sounds bad, but it’s true. I speak from experience. Just look at this one of my own, which I’m afraid still hasn’t overcome that first impression. I argued with my publishers until I turned blue. They finally gave me an ultimatum, and I caved, but I wouldn’t do it again. When that publishing company was absorbed by another, the CEO, in a huge staff meeting, pointed at his cover on the screen and asked, “What the fudge were you thinking?”

Only she didn’t say fudge.

Would you pick up these familiar titles if this cover was the first time you saw them?

Probably not, and with that, good luck and may the best book win.