Category Archives: Writing

Reader Friday-May Day or No Pants Day?

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From Wikipedia:

Now, be honest! Doesn’t this look like fun?

“No Pants Day is an annual event in various countries that became more widely celebrated in the 2000s. It is most often observed on the first Friday in May and involves publicly wearing only undergarments on the lower part of the body, not nudity. Except for making people laugh, the holiday typically serves no other purpose or agenda, but some organizers later used it to raise social issues.”

(No agenda…how refreshing!)

“May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on May 1…

International Workers’ Day, also called Labour Day in some countries and often referred to as May Day, is a celebration of labourers and working classes…and occurs every year on May 1 or the first Monday in May.”

* * *

So, TKZers, what’s your pleasure today? Would you rather celebrate May Day, International Workers’ Day, or No Pants Day?

Me? Hands down, No Pants Day, every day and twice on Sunday . . . way more fun than the other two!

 

Those Crazy State Laws

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Those Crazy State Laws will be a new feature when we have a 5th Thursday in a month.

Lately, I’ve been really interested in laws that were put on the books 50 to 100 years ago and are somehow still around today. Some of them are so ridiculous it’s hard to see why they were made in the first place, but apparently, something happened that made some lawyer official think a law was needed.

So, here we go with 15 crazy laws:

  1. In Arkansas, you can be arrested if you tie your dog to the roof of your car – even if it’s in a cage.
  2. In Montana, it’s illegal to have a sheep in the cab of your truck unless a chaperone is present.
  3. House Bill 110 in Texas was introduced on the House floor, which would require criminals to give their victims 24 hours’ notice, either orally or in writing, and to explain the nature of the crime to be committed. Not sure if it ever passed…
  4. In North Dakota, you may be jailed for wearing a hat while dancing, or even for wearing a hat to a party where dancing occurs.
  5. In one city in Oklahoma, there is an ordinance that says it shall be unlawful to put any hypnotized person in a display window.
  6. In Pennsylvania, all fire hydrants must be checked one hour before all fires. Exactly how anyone would know when a fire is going to happen is a mystery to me.
  7. At one time in Memphis, Tennessee, it was illegal for a woman to drive a car unless there was a man either running or walking in front of it, waving a red flag to warn approaching motorists and pedestrians.
  8. In Georgia, it’s against the law to tie a giraffe to a telephone pole or street lamp.
  9. Here’s another one about a giraffe—residents may not fish from a giraffe’s back in Idaho.
  10. In Indiana, citizens are not allowed to attend a movie nor ride in a public streetcar for at least four hours after eating garlic.
  11. In Arizona, donkeys cannot sleep in bathtubs.
  12. If you’re in Connecticut and walking on your hands, you aren’t allowed to cross a street.
  13. In Louisiana, biting someone with your natural teeth is “simple assault”, while biting someone with your false teeth is “aggravated assault”.
  14. In Chicago, Illinois, it is illegal to take a French poodle to the opera.
  15. In Colorado, it is not legal to keep a mule on the second floor of a building not in a city, unless there are 2 exits.

So there you have fifteen really dumb laws. Have you heard iof any of these? Or others? If so, leave them in the comments.

Behind The Covers
Of The Edgar Nominees

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By PJ Parrish

Morning, crime dogs. I’m up in Manhattan today, helping out at the Edgars again. My main duties as banquet chair don’t kick in until Wednesday night. As part of this gig — been doing it for more than 20 years now — I put together the Powerpoint of all the nominated book covers that are then projected on the ballroom’s big screens.

And I gotta tell you, from the reactions I’ve noticed from the nominees, seeing your cover six feet tall can make you feel six feet tall.

I love this job because I get to see all the covers ahead of time. It’s given me, over all these years, a unique viewpoint on trends in design. And there are some really stunning covers this year. So, as usual, I’m here today to share some of the goodies with you.

Some caveats.

  • I’m no graphic design expert. Just an old art major who couldn’t get a job.
  • This is only a broad sampling.
  • And it’s only for mysteries and thrillers, so that might create some distinctions from, say, romance, fantasy, sci-fi and…ahem…literary fiction. (Go ahead. I can take your best shot).

But I can identify some trends within our genre that seem to be sustaining over the recent years. And maybe this is helpful to you if you are designing your own cover or hiring someone to do it. It’s good to know what is working in the market these days.

One is the use of really bold san-serif type faces. This has been strong for a couple years now, but it seems really cemented now. Very few books are using lighter serif fonts. Maybe it arises from the need to stand out graphically on the book shelf and the Amazon pages. Filigree is passe. It feels like books are “shouting” more than ever.

Second: graphics are tending to be simpler, more easily scan-able. Graphics and photos are more stylized or manipulated for greater eye appeal.

Third: Colors are intense and highly saturated. Even when the cover’s mood is noirish or bleak, it is countered with “hotter” type faces. Some examples from Best First:

A sidenote: For All The Other Mothers Hate Me, I like the way the designer carefully positioned each word around the graphic so you focus on the woman’s face and those red shoes.

Here are a few samples from Best Paperback Original:

Note how the colors suggest different moods. I haven’t read any of these but to me the turquoise cover suggests a lighter story tone. Broke Road screams thriller. And The Backwater suggests, to me at least, a quieter, character-driven story. I could be wrong but that is what good cover design is all about — it conveys at a glance the mood, the tone, the themes of your story.

The Best Novel covers, to a one, all adhere to the bold sans-serif look. Here’s a few:

 

Fagin The Thief is interesting in that it is obviously a historical. In recent years, historicals tended to use softer, less in-your-face type, adhering to the idea that archaic looking type faces signaled the book took place in the past. Looks like that’s now “old hat.” Of course, if you’re a mega-bestseller like Robert Crais, well, your name gets star treatment. I like the quiet yet foreboding ambiance of The Inheritance. If you look closely, something is clearly not right between that trio sitting at the window. To my eye, an effective conveyance of mood.

Another on-going trend is the use of bold fonts that mimic free-drawn type faces. This was strong in Young Adult this year:

In the Best Juvenile nominees, however, the covers are staying traditional, with the busy, joyful and decidedly candy-store styles we’ve come to expect:

With one exception:

I have to confess, this is one of my favorites. Such graphic impact. And again, that bold san-serif font. More “young adult” looking than I’ve seen in this category.

In non-fiction categories, trends seem to be more static. Often because the titles are so darn long (many with subtitles) that there’s not much room for graphic flights of fancy. Plus, the subject matter is mood-serious. A few standouts from True Crime, again all sans-serif.

And some examples from Best Critical/Biographical. Again, note the lack of serif, the boldness. And how much title/subtitle type they’ve managed to get on those covers!

BUT…again, there is always an exception. It comes out of the Best Critical/Biographical, where normally, the designers must cram a title, a subtitle, author name and some kind of graphic onto very limited space. This gets my nod for the most striking cover of any nominated book this year:

Such mood, such simplicity. Edgar Allen Poe preached what he called “unity of effect.” Every sentence, every detail has to be used to create a single, intense emotional effect. That’s a good rule for any of you out there who are designing your own covers or hiring someone to do it for you.

I think Poe himself would have liked this one.

 

Reader Friday-WordNerds Unite!

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Good morning, and welcome to all my WordNerdy friends and family!

Quick question to get the fun ball rolling:

Can you add to this list?

(Credit for this meme goes to Chip MacGregor–saw it on his FB page, and almost snorted coffee!)

I did an internet search on “WordNerd”, and boy howdy, did I get some fun stuff to read.

Your turn…and, go!

 

 

True Crime Thursday – Blurry Line Between Fact and Fiction

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by Debbie Burke

Here’s a familiar trope in crime fiction: an author protagonist details a fictional murder that the author is later accused of. The book they wrote is used as evidence to prove their guilt or innocence.

Today’s True Crime story is a real-life case that carries that trope to the extreme.

In 2000, a Polish businessman named Dariusz Janiszewski disappeared. Four weeks later, his body was pulled from the River Oder near Wroklaw in southwest Poland. He had been tortured and tied with a rope noose around his neck that fastened to his ankles, pulling him into a painful backward cradle shape. If he struggled against the bonds, the noose would tighten, strangling him.

According to a scholarly paper (public domain) by Katarzyna Struzińska entitled “The Murderer as Writer, Storyteller and Protagonist: The Case of Krystian Bala”:

“The autopsy revealed that Janiszewski most probably died because of ligature strangulation; however, owing to some indicators showing that he was still alive when someone dropped him into the river, the possibility of death by drowning was not excluded [34]. Furthermore, the traces left on the deceased’s body showed that he had been beaten and starved for several days before he died.”

The gruesome crime shocked the community but there were no leads. The case went cold for several years.

Then in 2003 an author named Krystian Bala self-published a grisly novel entitled Amok that described a murder with specific details similar to Janiszewski’s death. The protagonist was named “Chris”, a variation on “Krystian.” Chris was portrayed as an arrogant narcissistic sadist who pushed beyond the limits of social, religious, moral, and legal boundaries.

A detective named Jacek Wroblewski had been working the unsolved cold case. When he learned about Bala’s book, he pursued that line of investigation, gathered some damning circumstantial evidence, and questioned Bala.

The alleged motive was jealousy for an affair between Janiszewski and Bala’s wife. A polygraph was inconclusive.

Bala reportedly confessed to the murder but then recanted. 

Per Polish law, he was released after 48 hours because of insufficient evidence.

Bala made public accusations against the police, claiming he’d been kidnapped, a plastic bag placed over his head, and tortured during questioning. His claims were disproved but the media had already kicked into high gear. The sensational case went viral with articles in Europe as well as international publications including The Guardian and Time.com.

Without physical proof or eyewitnesses, the detective continued to collect more circumstantial evidence. Phone calls to the victim shortly before the murder were traced back to Bala. He had also done online research about hanging and strangulation. Within days of the murder, Bala had sold Janizewski’s stolen phone through an internet auction site.

Meanwhile Bala vehemently protested his innocence, claiming an “oppressive police and justice system” had “treat[ed] the book as if it was a literal autobiography rather than a piece of fiction.”

In 2008, an in-depth account by David Grann was published in the New Yorker after Bala’s trial. Grann examined Bala’s background, influences, and beliefs. It’s a long article but gives considerable context detailing why many people were convinced of Bala’s guilt.

Grann’s article quotes Bala’s friend and former classmate Lotar Rasinski:

“He would tell these tall stories about himself,” Rasinski says. “If he told one person, and that person then told someone else, who told someone else, it became true. It existed in the language.” Rasinski adds, “Krystian even had a term for it. He called it ‘mytho-creativity.’ ”

Struzińska’s paper observes:

“Bala’s case might be one of the first stories that drew global attention to such a possibility of crossing the border between facts and fiction; nevertheless, this case of a writer-murder is not one-of-a-kind. For instance, in 2018 world media extensively covered the story of Nancy Crampton-Brophy, an American romance novelist, author of the novel The Wrong Husband and the essay How to Murder Your Husband, who was accused of killing her spouse, and in 2017 there was similar coverage of the case of Liu Yongbiao, a Chinese author (e.g., of the novel The Guilty Secret), who was sentenced to death for murdering four people after a 20-year-old cold case was solved [cf. 14, 17, 23, 26].”

During Bala’s 2007 trial, the court decided his book couldn’t be treated as evidence but still found him guilty based on other circumstantial evidence. He was sentenced to 25 years. He appealed and the case was retried, again resulting in conviction. He continued to protest, ultimately presenting his case to the Supreme Court of the Republic of Poland. They decided against him, which ended his legal recourse.

The case inspired Dateline-style true crime shows in Europe. Grann’s New Yorker article was reportedly optioned for film.

Despite the publicity, Struzińska’s paper says Bala admitted his book only sold a few thousand copies. He claimed to be writing a second book while in prison but apparently it has not been published.

Grann’s article quotes Bala as saying:

“I’m truly convinced that one day my book will be appreciated,” he said. “History teaches that some works of art have to wait ages before they are recognized.”

Bala achieved notoriety but the jury’s still out on the author’s “work of art.”

~~~

At TKZ, we often joke about police knocking on our doors based on our internet research.

As a writer, how consciously do you draw the line between fact and fiction?

~~~

 

In The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate, discover fictional and real-world villains to inspire your own stories.

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When You’re Right, You’re Still Wrong

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When You’re Right, You’re Still Wrong,
Terry Odell

top of a bald man's head

I’ve been dealing with writing stuff I know little about recently, and I’ve turned to reliable sources for research. As so often happens, I end up relying on “It’s FICTION” as I write. My philosophy is it has to be plausible for the situation.

This brought to mind something from years and books ago. I had written the following:

Touching base about the accident. I noticed a couple of units pulling away from the scene not long ago. Wondered if you had anything you could share. The Yardumians are concerned about the missing woman. Told them I’d see where things stand.” Okay, so that was a boldfaced lie. But he figured the Yardumians were concerned, and if they’d asked him to, he’d have called.

When my critique partners got their eyes on it, one suggested either barefaced or bald-faced, which he thought were the “right” usages.

I’d thought I’d used a correct term, so I looked it up. I discovered all 3 usages could be considered correct. (You might like to read the article for yourself.) Curious, I posed the question on my Facebook page, and a short time later, I’d had over 1000 views of that post, and over 40 comments. (To put this in perspective, if I get 150 views of a post, and a dozen comments, that’s a lot.) Granted, Facebook isn’t a scientific sample by any means, but I found the results worth thinking about. It wasn’t the number of hits that was of interest to me, or the number of comments—rather, it was that there was no consensus. Boldfaced and Bald-faced were almost tied with 18 and 16 “votes” respectively, while Barefaced had 7 people saying that’s what they were used to hearing.

What does this mean for a writer? Clearly, no matter which term I used, there would be a whole lot of readers who thought I got it “wrong.” And, as my first critique group used to say, “Just because it’s right doesn’t make it good.”

This can happen a lot, given how many regional differences we have in our language. But it’s not only language; sometimes it can be a ‘fact’ that you get right but readers believe the truth lies elsewhere. Getting police investigation and forensics procedures right when your readers believe what they watch on television is reality can make them think you don’t know your subject.

An author friend who wrote historical novels used the term technology in her book, and her editor called her on it. Although she could document the word’s usage in that time period, she decided to change it simply because readers probably wouldn’t take the time to look up the word’s etymology.

When I was writing Finding Sarah, I wanted to thwart her efforts to get away, so I made the only car she had access to one with a manual transmission. People who drove stick shifts years and years ago (myself included) know that you can start the car by “popping the clutch.” I made sure the car was parked facing a tree so Sarah would have to use reverse, which complicated that solution. However, in reality, in modern cars with manual transmissions, you can’t even start the car unless you’ve got the clutch depressed. Sarah didn’t know that, but critique partners who’d driven stick shifts back in the day thought I was “wrong” when the car didn’t start.

What are the solutions? For Sarah, I had Randy explain it to her later. Readers might have thought I was ‘wrong’ at the beginning, but I hope they understood when it was explained. For cop procedures, it’s nice if you can have either another character or some internal monologue to explain that “life doesn’t work like television.”

As for my bold, bald, bare dilemma? Rather than have over half my readers think I’ve got it wrong no matter which word I chose, I did a write around and said ‘blatant lie’ instead.

How do you deal with people thinking you’re wrong when you’re right?

Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Deadly Ambitions
Peace in Mapleton doesn’t last. Police Chief Gordon Hepler is already juggling a bitter ex-mayoral candidate who refuses to accept election results and a new council member determined to cut police department’s funding.
Meanwhile, Angie’s long-delayed diner remodel uncovers an old journal, sparking her curiosity about the girl who wrote it. But as she digs for answers, is she uncovering more than she bargained for?
Now, Gordon must untangle political maneuvering, personal grudges, and hidden agendas before danger closes in on the people he loves most.
Deadly Ambitions delivers small-town intrigue, political tension, and page-turning suspense rooted in both history and today’s ambitions.

Terry Odell is an award-winning author of Mystery and Romantic Suspense, although she prefers to think of them all as “Mysteries with Relationships.”

Pardon My Paranoia – Are Nosy Bots Reading Our Emails?

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by Debbie Burke

 

Recently I had a disturbing email experience.

For some months, circumstances had prevented the five members of my critique group from meeting face to face. So we began exchanging group emails to bring each other up to date.

Since we’re friends as well as writing colleagues, our emails often include personal information about families, friends, dogs, health, etc.

With five people chiming in, a recent email chain became quite long.

Then one member received a pop-up notice at the top of her gmail that gave an “AI Overview” summarizing each person’s contributions to the discussion.

Where the &$%# did that come from??? How did a bot gain access to our emails?

Our conversations included deeply personal medical information about ourselves, family, and friends such as…

Who’s struggling with symptoms that doctors can’t diagnose? Who needs heart or brain surgery? And so on.

Private, personal, confidential conversations among close friends.

Out of nowhere, an AI bot gave us a nice, neat, efficient, accurate summary.

How helpful. But intrusive as hell.

How did this nosy bot access, read, and summarize our discussions?

Had an update from Gmail changed settings to allow AI summaries?

Click the following link for an article from HuffPo that describes what probably happened and reasons why we might not want a nosy little bot to read our emails.

More insights from Proton.me:

“Today, companies like Google are expanding AI access to private communications such as email, framing it as productivity and convenience. But Gemini operates under its own terms, making it harder to distinguish what data is handled by Gmail itself and what is processed by AI systems.”

If you don’t want Gemini AI summaries on Gmail, here’s how to change “smart” settings: help page.

When I checked my settings, I had already turned off “smart” features. Yet the AI summary still showed up. Hmmm. 

That leads me to believe someone else hadn’t disabled their smart features, which opened access to our Gmails.

***TKZ’s tech experts, please feel free share your knowledge in the comments.***

What does that mean for medical and legal professionals who send and receive confidential records? If a recipient doesn’t know to shut off their device’s smart features, can Gemini suck up private information for its own commercial use?

Doesn’t that violate HIPAA rules and attorney-client confidentiality???

I foresee class action lawsuits from victims damaged by confidentiality breaches.

What about writers?

We routinely email manuscripts to agents and editors. We also exchange manuscripts for beta reading, critique, editing, etc. Those manuscripts are copyrighted as soon as the author commits them to tangible form, on paper, digital file, etc. That protects our work, right?

Not necessarily.

You may have heard about the $1.5 billion judgment against Anthropic for using illegally obtained copyrighted books to train Claude, their large language model (LLM) AI program.

The award was a win for authors, right? Uh, only under limited conditions.

To qualify for compensation in the Anthropic settlement, their books had to be registered with the US Copyright Office, not just copyrighted.

Typically, traditional publishers register copyrights but some companies didn’t. Their authors were out of luck.

Also typically, copyrights are registered upon publication, after edits, rewrites, additions, etc.

That leaves many manuscripts in limbo.

What if we email manuscripts to agents or editors? Our work is copyrighted but, while it’s under submission, it’s probably not yet registered. Can these be vacuumed up to train LLMs?

Currently, regulation of AI’s use is virtually nonexistent. Laws haven’t caught up with constantly changing developments. Legislation to control and limit use is likely years away, maybe even decades.

Meanwhile, the ease, convenience, and efficiency of technology has seduced us into giving up privacy and confidentiality.

I turned off annoying Gemini intrusions by changing settings on my own computer, but I can’t control others’ devices. And of course I trust Google as much as that nice Nigerian prince who’s sending me millions. 

Yes, I could switch to a different email server but that would cut off my main contact point as an author.

I don’t know how to deal with this except to be more cautious of what I write in emails.

Back in 2019, I wrote about text messages that I naively thought were private. Then I learned Facebook, Amazon, Google, etc. had accessed my texts to send advertising related to them. Stealth permissions buried deep in the phone’s terms and conditions grant access to third parties. By using the phone, you agree to the conditions, even when they’re next to impossible to find.

Six years later, Gmail is in a similar state where the onus is on the user to go extra miles to opt out of invasions into privacy.

This reminds me of wise advice from an attorney mentioned in the 2019 post: “Don’t put in writing anything you wouldn’t want to be read in open court.”

~~~

TKZers: Have you run into Gemini’s email summaries? What do you do to maintain online privacy? Or does that no longer matter?

~~~

You can’t believe your eyes. Can investigator Tawny Lindholm and attorney Tillman Rosenbaum save an innocent woman’s life after deep fake videos show the world she’s guilty? Find out in Deep Fake Double Down, winner of BookLife’s best mystery contest.

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The History of Books

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“My best friend is a person who will give me a book I have not read.” —Abraham Lincoln

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Thursday, April 23, 2026 is World Book Day. According to Wikipedia,

World Book Day, also known as World Book and Copyright Day or International Day of the Book, is an annual event organized by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) to promote reading, publishing, and copyright. The first World Book Day was celebrated on 23 April in 1995, and continues to be recognized on that day.

Clearly, all authors should be celebrating World Book Day, but I have to admit I never heard of this special day until my husband and I were invited to give a presentation on the subject. As a result of that invitation, I did a little research and found it to be such a fascinating story, I figured TKZ folks would be interested.

Much of the information below outlining the major milestones in the history of books came from tckpublishing.com.

* * *

Mesopotamia, 3500 BC – Clay Tablets

The Mesopotamians used wet clay and wrote on it with a reed stylus. The tablets were then dried or baked to preserve the writing. Much of the content recorded inventories, sales information, contracts and legal agreements.

Egypt, 3000 BC – Papyrus

The Egyptians used marrow from the papyrus reed to produce sheets which were glued together to create scrolls. Some of the scrolls were very long—one measured more than 40 meters!

 

Greece, 500 BC – Goat skins

A shortage of papyrus gave the Greeks incentive to go in another direction, and they used sheep and goat skins to make parchment. It was a good solution, but not as good as leather.

 

China, 100 BC – Paper!

The Chinese are credited with inventing paper made from rolls of bamboo that were bound together.

 

Rome, 100 BC – Codex

Romans made a giant leap forward with the invention of the codex, a way to bind pages together to form what we would recognize as a book.

 

It took 3500 years to get to books in the format we’re used to seeing, but printing books in mass was still to come.

Movable type – 1000 – 1400

The Koreans invented the first metal movable type in 1200 AD and produced the first book with that type in 1377AD.

 

 

Gutenberg’s printing press – 1439 

Gutenberg’s brilliant invention provided for the mass production of books. The first mass-produced book was the Gutenberg Bible, printed in 1455.

 

Pocketbooks – 1500

Aldus Manutius is credited with inventing this precursor to the modern paperback.

 

Printing comes to America – 1640

The Puritans brought over a printing press and printed The Bay Psalm, the first book printed in the new world. It contains the Book of Psalms from the Bible. A few copies of the original printing are still in existence.

 

Project Gutenberg – 1970s

Michael S. Hart founded Project Gutenberg in 1971 as a way to digitize and preserve important books. As of March 2026, this volunteer effort has made over 75,000 free works available to the public.

 

Amazon Kindle – 2007

Amazon’s Kindle was introduced in 2007 to light a fire in the reading public. Over 80,000 titles were available for purchase on the first release. There are currently over 44 million book titles on Amazon.

 

According to medium.com, around 2.2 million books are published each year, and there are around 155 million books (unique titles) in the world today!

* * *

So TKZers: What are your thoughts on the history of books? What’s your favorite book? How many books have you published? Do you write in one genre or several?

* * *

THE WATCH MYSTERIES

Half-sisters Kathryn and Cece never meant to become sleuths, but trouble has a way of finding them. With Kathryn’s problem-solving skills and Cece’s theatrical talent, these reluctant detectives prove the search for truth is worth the effort.

Three complete novels on sale this week for 99¢ on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books, Kobo, and Google Play.

Reader Friday-Let’s Talk Billets…

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Okay, Killzoners, let’s be up front with each other…and have some fun while we’re at it.

 

Be it paper delivery, fast food shenanigans, kiddo-sitting, or shoveling out your neighbor’s chicken coop . . . what was your first paying billet (or J.O.B.)?

I like to think of my first job as the First Draft of My Life.

 

Remember these?

 

I was the advanced age of fourteen when I was hired in my mother’s office. I worked after school three days a week, filing real estate cards—way before the digital age—and answering the black dial phone. Not exciting, but I could start buying my own clothes!

 

We won’t talk about the other job I had . . . intermittently dog-sitting for our neighbor’s twin St. Bernards . . . actually, I don’t know to this day who was sitting who. (Whom?)

Two of them!

 

Your turn—what was your first experience with a paycheck (and, dare I say, taxes?)

And, second question: How has that first paying job influenced your writing–such as plot, character development, etc.?