Welcome to 2025

Posted on by

Welcome to 2025
Terry Odell

fireworks above the numerals 2025

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Hello, and Happy New Year TKZers. I have the honor of being the first to post in 2025. I hope you’ve recovered from any celebratory events at your place.

What did I do during the annual TKZ hiatus?

Unlike Mr. Gilstrap, the holidays aren’t a big thing in our household.

I continued my weekly yoga practices. Had a hair salon appointment. Took the dog to the vet for her checkup. Had a massage. All of these are ordinary, everyday type events. Hanukkah began at sundown on December 25th, so while most of you were probably having a Christmas turkey, ham, or whatever, we gathered and had latkes, courtesy of our son. Host has the pleasure of having their house smell like grease for days afterward.

white plate with 5 potato latkes

I brought the requested rugelach, which was a little easier this year because one of my daughters was in town and helped with the assembly.

glass platter of rugelach cookies

**Those of you who are subscribed to my free Substack, “Writings and Wanderings” received the recipes for both of those dishes in my holiday post.

Tonight, we’ll light the last candles.

And I worked. Since my last post of 2024, I added about 25,000 words to the current manuscript.

stack of printed manuscript pages

I also checked with my editor, and I’m on her schedule for February 1st, which means I’ll be busy in January, finishing the draft and then getting it whipped into a shape I’m comfortable sending her.

As I write this, I still have no title or cover image selected, but I’m planning to pick an image from our trip to Copenhagen and the Faroe Islands last August.

Speaking of images, I put together a gallery of my favorite shots of 2024.
**My Substack subscribers have already received that link, too.

The Hubster and I welcomed the New Year in our own traditional fashion. An early dinner (late lunch) out, and then a bottle of bubbly at home for a quiet evening. I can’t remember the last time we managed to stay awake until midnight, and since fireworks are outlawed in our community—in fact, in the entire county with the exception of organized displays—it is a quiet night. If we were so inclined, we could go up the street a hundred yards or so and watch the annual Pikes Peak display, assuming there’s no cloud cover, and it’s not snowing. Or too cold for us. And we managed to be awake. So far, we’ve been here 14 years and have never seen the display. Not even the 9 PM test. Every year a group of climbers ascend the peak to set off fireworks. For them, it’s a two-day ordeal starting the night before when they climb to Barr Camp and spend the night. They climb to the summit the next day, and set off a fireworks display at midnight.

If you want the history and more details, you can find them here.

Note: When we lived in Orlando, we could stand in our driveway and watch the fireworks from the theme parks. It was never cold.

Okay, that’s the holiday summation. What’s next?

A thought has been niggling through my brain as I think about the year ahead. “May you live in interesting times.” I was curious about the origin and meaning of this statement, and I paid a visit to the Google Machine. I found this article at Wikipedia, and I’m blatantly copying and pasting it here. I’ve redacted the footnotes. If you want all the references, you can find the article in its entirety here.

“May you live in interesting times” is an English expression that is claimed to be a translation of a traditional Chinese curse. The expression is ironic: “interesting” times are usually times of trouble.

Despite being so common in English as to be known as the “Chinese curse”, the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced. The most likely connection to Chinese culture may be deduced from analysis of the late-19th-century speeches of Joseph Chamberlain, probably erroneously transmitted and revised through his son Austen Chamberlain.

Origins

Despite the phrase being widely attributed as a Chinese curse, there is no known equivalent expression in Chinese. The nearest related Chinese expression translates as “Better to be a dog in times of tranquility than a human in times of chaos.” The expression originates from Volume 3 of the 1627 short story collection by Feng Menglong, Stories to Awaken the World.

Evidence that the phrase was in use as early as 1936 is provided in a memoir written by Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, the British Ambassador to China in 1936 and 1937, and published in 1949. He mentions that before he left England for China in 1936, a friend told him of a Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”

Frederic René Coudert Jr. also recounted having first heard the phrase in 1936:

Some years ago, in 1936, I had to write to a very dear and honoured friend of mine, who has since died, Sir Austen Chamberlain, brother of the present Prime Minister, and I concluded my letter with a rather banal remark “that we were living in an interesting age”. Evidently he read the whole letter, because by return mail he wrote to me and concluded as follows: “Many years ago I learned from one of our diplomats in China that one of the principal Chinese curses heaped upon an enemy is, ‘May you live in an interesting age.'” “Surely”, he said, “no age has been more fraught with insecurity than our own present time.” That was three years ago.[7]

The phrase is again described as a “Chinese curse” in an article published in Child Study: A Journal of Parent Education in 1943.

“Chamberlain curse” theory

Research by philologist Garson O’Toole shows a probable origin in the mind of Austen Chamberlain’s father Joseph Chamberlain dating around the late-19th and early-20th centuries. Specifically, O’Toole cites the following statement Joseph made during a speech in 1898:

I think that you will all agree that we are living in most interesting times. (Hear, hear.) I never remember myself a time in which our history was so full, in which day by day brought us new objects of interest, and, let me say also, new objects for anxiety. (Hear, hear.)

Over time, the Chamberlain family may have come to believe that the elder Chamberlain had not used his own phrase, but had repeated a phrase from Chinese.

That’s it from me. Any thoughts, traditions, events you’d like to share. The floor is yours.

New! Find me at Substack with Writings and Wanderings

Double Intrigue
When your dream assignment turns into more than you bargained for
Cover of Double Intrigue, an International Romantic Suspense by Terry Odell Shalah Kennedy has dreams of becoming a senior travel advisor—one who actually gets to travel. Her big break comes when the agency’s “Golden Girl” is hospitalized and Shalah is sent on a Danube River cruise in her place. She’s the only advisor in the agency with a knowledge of photography, and she’s determined to get stunning images for the agency’s website.
Aleksy Jakes wants out. He’s been working for an unscrupulous taskmaster in Prague, and he’s had enough. When he spots one of his coworkers in a Prague hotel restaurant, he’s shocked to discover she’s not who he thought she was.
As Shalah and Aleksy cruise along the Danube, the simple excursion soon becomes an adventure neither of them imagined.

Like bang for your buck? I have a new Mapleton Bundle. Books 4, 5, and 6 for one low price.

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

Auld Lang Syne and Taking Stock

Posted on by

by Debbie Burke

@burke_writer

 

Happy New Year, TKZ friends!

Tonight, all over the world, millions of people will sing “Auld Lang Syne.”

So what the heck does “Auld Lang Syne” mean?

The literal translation from Scottish is “old long since.” In 1788, Robert Burns wrote down a Scottish folk poem that he claimed came “from an old man’s singing.” The poem wasn’t published until after Bobby’s death in 1796.

The melody was from a 1782 opera but had different lyrics.

In 1799, the tune was combined with the Burns poem to celebrate Scottish Hogmanay (New Year’s celebration):

“Hogmanay celebrants traditionally sing the song while they stand in a circle holding hands.” (source: Britannica.com)

The last verses from Bobby’s original poem read as if a cat scampered across a keyboard:

“We twa hae paidl’d i’ the burn,
Frae mornin’ sun till dine;”

“we’ll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.”

Here’s the English version of the later verses:

We two have run about the slopes,
And picked the daisies fine;
But we’ve wandered many a weary foot,
Since auld lang syne.

We two have paddled in the stream,
From morning sun till dine;
But seas between us broad have roared
Since auld lang syne.

And there’s a hand my trusty friend!
And give me a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll take a right good-will draught,
For auld lang syne.

The last day of 2024 seems like a good time to take stock of writing progress during the past year.

My 2024 goal list was seven items. I can check off four as completed or making substantial progress. Those are:

  1. Publish the ninth novel in the Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. Fruit of the Poisonous Tree launched October 1, 2024. Checked off.
  2. Start an editing business. For years, writer friends urged me to go pro with editing services. Last January, I hung out a shingle. Through word-of-mouth recommendations, I earned more in the first two weeks of editing than I did the entire previous year in book sales. Check that off as a big success.
  3. Do more teaching and personal appearances. I talked with book clubs, taught workshops, participated on panels, and sold books at festivals. These are fun activities because I love to meet readers and writers. Check this off as a success with plans to continue in 2025.
  4. Work on my nonfiction craft book The Villain’s Journey. This is a long-term project. In 2024, I made substantial progress with research, writing, obtaining permission to quote sources, and refining the structure. This project rolls over into 2025 with a goal to finish and publish The Villain’s Journey by summer 2025.

What items on my list were fails?

  1. Do more marketing, advertising, and promotion. For years, this goal remains my perennial failure. Will I do better next year? We’ll see.
  2. Create box sets of my Tawny Lindholm Thriller series. I didn’t get around to this project and will roll it over into 2025.
  3. Start a Substack. Another project I didn’t get around to. Rolled over into 2025.

Goals are important for writers because we’re often working toward a nebulous, uncertain future where progress is hard to quantify.

Unless you have a set deadline, it’s easy to fall back on Someday. Someday I’ll finish my novel, or learn Scrivener, or run Amazon/Facebook ads, or [fill in the blank].

At the start of each year, members of my critique group submit a list of goals we want to accomplish. At the end of the year, we review the lists to see how we did. We’re usually pleasantly surprised by how many items we checked off.

When you write down specific goals AND show them to others, that’s a small but effective step to make you more accountable for your progress.

TKZers, want to try an experiment? Write down your 2025 goals and share them in the comment section. Next year at this time, we’ll review the comments and see how we did.

While Rod Stewart sings “Auld Lang Syne,” I’m raising a toast to The Kill Zone community.

Wishing you a happy and creative 2025!

~~~

Start the New Year with new reading at a bargain price. 

Tawny Lindholm Thrillers – select titles are 50% off !!! Today is the last day of the sale. 

Sales link

Finishing Strong with Aspects of the Novel

Posted on by

“Everything ends; you just have to figure out a way to push to the finish line.” —Jesse Itzler

* * *

Welcome back, TKZers! Isn’t it wonderful to be back in the Zone after the two-week break?

Now that we’re approaching the finish line for 2024, it’s time to look back at lessons learned in the past year. In addition to the great content posted here, TKZ contributors lent their voices to other platforms. One of those was The Craft of Writing Blog on my website at kaydibianca.com.

The theme of this year’s blog was Aspects of the Novel, and each month I interviewed an accomplished author on a different facet of novel writing. Five of those authors are TKZ contributors whose thoughts were so instructive, I wanted to share an excerpt from each interview in this post.

So enjoy finishing the year strong by walking with our wise friends through various Aspects of the Novel. To see the entire interview for any of the choices below, click on the link.

* * *

VOICE (James Scott Bell)

How does an author go about developing his/her own voice?

It’s really a matter of learning ways to let the voice run free. Let it come out naturally as you, the author, are concentrating on the emotion and action and internal lives of the characters. There are various exercises I give in my book on voice, such as the page-long sentence. When I come to a place of high emotion in a scene, I like to start a fresh document and write a single, run-on sentence of at least 200 words. It is free-form, wild text in the character’s voice, not thinking about grammar or structure. It’s just pouring out the emotion as fast and intensely as possible.

What happens inevitably, like panning for gold, is you get a few glistening nuggets. It may even be only one sentence, but that sentence will be choice.

There are other methods, but the great point is that doing this begins to develop a strong “voice muscle” in your writer’s brain, and you get better and better at it the more you exercise it.

 

ANTAGONISTS (Debbie Burke)

How does a good writer approach creating the antagonist character? Are there exercises a writer can use to develop their villain-creating talents?

A technique I like to use is James Scott Bell’s voice journal. Let the antagonist write out their thoughts, feelings, and beliefs. What are their deepest, most secret desires? Give them the opportunity to express their frustration, anger, and hatred. Putting their emotions into words helps the author get inside their skin and understand why they feel their behavior is justified.

Interview the villain/antagonist. Ask questions. What is their background? How did their parents treat them? Were they bullied or abused? What early losses or failures scarred them?

Another Jim Bell tip: have villains argue their case before the jury that will decide their fate. What compelling arguments can they offer to save themselves from the death penalty?

 

DEEP POINT OF VIEW (Terry Odell)

Now, on to Deep POV:

Deep POV can be thought of as writing a first person book in third person. You are deep inside the POV character’s head, providing the reader with not only the character’s five senses, but also their thoughts and feelings. Because you’re deep into their heads, your readers should feel closer to the characters than if you have an outside narrator, as is the case in shallower third person POV. A test. You should be able to replace he, she, or the character’s name with “I.”

When writing in Deep POV, it’s also important to be true to the character. What would they notice? Two characters walk into a room. (No, that’s not the start of a joke.) One’s a cop; the other is an interior designer. They’ll focus on very different things.

 

ANTI-HEROES (Sue Coletta)

How do you define an anti-hero?

An anti-hero is the protagonist of the story, who straddles the law. Good people doing bad things for the right reason. Nothing is black and white. Anti-heroes thrive in shades in gray.

 

DESCRIPTION (P.J. Parrish)

How would you define descriptive writing?

Wow. That’s a toughie. Well, let’s start with a distinction. There’s explanation and then there’s description. Explanation is you, the writer, just dealing with the prosaic stuff of moving characters around in time and space. Explanation example: The man walked into the room. Simple choregraphy. Gets the job done but pushes no emotional buttons.

But description? That’s where the magic happens. When you work your descriptive powers, you engage the reader’s senses and imagination, maybe tugging on their memories and experiences. The man didn’t just walk into the room.  Rewrite:

The old man stopped just inside the door of the café. He was in his eighties, that much was clear. But as he stood there, erect and with a small smile tipping his lips, heads turned to him. It wasn’t just the panama hat or the seersucker suit. Because the hat was yellowed and his sleeves were frayed. No, we were staring at him because the air around him seemed to vibrate with an aliveness. He caught my eye and started toward me, and my throat closed. It was like looking at my father, the one I had seen only in photographs.

See the difference? The main purpose of descriptive writing is to show the reader a person, place or thing in such a way that a picture is formed in their mind. It means paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses. Explanation vs description. When you explain something, you try to make it clearer and easier to understand. But when you describe, you’re tugging on their emotions.

 

* * *

As we come to the end of the year, I want to wish you all a Happy, Healthy, and Successful New Year!

* * *

So TKZers: How are you finishing strong in 2024? Any lessons learned you can share? What are you looking forward to in 2025?

 

“A delicious murder mystery” —Readers’ Favorite Reviews

Available at  Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google Play, or Apple Books.

See You Soon!

Posted on by

by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

Today commences our annual two-week hiatus here at TKZ. This blog has been hale and hearty since 2009, which is a testimony to the quality of our writers and commenters over the years. 

Blogging began back in 1994 when Justin Hall, a student at Swarthmore College, started publishing personal content on his website. He called it “Justin’s Links from the Underground.” This was his “log” on the web. A web log.

The term “weblog” came from Jorn Barger, a bearded James Joyce fan. Later, tech billionaire Evan Williams coined “blog” as both noun and verb, and “blogger” to designate one who blogs. As co-founder of Pyra Labs, he helped design the site Blogger which went public in 1999. (Williams would go on to co-found a micro-blogging site called Twitter.)

In 2004, “blog” was Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year.

Blogs took off in the 2000s, with professional and monetized blogs like TechCrunch, Gawker, and Huffington Post becoming major players in media, offering insights into technology, gossip, and news.

Writers started blogging, too. One of the most influential blogs was Joe Kontrath’s A Newbies Guide to Publishing, which gave practical advice to writers trying to break into traditional publishing. At the end of 2010, however, his blog morphed over into leading the charge for indies. 

On August 7, 2008, a date that will live in fame, a group blog for writers called Kill Zone made its debut. Of its original cast, only our great founder and admin, Kathry Lilley, and a fellow named Gilstrap remain. I looked up John’s first post and saw this:

I faced a storytelling crisis last weekend. Staring down the throat of an August 15 deadline for Grave Secrets (coming in June, ’09), I needed an ending. 

So the first Jonathan Grave thriller was coming. It came (with a title change to No Mercy).

I mean, I already had an ending from the initial drafts, but I needed an ending. A kick-ass final sequence that would leave the reader exhausted and satisfied. The one I already had took care of the satisfaction part, but it didn’t have the roller coaster feel that I wanted.

So I shot one of the characters.

What a great tip. It’s another side of Raymond Chandler’s advice: Bring in a guy with a gun.

And that’s what we’ve always been about here. Tips and techniques and advice and encouragement for our fellow writers. God willing and the crick don’t rise, we’re going to keep on trucking (Okay, Boomer) in 2025.

While you, dear writing friends, keep on writing.

Merry Christmas and Carpe Typem. See you soon!

Social Media Words of Wisdom

Posted on by

Sue’s post this past Monday on the upcoming changes to Meta got me to thinking about social media.

For all the changes in the landscape since MySpace, social media continues and authors are still expected to be on at least one platform. I started with Facebook in 2009, and then added Twitter when I bought my first smart phone in September 2010. I tried Instagram but it didn’t work for me. Does anyone remember Google +? I was active there in the early 2010s. A few years later it closed down.

Now I’m on Bluesky, and in fact, my first TKZ post in 2025 will be an introduction to that platform.

Social media let me connect with other writers, make new friends, helped me be a guest blogger at a few sites and led to my first podcast appearance in 2017, and yes, helped me a sell books, though personally as an author that’s not it’s main value, rather, connection is, both with other authors and readers.

With this in mind, today we have a pair of insightful excerpts from the TKZ archives for your consideration by Laura Benedict and Sue Coletta on dos and don’ts of authors using social media. The full posts are each linked at the bottom of their respective excerpts and well worth reading in their entirety.

While many people in the writing/publishing business strongly believe that social mediadoesn’t sell books, some folks disagree. I’ve put up a lot of links here, but if you want to save a few clicks, here’s the gist: Social media is there to build relationships. The aspect of building relationships is key, no matter on what industry you work within. Take a look at examples of Digital Transformation to see why this is important and how you can use it to your advantage.

People with whom you have relationships will like you. If they like you AND you spend at least 80% of your time giving them great “content” they will tolerate the 20% of time you spend promoting your work. But the conversion rate will be less than 2%, which means you’re selling yourself and your time very, very cheaply. But folks truly dislike a hard sell. Many of the people who say you can sell books through social media want you to pay them to tell you how to do it, and they won’t give you quantifiable forecasts.

(Traditionally published books still sell best through tried and true methods like word-of-mouth, tv, radio, magazine, and web ads, vertical marketing to influencers like librarians and booksellers, hand-selling, and peer reviews. But almost none of those methods is free, and it’s only rational that publishers would prefer free methods that rely on author execution to methods that cost money.)

What is content? Content is added value, often in the form of information: lists, quizzes, articles, expertise, audio or video entertainment, memes, blogs, observations. Given the 80/20 rule, if you do fifty posts in a week, the theory is that at least forty of them should be content and not mention your work at all. Ideally, the content should be at least tangentially related to your field of expertise or the lifestyles of your audience. But even if you automate those posts with Buffer or HootSuite or some other social media-scheduling program, it takes time to curate that content.

A brief cautionary tale: A self-published writer I know spends a lot of time posting on Instagram, but I’d say 80-90% of the writer’s posts are specifically about the book. They’re quotes formatted as memes, or pictures of the cover, or bits of dialogue taken out of context and framed with artistic graphics. The posts are careful and attractive, but I gloss over them, and even find myself a little angry at having to scroll past them every time I log onto Instagram. If the 80/20-percentage figure is at all valid, it’s completely upside down. And the writer uses a blue million hashtags, but only ever gets 10 or 11 likes. I can only imagine how much time the writer spends creating those posts (or perhaps the writer pays for them). Plus, even though it almost looks like content, it’s not, and is off-putting.

There are two big dangers for me when it comes to content. I spend a lot of time crafting my blog posts. This one (I’m adding this bit in editing) has taken me about 3.5 hours, and I’ll spend at least another 45 minutes editing and posting it. On my own daily blog, it’s a challenge to come up with fresh concepts. Then there’s finding the right photos, adding links, and pumping up the SEO. Unfortunately there’s no way to quantify the ROI on publishing blog posts. Another particular danger for me is rabbit holes. Ideally, I like to spend about thirty minutes online in the morning checking out news stories and resources for my own amusement and edification—but I often spend an hour or more. Usually, I’ll manage to bookmark only one or two links to pass on to social media. But which ones to choose?

I read a lot of crime news stories—many are too sensitive or explicit to share without grossing people out over their morning coffee. But I also read some politics (no, never post about that), bits of history and archeology, and stories about textiles or architecture. I’ll occasionally post about writing and books. Nearly everyone likes books. But I don’t think of my personal blog audience as being full of writers. I’m not selling books on writing, and few people who aren’t writers care about writing motivation, or how to build a character. So I save the writer-centric stuff for here or my own blogs about the writing life.

Laura Benedict—June 28, 2017

Whether we like it or not, social media is here to stay, and writers are expected to have an online presence. To help you navigate these turbulent waters, I’ve compiled the top 10 mistakes I’ve seen writers make over the years.

#1: Don’t talk at your audience. Chat with them. 

Social media is about making connections, engaging in conversation. It is not a soapbox, nor are you the most important person in the room. People will have opinions that don’t align with yours. And that’s okay. Talk it out. Get to know them.

#2: Don’t try to be something you’re not.

I see this all the time. If you’re not passionate about a subject, don’t try to fake it because it’s trendy. This isn’t high school. Share something that excites you, and your passion will shine through. Folks want to know the real you, not some made up version.

Which brings me to…

#3: Chill out, dude.

You cannot hop on social media for five or ten minutes and expect to see instant results.

Building a community takes time. If you rush it, your “buy my book” activities will reek of desperation.

#4: Don’t copy a famous author’s social media style. 

What works for a thriller or noir writer might not translate well to cozy, HEA romance, or sci-fi fans. If you write in a similar genre, you can emulate that author, but add your own special flair.

#5: Don’t spout orders. 

We’re told to have a clear call to action in social media marketing, that’s true, but less is more. Don’t ask for multiple favors at once.

Buy the book.

Rate the book.

Review the book.

Repost the review on Goodreads, BookBub, Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple, etc. etc. etc.

Tell all your friends to buy the book.

Choose one. Once you build trust, move on from there. 

Otherwise, it feels a lot like this:

Read everything I’ve ever written. Don’t think about time. I’m more important.

When you’re done with that, rate and review all my books, but don’t say anything negative. I will only accept four or five stars. Don’t forget to repost the review everywhere books are sold. And I mean everywhere.

Oh, btw, I need a few things at the grocery story. Grab a pen and write this down. You’ve got time, right? ’Course you do. After all, I’m the almighty author.

Clean my house.

Walk my dog.

Feed my wildlife.

Check in on my elderly parent.

Can you cook? Great. I’m far too busy writing my next masterpiece to waste time in the kitchen.

Come to me when you’re done, and I’ll give you the next task. You’re welcome.

#5: Don’t take before you give.

We’ve talked about the 80/20 rule before. I think 90/10 works better, but you’re safe with 80/20. For those who don’t know, it means 80% of what you share should be about life, pets, passion (not writing), or goofing around, 20% book news. Sounds easy enough, right? Yet some authors can’t seem to wrap their head around it. Every post is a version of “Buy my book!”

To the writers who struggle with the 80/20 rule, let me rephrase in simpler terms. I know you’re excited—we all do—but you are not the first person to write a novel, nor will you be the last. What if an Avon lady knocked at your door day after day after day to buy her products, would you be more or less likely to whip out your credit card? Don’t act like the Avon lady.

Sue Coletta—April 18, 2022

***

  1. Do you find social media useful as a writer or as an author? If so, how?
  2. What are your own dos and don’ts about using social media, especially as a writer or author?
  3. Do you have an advice on connecting with other writers and readers on social media?
  4. Do you have a favorite social media platform?

***

This is my last TKZ post of 2024. Wishing everyone Happy Holidays and all the best in 2025.

Reader Friday-Let’s Go To The Movies

Posted on by

Hey TKZ gang! Let’s talk movie lines. We all have our favorites and I thought it’d be fun to share a few. Doesn’t have to be well-known, or spoken by a famous actor. Just one that grabbed your attention.

I have several favorites, like: We’re gonna need a bigger boat (Roy Scheider in Jaws); or, I have a very particular set of skills (Liam Neeson in Taken). And, …the future is coming and you’re not in it…” (Hammer to Mav, played by Ed Harris and Tom Cruise in Top Gun, Maverick).

But I have a new favorite, just realized the other evening when we were watching one of Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible flicks. It slipped by me so quickly, I had to back up the movie to hear it again. Those movies (and we have all of them!) are more known for great action than stellar acting (sorry, Tom), but one of the bad guys had a moment. I can’t explain why the line resonated with me–maybe because it made me think about the world we live in.

Solomon Lane, played by Sean Harris

 

Here it is, spoken by bad guy Solomon Lane, played by actor Sean Harris: “Human nature, my weapon of choice . . .”

Dwell on that for a moment.

 

 

Okay, over to you, TKZers! What’s your favorite movie line?

Our TKZ holiday break is approaching, so I’ll see you again on the other side of 2024! Hope you all have a great and peaceful holiday season…

 

The Write Stuff: Holiday gifts for writers and readers

Posted on by

by Elaine Viets

Stumped what to give your favorite writer or reader for the holidays? Here are a few suggestions, gathered from the four corners of the internet.

Sherlock’s Study Candle. What better way to write your historical novel – or read the adventures of the Master, than with a Sherlock’s Study Candle, scented with cherrywood, tobacco and rain. Fortunately, this soy candle does not have those less romantic scents of horse sweat and the Thames at low tide. Etsy. $9+ etsy.me/4ioTSxP

Book Nook Reading Valet. Park your book on the wooden triangle and  hide your cell phone under it. There’s room for your specs and a wineglass or mug. $50 Uncommon Originals. bit.ly/3ZOV32m

Always Check Behind the Shower Curtain. Hang this in your guest bath and I guarantee they won’t use all the hot water. For mystery writers and true crime lovers. $58. Etsy, etsy.me/3Dc98xM

The James Bond Vesper Martini Cocktail Shaker. For your favorite Bondophile, this stainless steel shaker has Bond’s Vesper Martini recipe from Casino Royale on one side:  “A measure of Gordons, 1 of vodka, half a measure of Kina Lillet, shake it over ice. Then add a thin slice of lemon peel.” The 007 logo is on the other side. It’s $39 at the 007 Store. The store has other Bond-themed gifts including Turnbull & Asser silk ties and pocket squares. https://bit.ly/3ZzonbP

Books! Book lovers never have enough books. Give one of your latest mysteries. Or if the person has them all, give them an author you admire. Better yet, give them a gift card to a bookstore.

 

Blind date with a book. Here’s a Goodreads-Rated Blind Date with a Book Gift Set. The set has a book in your favorite genre, and ways to enjoy this good read, including popcorn, a magnifier, a bookmark, tea, cocoa. Etsy. $13.49+ bit.ly/41pn0ik

Subscription box  for a blind date with a book. Give a three-, six- or twelve-month subscription. Each book bundle arrives at once, stuffed with books, bookmarks, stickers and drinks – coffee, tea, or hot chocolate. Just choose the genre. Etsy. Subscriptions start at $49. bit.ly/3ZLErIy

Whimsical cat with glasses handmade wrist rest. Purrfect for any cat lover. $28.95  bit.ly/3OQreYJ

Happy holidays, TKZers. I’ll see you next year.

Holiday Deadlines

Posted on by

By John Gilstrap

It will come as no surprise to anyone who has known me for more than a minute or two that I am a social creature. I am a Type-A extrovert all the way–ENTP for you Myers-Briggs afficionados. There’s nothing I enjoy more than a good party. Which is why, beyond the glorious religious reasons, the Christmas season is the highlight of my year. We love to host parties. In fact, when we designed our stone cabin in the woods, we included extra wide hallways specifically for the purpose of accommodating large-scale parties.

This past weekend, on December 7, was the annual big one for local folks, about 70 people in all. It’s our Christmas present to each other, so the whole thing is catered, complete with open bar and valet parking. (The valet parking is necessary because it gets REALLY dark out here, and parking is in a field.) Thanks to my involvement with the local radio station, we’ve gotten to know far more local people in the two and a half years we’ve been West Virginians than we met in our lifetimes outside Washington, from down-the-street neighbors to politicians to judges and prosecutors. Kurt and Annie Muse (subjects and co-author of Six Minutes to Freedom) were able to join us as well.

On December 14th, there’ll be another party for 16 people, for which I’ll do the cooking, though I’m not yet sure what we’ll have. Soft plans are forming for a y’all come open house event on December 22 for the broad spectrum of friends from today and yesteryear–firehouse buds, high school and college friends and old neighbors. If it happens (I guess we really need to decide), that get-together will be the very definition of informal–think pizza, sides and maybe burgers if the weather is nice enough.

Then, on December 27, we’ll host the daylight version of the extended family party that used to be a Christmas evening party before we moved to West Virginia. (Did I mention it gets dark out here at night? Apparently, Washingtonians’ retinal rods and cones don’t function without the assistance of street lights.) Cooking assignments for this party were established decades ago. Barbie brings the apple pie (actually she’s not allowed to cross the threshold without it), Nan brings her cheesy grits, Jim brings cranberry relish, Donna brings sugar cookies (another prerequisite for entry), and I bring the old school green bean casserole that everyone makes fun of but somehow manages to choke down without leaving leftovers.

With all the entertaining, this is my season for extravagant decoration. I’ve been told that my Holiday decorating aesthetic is best described as “hotel lobby.” He who said that was not being entirely complimentary, but he may have had a point. For this one annual slice of time, more is more, right? For one-twelfth of every year, we turn what I think is a fairly staid, conservatively outfitted home into our wonderland. I have regular late-summer nightmares about having missed the holiday decorating season. I hope we do it without tipping into tacky, but if there’s ever a season when you get get away with crossing that line, I think this is it.

Because of a very sad story that happened when I was young, and then was reinforced through many years in the fire service, we don’t put up any real Christmas trees. I don’t even allow any real greens near a fireplace or a candle (it was a VERY sad story when I was young). So, we do artificial trees, the technology for which has seen amazing advances year over year. Remember “more is more?” I confess I have a self control problem, however, when it comes to Christmas trees. We have six of them this year. I already know where I want to put the 7th next year.

Of the six trees, though, only one is the true Christmas tree for the house, and it’s the one in what we call the family room. This is the one that is, quite frankly, the most boring to look at, but it’s the one that I’ll sneak down at night to look at to bring peace to my soul. Here, you’ll find the God-awful (priceless) toilet paper dowel wrapped in crepe paper made by our son in kindergarten in 1989. You’ll find the ornaments bought on every family vacation, and Bernard and Bianca from “The Rescuers Down Under” (1990), who must always be holding hands. Even a few nicotine-stained Shiny-Brite glass ornaments from my youth remain intact. One stocking over the mantle reads “Johnny” and it was handmade by my Mom-Mom when I was an infant. When our son Chris was born in 1986, I transferred the two silver dollars my Uncle Henny gave to me when I was 5 or 6 years old from the toe of my stocking to the toe of his.

The book tree in the library is the newest addition to the collection. It is by far the most self-indulgent (and self-congratulatory) of the decorations, and I won’t even pretend that there was an effort at subtlety. Much of the detail was lost in the formatting to blogger, but in addition to a few regular ornaments, the branches of the tree are decorated with open and closed editions of my various books. The dangling yellow bits are bookmarks I had made for Zero Sum. We used a standard hole punch near the top to make room for a standard ornament hanger. Finally, instead of a tree skirt, we scattered more books around the base of the tree stand. At last, a practical use for all those author’s copies that have been gathering dust in the basement!

One of the great pleasures of designing your home from scratch is that you get to design it to your own lifestyle. This is Joy’s and my fifth house since we’ve been married, and each previous iteration came burdened with a space called a “living room” which went entirely unlived in. So, for our dream home, upon entering the foyer a glance to the right reveals the “tavern.” (Hey, I’m Irish. Gimme a break.)

Next to the back porch during 8 months of the year, the tavern is probably the room we use more than any other, and not just for the bar–though for that, too.

Of course, a tavern Christmas tree must have special ornaments. When I went to the liquor store and told the clerk why I was buying a couple dozen airline-size bottles of a variety of boozes, she really got into it. Wrap some ribbons around the necks and voila! You’ve got a tree bauble, to which we added more than a few used wine corks. For the record, that tiny bottle you see is the only bit of Jägermeister to be found in our house. I am confident that anyone who has ever been among the last to leave a bar will agree that in the history of time, nothing good has ever happened after the Jägermeister came out.

If you’ve read this far, it is entirely reasonable to ask what does any of this have to do with writing? Well, I’ll tell you: This being December 10th, I owe a short story to an anthology by December 15th, and I’ve been having trouble carving out the time to get it done. It seems like deadlines are a constant in my life, and somehow, I always meet them. But Christmas comes but once a year.

Killzone family, this is my last post before we hit our end-of year hiatus, so let me take this opportunity to wish you the very best for this holiday season and the coming year. May every challenge be surmountable! See you on the flip in ’25!

#WritingCommunity: Updated Terms to Meta Platforms in 2025

Posted on by

Have you read Meta’s new terms of service (TOS)? Even if you don’t have an account on Facebook, Instagram, Threads, Messenger, or WhatsApp, you may still be bound by its disgraceful overreach.

Many of us—me included—forfeited our right to privacy when we joined social media. What’s the alternative? If authors want to sell books, they need to have an online presence. So, when social media giants like Meta update their TOS, we barely give them a glance.

This time, it’s a mistake to accept or click the box away without reading what rights you’re granting. By using any of Meta’s sites and/or products after Jan. 1, 2025, you will be bound by its new TOS.

Thank God for the writing community’s sharp eyes and willingness to share information. A couple of weeks ago, writer friends warned me of Meta’s update to their terms of service in our “super-secret” author group on Slack.

What is Slack?

If you’re not familiar, Slack is a fantastic app for collaboration—blogmates, writing teams, authors in the same story world or collection, etc.—away from the prying eyes of social media giants. When you post within your designated group, no one but the members have access to your shared information or discussions. Many companies and corporations use Slack to stay in touch with their employees. Using Slack as an author group also saves your email inbox from replies that don’t apply to you. Highly recommend.

Meta’s Overreach

One of the authors in my group brought up the update to Meta’s terms of service. As if Zuckerberg hadn’t collected enough information on us, these new terms violate any right to privacy we had left. And not just while using a Meta platform. Now, we are always bound by their ridiculous terms, on or off Meta, because we have an account on Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, or Threads.

Even if you’re not active on social media, you are still bound if you use one of Meta’s products, such as Messenger or Marketplace.

Private or Direct Messages (PMs or DMs) Are Not Private

No online messages are private. You know that, right? Be careful of what you discuss. Big Brother monitors and stores your conversations.

Meta’s new TOS reaches beyond other social media PMs. When you click “accept” to its updated terms, you will grant Meta the right to read your private messages (nothing new) and use, share, copy, or sell, in whole or in part, in any way it wants, including but not limited to, training and developing its AI models.

Content

Any and all content you post to one of its platforms or products will include an automatic license for Meta to use, distribute, share, copy, sell, in whole or in part, in any way it wants, including but not limited to, AI content that may directly compete with you. Doesn’t matter if the content is your intellectual property. By using Meta after Jan. 1, 2025, you will automatically grant them free rein once you upload.

Want to share selfies with your new puppy or a family photo with friends and family? All your photos and videos, including your voice(!) and language, Meta will have the right to copy, share, sell, distribute, or use, in whole or in part, including but not limited to, training its AI models.

AI Features

Meta categorizes AI as a separate license—perhaps to make it more palatable—but is it? Not really. The moment you use any AI feature, like to search Facebook for a friend’s profile—the only search feature available now—you will automatically grant the same license, with no way to opt out. Sure, Meta says you can ask that your content not be used to develop or train AI, but it retains the right to deny your request. The only surefire way to opt out is to delete your content and/or account.

What if You Delete Your Meta Account?

Might not matter. Even if you don’t have an active Facebook, Instagram, Threads, or WhatsApp account, you could still be consenting to Meta’s new TOS if a friend or family member sends you a funny meme or Reel. Once you click that link to view Meta content, these new terms apply to you, effective Jan. 1, 2025.

Other Concerns

Meta admits to using AI but stops short of specifying how it plans to use our content to develop future AI models. This lack of transparency leaves creators vulnerable to their work being exploited.

Do not assume the omission works in your favor. The absence of clear disclosures about AI practices sets a dangerous precedent for big tech. You may think sharing selfies or photos of your children, significant other, or your home isn’t a big deal, but it is. The new AI license allows Meta to exploit you and your family.

Though you retain ownership over your content, Meta’s broad license to “use” it creates a gray area. What prevents Meta from repurposing your photo or video in marketing campaigns? Absolutely nothing.

By continuing to use a Meta platform, you agree to future terms. On Jan. 1, 2025, you will hand Meta a blank check to rewrite the rules at any time without the need to notify you for consent.

The more data Meta collects, the stronger its stranglehold on users. Nothing prevents Meta from selling your information to data brokers that will learn almost everything about you from your content, language, behavior, and so-called private messages. They in turn, sell your data to advertising markets. Or worse, use it to train AI without compensation or your consent.

I wouldn’t dare post a novel excerpt in 2025. I used to create video excerpts of all my books, which worked great as a marketing strategy. Now, finding all that old content on Meta will be a near-impossible feat. Even though I posted the video excerpts prior to Jan. 1, 2025, the new terms will supersede the old.

What’s a writer to do? Suggestions welcome! 

Did you read Meta’s new TOS? Will you continue to use Facebook, Instagram, or Threads in 2025? Does anyone use WhatsApp? Can’t imagine it’d be helpful for authors. Please correct me if I’m wrong.

When you’ve worked for years to gain a following on one or more of Meta’s platforms, it is not an easy decision to delete your account. What alternatives do we have? Blogging, Substack, or Medium, I suppose.

Anyone use BlueSky?

I’ve heard mixed things about it. Most say, it’s comparable to X-Twitter, not Facebook. BlueSky claims “it offers a more decentralized, user-controlled experience with fewer ads and a cleaner interface, making it ideal for those who prioritize privacy and community.” However, it still lags behind X-Twitter in terms of features and user base.

The mere thought of building another audience from scratch exhausts me. How ’bout you?