Burning Your Zozobra
While one half of our nation rejoices this week and the other half wonders what went wrong, here comes Thanksgiving, Christmas and 
Hanukah, when we’re all thrown together at friends’ parties and family reunions. Finding common ground where we can stand together may be difficult as we tiptoe around each other’s feelings after the election.
Four years ago, it also felt like our national unity had frayed, both physically (the pandemic) and culturally (we vs. them). Back then, I wrote a guest post for Jungle Red Writers about a new word I’d learned from an article in The Conversation. This week, our local newspaper reprinted the original essay.
The word is zozobra.
In Spanish, it means “anguish, anxiety, or gloom,” which many of us suffered from in those fear-ridden times.
I’ve recently heard that in Santa Fe, New Mexico there’s an annual Summer Festival in which they burn an ugly zozobra in effigy as an attempt to chase the gloom away.
And yet, barring a truly effective alternative to lighten our national funk, what better time is there than Thanksgiving to remind us of what’s truly meaningful in life? For me, that includes friends and family (regardless of political differences), the health that still sustains us, and a sense of purpose that keeps us engaged in the world.
Yes, bad things happen every day, and sometimes they happen to us.
But what if we try to minimize the complaining and instead, focus on the positive things we can do to make life better for ourselves and others.
It helps to practice gratitude for the small things that bring us joy.
I am grateful for family and friends, and for being accepted into a writing community where colleagues honor and respect one another, where we share our ups and downs in the wacky world of publishing. To my Stiletto sisters, and to Sisters in Crime and beyond, I would be bereft without your continued friendship and support.
And to our readers! Thank you for reading!
We’re all in this together, come what may. Tomorrow is World Kindness Day. Maybe we could start with that.
Or, if you’re not quite ready to let go of your anxiety, you could plan your very own Zozobra Festival and exorcise the beast.
What are you grateful for today?
Please tell us in the comment section below.
Gay Yellen is the author of the award-winning Samantha Newman Mysteries, including The Body Business, The Body Next Door, and The Body in the News!
Now available from your favorite bookseller. Readers and book clubs, please contact me at GayYellen.com.
What do trolls have to do with writing suspects and antagonists in mysteries?
I first learned of Thomas Dambo’s work when I saw a news story about him and his art installations made of recycled materials. He’s considered the world’s leading recycling artist with his work appearing throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. His more than 125 larger-than-life trolls were created to share his environmental message throughout the world in outdoor installations that use trash to create art within nature.
Six of Dambo’s trolls took up residence within the gardens, trees, and wooded areas of the Cheekwood Estate & Gardens in Nashville during this past spring and summer. I was lucky enough to have the chance to visit with them. They’ve since moved on to spend time at the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center in Virginia Beach, VA through Jan 20, 2025. If you have a chance to visit with them, tell them I said hi.
Also, the best villains or antagonists are multi-layered. If they weren’t, they’d be caricatures rather than characters, and no author should be writing Snidely Whiplash-type cardboard villains. That’s why it’s so important to spend as much time developing the goals, motivations, and conflicts of our suspects in our mysteries as we do our protagonists.
By Lois Winston
I don’t know how I didn’t know about this series of books, but I’m so happy I stumbled upon them. Mrs. Polifax is a New Jersey widow who walks into the CIA one day and offers her services as a spy. Surprisingly, they take her up on it! And that’s the start of a very entertaining book featuring an extremely endearing character. The author wrote fourteen books in the Mrs. Polifax series before her death at the age of eighty-eight in 2012. I’ve already started the second one.
If a book doesn’t draw me in by the third chapter, I won’t waste any more time on it. There are too many books to read and not enough leisure hours in my day. Even so, there are books I finish but soon forget. Then there’s The Dutch House. I first picked this book up because it takes place in a town where I went to college and later lived for several decades. But I kept reading because the author is so adept at crafting both characters and plot.
I bought this book several years ago but just got around to reading it this summer. At 880 pages, it’s quite intimidating and requires a huge commitment of time. Because I don’t care for horror stories, I’d never read anything by King other than his book on writing. However, I’m old enough to remember the day Kennedy was shot, and the concept about a man who goes back in time to prevent the assassination fascinated me. I flew through it, unable to put the book down until my eyelids grew heavy each night.
Disclaimer: the author is a dear friend, and I was lucky enough to read this book prior to publication. Daisy Harriman, one of the main characters in the book, was a real person. When she requested a room for the night at the Waldorf Hotel, she was turned away because she wasn’t accompanied by her husband. Appalled by her treatment, she set out to change history, creating The Colony Club, the first woman’s club of its kind in not only New York but the world. The novel also incorporates other historical people of the Gilded Age, including Stanford White, who designed the building, and actress-turned-interior designer Elsie de Wolfe, who decorated the Colony Club’s rooms. The author is a meticulous historian who creates a richly accurate depiction of the times, especially in the treated of women, making the book extremely au courant for today’s readers.
This time, I was expected to say something. My mind still reeling over actually winning, I stepped up to the mic and thanked whoever it was who’d determined that 
My own high school reunion happened just this past weekend, which made me wonder what the children returning to class will be learning, and what they’ll need to figure out on their own after they graduate.
Come to think of it, that long-ago betrayal may have fed my subconscious as I created E.B. Odom, the villain in 
Breaking News! I’m thrilled to announce that A Crafty Collage of Crime, the 12th book in my Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mysteries, is a Killer Nashville Silver Falchion finalist for best Comedy.
USA Today and Amazon bestselling and award-winning author Lois Winston writes mystery, romance, romantic suspense, chick lit, women’s fiction, children’s chapter books, and nonfiction. Kirkus Reviews dubbed her critically acclaimed Anastasia Pollack Crafting Mystery series, “North Jersey’s more mature answer to Stephanie Plum.” In addition, Lois is a former literary agent and an award-winning craft and needlework designer who often draws much of her source material for both her characters and plots from her experiences in the crafts industry. Learn more about Lois and her books at her website where can also sign up for her newsletter and find links to her other social media: 
As he does every year, last weekend my husband took a sealed jar of sand from the shelf and set it out on a table to commemorate those long-gone soldiers and their unimaginable courage. It’s the sand we had gathered from the beach in Normandy. It still looks as it did in 1999.
But the publisher who loved it marketed 
Which brings me to Book 3,