This post is part of Long and Short Reviews’ Winter Blogfest. Leave a comment for a chance to win a pdf copy of three of my award-winning short mystery/crime stories: a woman trying to escape her violent husband, a hurricane that masks a nursing home murder, and sheriff’s deputy’s trap for animal abusers.
My Best Christmas Present
If you’re a writer, your desk is probably loaded with coffee mugs and collections of pens, pencils, notepads and paperclips, while grammar guides, marketing manifestos and the like spill from your bookshelf. That’s certainly how my “work area” looks.
Bucking the tendency to default to such perennial gifts, my grandchildren surprised me a few years ago with what may be my favorite Christmas present, well, ever. I write crime and mystery fiction (two novels, the second, She Knew Too Much, coming early in 2026), and have some 45 published short stories in that genre. In 2019, when my grandkids were 11, 10, and 8, they made a video version of my story “The West Texas Rookie,” published that year in Mystery Weekly Magazine.
This was the first of four published stories about young, tiny, and fearless Japanese American reporter Brianna Yamato making her mark in the macho newsroom of the Sweetwater, Texas, Register. Assigned to write a wrap-up story about a four-victim homicide that even the police believe needs no further investigation, Brianna proves there’s always more to find out.
The kids took this story, turned it into a play, created props and (minimal) costumes, and acted it out, making strategic adaptations. At one point in the story, Brianna climbs into her car and a kid bikes up to the driver’s window to deliver a key piece of neighborhood gossip. In their version, my younger grandson rolls up on his skateboard—easier to keep in frame that way. Locations around the house were adapted to serve as newsroom, Brianna’s apartment, and the crime scene. They enlisted their mom to play the nosy neighbor. My older grandson served as principal videographer, using his mom’s cell phone, and my granddaughter (the middle child) played the intrepid Brianna. Somehow, they even created a main title and closing credits.
In their hands, the story was funny and entertaining, it still worked, and it was one of the best gifts I’ve ever received!
In She Knew Too Much, American travel writer Genie Clarke is in Rome on assignment and overhears planning for a major crime. When the gangsters realize what’s happened, they go on the attack. What she’s learned is just the first hint of a deadly criminal conspiracy that must be stopped.
More than 45 of Victoria Weisfeld’s short stories have appeared in leading mystery magazines and anthologies, including Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen MM, Black Cat MM, Sherlock Holmes MM, Alfred Hitchcock MM, and Soul Scream, with awards from the Short Mystery Fiction Society and Public Safety Writers Association. Her first mystery-thriller, Architect of Courage, was published June 2022.
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