Kristen Arnett, 43, is the New York Times best-selling author of “Mostly Dead Things” and “With Teeth.” Her next novel, “Stop Me If You’ve Heard This One,” is due to publish in March. She lives in Orlando, Fla. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

I usually try and think about the fact that everybody already has a lot of stuff. I want to give them a present, not a chore. I keep a note on my phone that’s just gifts for people. During the year, if someone close to me mentioned something that they really like or really want, I put a note in right then.

I feel like I’m brand ambassador for Florida a lot of the time, so I’m like, “Let me give you something cool that also reminds you that you like it here and you want to come visit me.” There’s a bar I go to all the time called The Courtesy — it’s like our Cheers, and they make a milk punch around the holidays that you can buy as a gift. I know people will drink it; it won’t just sit in their houses.

I’m a writer, but I’m also a librarian, and I want to give people books. Taste is subjective, though, so I might give bookstore merch. The Lynx in Gainesville, which [the author] Lauren Groff runs, has amazing coffee mugs and shirts and visors and they also have gift cards, so you can give those to people and they don’t even have to live in Gainesville to use it.

I also do free hand embroidery sometimes as a surprise gift. I made an embroidery of the Cheez-It logo for my friend who’s obsessed with Cheez-Its, and a manatee for my friend Caroline. She was like, “What the hell is this?” But she was really happy. People are always nice about it. And if they didn’t like it, they’ve never said so.

I won’t tell people I’m doing it. It’s just, they’ve mentioned something six months earlier and then: Wham! Here’s a Cheez-it embroidery for you at Christmas.

I’d been thinking about this mug I really wanted from the television show “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” that says Kiss the Librarian on it. I’d always wanted that mug, and I never bought it for myself.

My birthday and Christmas are really close together, and one day I went over to my best friend’s house and they were like, “I got you this gift.” It was that mug. And I hadn’t told anybody that I wanted it, so it literally felt like they were reading my mind.

It fell on the ground like two years ago, and I painstakingly glued the pieces back together. So now all my pens live inside of this mug, and I’ll never get rid of it. I love it so much.

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