Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 100

My First Computer: Osborne I

My First Computer

by Vonda N. McIntyre

I’ve already written a bit about the Osborne I, a tan-case machine with a four-digit serial number, my first personal computer, without which I would never have been able to finish The Entropy Effect by its very tight deadline. It was a “luggable” machine, about the size and weight of a portable sewing machine. I did lug it around sometimes when I travelled, and it got lugged to downtown Seattle by one of my housemates, who was in charge of directory assis...

I’m an Anti-Socialist

It’s not that I’m a wealthy capitalist, no. I’m not indifferent to the plight of the working poor, homeless, sheltered, or otherwise left behind. I don’t have a trust fund or hidden wealth in the Caymans. I’m not talking about that kind of socialism. I’m talking about social mediaism. I hate it. What was so wrong with email that we had to invent Facebook?

I have a couple of friends I can only contact through Facebook. I could email them from now until Doomsday and it’ll be like shouting into o...

Best of the Blog: For God’s Sake, Put on Some Clothes

Editor’s Note: Most writers tend to get cranky about inaccuracies in television. Madeleine Robins is no exception. This post originally appeared in 2011.

I am fond of procedural crime dramas, lawyer dramas, medical dramas, and I am pleased to note that women are well represented in the roles of FBI agents, detectives, CSIs, lawyers, reporters, doctors, mad scientists, etc. I am less pleased because so many of these characters don’t seem to have a clue how to dress.

I’m not talking dressing bad...

This Is Self Defense

If you haven’t already heard it, go listen to Antoinette Tuff dealing with the man who came into her elementary school armed to the teeth.

The first thing that strikes me in listening to this conversation is how calm her voice is. Certainly she must have been frightened, but it never shows in her voice or her actions.

The other thing you can hear in this conversation is that she’s dealing with the shooter with compassion, one human being to another. I suspect she had an instinctive feeling that...

WWW Wednesday 8-28-2013

This summer has been a bumper crop of good reads.

Below the cut, what I’ve read recently, what I’m reading. The what-will-I-read pile is always changing, and recommendations are welcome.

Finished:

Sorcerer’s Luck, by Katharine Kerr.

One of the things I appreciated most when I put this book down was how Kerr had so skillfully taken the popular elements of the current wave of urban fantasies, and given them all a hard twist into weird. Or wyrd.

Two guys and one gal, vamps, shapeshifters, powers, Ice...

Geek Redux: The Feel of Geek

I love mice.

They’re nimble and sleek. They come in a myriad designs, sizes and colors, with or without tails, three buttons or two or one, with scroll wheels and balls and gleaming laser-optics. And they do one thing that makes them absolutely irresistible to me: they point and CLICK.

Ever since my very first computer—a 28 Compaq “luggable,” I have geeked out over tactile feedback. First, it was keyboards. Because I was a PC-user (all because of a little word processor called PC-Write—more on...

Baker’s Dozen by Leah Cutter

Travel to cold Seattle and the see the world from the viewpoint of a private investigator who just happens to be a ghost, then go down to the creole fairy courts of Louisiana, learn the secrets of 9s and how the raven warriors take care of their own.

Here are 13 tales of fantasy and wonder, sweet and savory, to fill you up just right.

Download a free sample copy!

BVC Announces Spear of Heaven by Judith Tarr

Book View Cafe releases the first electronic edition of Judith Tarr’s Spear of Heaven.

Volume II of Avaryan Resplendent

Sequel to Arrows of the Sun

Worldgates are a great magic and a great convenience: opening the way from one world to the next, and from one side of a world to the other. Now the mages of the Gates are exploring a new continent and forging new alliances, led by the Master of the Mageguild and the heir to the throne of Sun and Lion. Suddenly, the Gates begin to fall—and the Master...

The Writing Life: Interruptions

When I first started writing, way back in fourth grade, I worked on one story at a time. It never occurred to me that it was possible to have multiple writing projects in different stages. As I got older, the pile of stories begun and then abandoned grew, too. I noticed how rare it was for me to return to a story once I’d run out of steam. I either wrote it all the way through or it ended up on the Pile of Doom. Through high school and college (summers), I completed more of what I began. My g...

Author Interview: Brenda W. Clough

Brenda W. Clough

Interviewed by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Writer Brenda W. Clough has stitched together an exotic quilt of a career and a life. She’s written classic fantasy, fantasy humor, fantasy for children, science fiction, steampunk, and even contemporary mystery. Her most recent novels are Speak to Our Desires, an unusual murder mystery that takes place in 1969 New York City, and Revise the World, a science fiction tale of time travel, FTL drives, and resurrected Antarctic explorers.

Clou...