Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 103

Bicycles and Creativity

One of the first things I did after I got to Oakland was bicycle over to the Pedalfest with my friend Jim. (That’s Jim trying out the double-decker bicycle, which was difficult to get on, but easy to ride, according to him.)

Pedalfest is a yearly event put on by the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, an organization devoted to making — and keeping — Oakland and the rest of the East Bay bike-able.

In many ways, it was your typical urban festival — two music stages, food stands, various vendors hawking...

Best of the Blog: Designing Ebook Covers

Editor’s note: Here at Book View Cafe, we’re always talking about what works best for ebook covers. Dave Smeds has spent a lot of time considering this issue. This post from last March covers the important points.

As soon as people start talking about ebook cover design, someone is bound to say, “First rule: The cover needs to be legible at thumbnail size.”

Therein lies the trap.

It is a fact that most potential customers for any particular ebook will first encounter the cover image as a thumbna...

WWW Wednesday 8-14-2013

It’s WWW Wednesday and Deborah J. Ross is here to entertain you with her recent literary discoveries. (This meme is from shouldbereading.)

• What did you recently finish reading?

Sherwood Smith’s delightful Regency Danse de la Folie..It’s engaging and fun in a way that doesn’t ask you to leave your intellect or your knowledge of Jane Austen’s work at the door. Various characters have various romantic and other adventures before the couples sort themselves out. (Complete side-thought: our new Ge...

Making Word(s) Count #5: Reactions and Scale or “I’m Hit!” she said lightly.

Maya Bohnhoff (and Clancy)

Among the many manuscripts I’ve critiqued or edited, I occasionally encounter writers who have a problem with scale.

I do not mean that their prose contains too many minerals and leaves a residue on the page (well, okay, maybe that’s part of the problem). I mean when it comes to the cycles of action / reaction in the story, the proportions are wrong. That is to say, the emotional reactions of the characters to events and reveals are out-of-keeping proportionally. This...

Sparkle

Among all the wrist-to-the-brow disparagements of romance there seems to be a special sneer for what’s sometimes called ‘chick lit’–the sprightly, often funny, light-hearted romantic story that is about relationships (romantic, familial, fraternal), rather than blood, guts, and the fate of nations, or heavy philosophical musings.

The reasons for this seem obvious to me–besides the cultural baggage that dictates anything by or about women is automatically lesser than stuff by men about men, the...

Writing Craft: “Middle Book” Reflections

I’m in the process of proofreading Shannivar, the second volume of a fantasy trilogy (The Seven-Petaled Shield). As is typical, I swing between elation at what I’ve accomplished (“This is brilliant!” “I nailed it!”) and wishing I could take the whole thing apart and put it back together right. I’m also reflecting on the challenges and joys of “middle books.”

Middle books present particular challenges that reflect whether they are truly the second of three parts or whether they are “the continu...

Contemporary Dilemma

Normally, I write historical romance, which requires extensive research into costume, social policies, where Wellington and Napoleon were at the date of my story, and whether Drury Theater had just burned down again or not. This can be an incredible amount of work, but once it’s done, it’s done. Napoleon does not unexpectedly move from that place in history and reappear ten years later as a senator instead of a king.

Then I started writing contemporary romance and mysteries. Stupidly, I though...

Author Interview: Madeleine Robins

Madeleine Robins

Interviewed by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Writer Madeleine Robins was once a certified Renaissance woman. Truly. The Society of American Fight Directors said that she “Knows Her Stuff” in broadsword, rapier, rapier and dagger, short-sword, quarterstaff, and hand-to-hand combat. She also can create period costumes when time and whim seize her, has worked as both singer and sword-wrangler at the NY Renaissance Festival, and realized one day that she should be creating stories, not...

Story Inspiration Sunday

There are lots of things that inspire me to write, like fashion and weird photography and poetry and food and things.

For the month of August, I’ve been doing a challenge. Basically, it’s writing 3000 words per day, every day, for the first 20 days of the month, so I’ll finish a 60,000 word novel in August.

Sounds crazy, right?

But I’ve done it so far. In the first ten days of August, I’ve written 30,000 words.

What’s my inspiration? How do I sit down at my writing computer, day after day, an...

The Darcy Chronicles 6: A Week of Milestones and a Family Reunion

Mr. Darcy spent his twelfth week of life demonstrating increasing maturity and assurance, which is both good news and bad news. First the good news.

His bladder is both more capacious and under better control; the frequency of accidents has decreased markedly, and they are all now training failures on the part of the two-legs, who sometimes forget that getting up from nap is followed by urination. He knows that the house, including the front porch, are part of his den, and is making a real eff...