Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 104

Beguiled Again and Again [Until I Got It Right]

The first time I wrote Jeff and Cecilia’s story, she had three boys. Jeff was a lawyer. Jeff spent the entire book chasing her, trying to woo her. The book almost sold but didn’t, for which I am forever grateful.

No. Really.

That was the first book I ever started and actually finished, and for all of its charm (and it did have charm) it had problems, as well. I’ll never forget the telephone call from the editor. The Call. Everyone had told me, a letter is a rejection. A phone call is YES! [This...

Stranger in a Strange Kitchen, 04: “Cheese, Gromit!”

Macaroni cheese (“macaroni and cheese”, in these climes; or just mac-and-cheese) was one of the great dishes of my childhood. I’m hardly unique in that, on either side of the Atlantic. Nevertheless: my mother’s version is not my version, and US iterations are different again, in more than name. So. Let’s talk about pasta and fermented cow-juice.



My mother’s macaroni cheese was simple and focused: boiled macaroni in a cheese sauce made with a flour roux, milk and grated cheddar. Once mixed, it...

My Own Computer Room

by Lois H. Gresh

I graduated from high school a year early, and hammering away at microbiology/genetics at night college, got a full-time job as a “library technician” at the National Institute of Health. For two years, I wrote biweekly medical newsletters, which I then formatted for publication using something called Keyword-in-Context (KWIC) programming on an IBM 360 mainframe.

(photo left – at 17 with my first computer terminal at the National Institute of Health)

To review the newsletters, I...

Finding Jenn’s Voice: The Statistic

“The number one cause of death among pregnant women is homicide.”

It’s a startling statistic, incredible and motivating. It motivated my friend Tracy Schott to make a documentary on the subject. Tracy is unique in my town: Reading, PA. She’s a working producer of TV shows and films. She does a lot of industrial work: commercials and instructional videos, and some reality TV. Once in a while she gets to do an artistic project like my Princess Dancer video.

About a year and a half ago, Tracy told...

The “Fake Geek Girl” Nonsense

I misunderstood what was going on when I first heard about the so-called “fake geek girl” claims. I thought it was male high tech nerds accusing women attending tech conferences and SF cons of faking their knowledge of cyber matters. Of course, I also thought it was nonsense propelled by the fear of some men in the tech world that women were getting girl cooties on their reality.

But after reading Seanan McGuire’s piece on assholes checking geek cred at ComicCon, I realized that whole thing wa...

Best of the Blog: Why Can’t Men Wear Dresses?

Nancy Jane Moore spends a lot of time thinking about gender issues. This piece was published on the blog in 2012 and still draws reads. Nancy wrote on more issues related to the limits on male attire earlier this year.

After my father’s hip surgery back in June, a member of the staff at the place where he lives asked me to get him some elastic-waist shorts and pants so he could get dressed more easily and with less pain.

“What he really needs,” I said, “is a dress, a nice loose shift that can...

F is for Finish

Welcome back to The Author’s Alphabet. You can read earlier posts here. Each week, I’ll be posting another letter of the alphabet, selecting a word that starts with that letter, and sharing my view of what that word means to me, as an author. Then, the fun begins — you get to comment, question, poke, prod, and otherwise get involved with the discussion.

F is for Finish.

There’s been a lot of talk in the blogosphere the past couple of days about what it means to be a professional writer. (Boring...

WWW Wednesday 8-7-2013

It’s WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

• What did you recently finish reading?

A couple of weeks ago I did a reading with Nalo Hopkinson and Deborah J. Ross. It went really well–full house, much good discussion. And I scored copies of Deborah’s The Seven Petaled Shield and Nalo’s Sister Mine. They’re very different–Shield is a thoughtful fantasy in the epic mode, and the first in a trilogy. Disclaimer: I’m generally not a reader of epic fantasy–I think it’s the intractable urban...

The joy of new hats

I love hats. I have about six I wear in round robin. I have another fifteen or so that have been favorites and wore out, or are lovable but impracticable…you know. Like shoes. Only your feet don’t hurt.

Yesterday I had friends over and one of them, Kim Hirschman of Uncertainty Studios, flat-out gave me one of her hand-made felt hats. Here it is.

The hat represents a sea scallop. By rights it should be blue-eyed, but she allowed for a recessive gene. The hat is worn here with a scarf that Vonda...

Tomorrow Belongs to Them

My daughter spent three weeks in Georgetown this summer, at a Junior Statesmen of America-sponsored AP Government course. She had… I believe the technical term is: a blast. Extraordinary speakers from the right and the left (Ed Meese! They dug up Ed Meese of Iran-Contra days; and Mark Takano, the former-teacher California Congressman who marked up a colleague’s paper; and, and, and…). They toured the Pentagon and met high-ups at the IRS and wrote papers and took tests and learned learned lear...