Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 107

Story Inspiration Sunday

This post is going to deal with places and things that make me write.

To start with, here’a picture of my writing nook:

This is upstairs, in my bedroom. I have a stand for my laptop, as well as a separate keyboard, so I’m not always hunched over when I’m working there.

My writing nook is a quiet place, with the perfect lamp overhead, and a small table for holding my coffee or chocolate.

I love writing in this space. It’s tucked away from everything, quiet and serene.

Here’s the view from my writin...

The Darcy Chronicles 4: Halfway There

Putting puppy energy to good use

This is Mr. Darcy’s 10th week of life; he’s halfway through the most critical period in a dog’s life.

Puppies, like all young predators, are wired for almost frantic, try-everything exploration of their world. (Prey animals have a similar period, but their curiosity is, I think, modulated by greater caution.) Everyone knows the puppy mantra: What’s this? What’s this? What’s this? Gotta pee…all day long, punctuated by meals and naps. “What’s this,” for a dog, mea...

My First Computer-Leading Edge

My First Computer

by Patricia Rice

In the 1980s, rural America was not a guiding light of technology. I distinctly remember a university club meeting where the speaker told us about the wonders of household computers. When quizzed on what on earth we would do with one, the speaker told us it would be marvelous for filing recipes.

At the time, I was a CPA and a budding novelist. I’d been writing my books on an old Underwood using white-out and carbon paper. After I sold my first novel, I graduate...

Obsolete Skills

The other day, I was teaching a teenager who has just gotten her driver’s license how to drive a manual transmission. I’ve never taught anyone to drive before, so I found it quite challenging to break the necessary skills down into a series of steps a newbie could follow.

“Put in the clutch, start the car, put the car in gear, release the parking brake, give it a little gas and let out the clutch at the same time.”

“Where’s the clutch?” she asked.

Oops. My instructions weren’t basic enough.

I lea...

Best of the Blog: Is Special Relativity Wrong?

Editor’s Note: Sue Lange likes to play around on the fringes of science in her science fiction. This post on possible flaws in special relativity drew a lot of conversation, some of it from people who are determined to find Einstein wrong.

The Natural Philosophy Alliance (NPA) doesn’t like 20th Century science, specifically relativity (special and general), quantum physics, the big bang and other cosmological disciplines. The members of the NPA feel that modern physics is “in dire need of a th...

D is for Delay

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.

D is for delay. Alas, due to circumstances beyond my control (nothing disastrous, just time-consuming…), I won’t be able to post a complete Au...

All Creatures Real and Otherwise: Some of the Kittens of Mystery at Home

Among Chris Dolley’s many Book View Cafe books is International Kittens of Mystery — a tale of the kittens who save the world each day and still make it home in time for dinner. Here they are preparing for their next amazing adventure.

Everyone knows it’s important to practice one’s fighting skills.

Stalking also needs practice.

As does lurking.

One must bathe regularly, though I think the Kitten of Mystery on the right is doing it the preferred way.

And as every secret agent knows, the most impor...

WWW Wednesday

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

The usual questions being:

What have you read, what are you reading, what will you read?

I’ve been so busy with a house full of guests, and my brains are so broiled from the heat, that I have not been finishing a great many books. Lots of ongoing reading that I am involved enough with to forget the heat and the constant kitchen duty. (Which I often do with a book at hand.)

I began reading Katharine Kerr’s Sorcerer’s Luck late one super hot night,...

Maturity I: Getting the Yang of It

Young things of any species are born pretty much wild. Full set of instincts and natural impulses, evolved to maximize survival. In mammals: suckle reflex, and imprinting on nurturing unit. Just about everything else develops with age and education.

With horses, the development is both fast and slow. Fast in that the foal is up and ready to run within an hour or two; by twelve hours old he’s pretty mobile, and has, if healthy, received his passive immunities through his mother’s colostrum, lea...

Rotten Row: the origin story

I know I’ve told this story before; I may have told it here, or hereabouts. If so, bear with me. Or just scroll on. I am at that time of life; I am in my anecdotage.

So a few years back, I was staying with m’friend Juliet McKenna in Oxon, and there was a one-day SF con in London; and furthermore m’other friend Liz Williams was signing in an SF bookshop on t’other side of the Smoke. So two birds, one stone: I hopped on a train and spent the morning at the con, and then at lunchtime set off to w...