Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 11

The Mathematics of Writing

History—and nonfiction of various types—offers a wonderful smorgasbord of events and interrelationships for writers to base stories on. Most writers—myself included—have mined nonfiction for fictional ideas. My collectedhistory books havemany pages with the words“Story here!” scrawled at the top, often with multiple exclamation points, highlighting and arrows pointing to the text that made the hair rise up on my neck and my ovaries twitch.

It’s easy to get ideas from nonfiction—books, magazi...

My morning reading

Eachmorning, I spend some quiet time in devotion and study. My current study material is a 2005 missive from the Universal House of Justice(guiding institution for the global Bahá’í community) entitledOne Common Faith.It is an exploration of the role of religion in the world, both past and future, and deals with a variety of related issues. For example, the role that ourdifficulty in distinguishing between eternal spiritual principles and evolving social conventions plays in dividing our worl...

Another Hero Goes into the West and Does Not Diminish

Oliver Sacks

I was shocked and saddened to hear that one of my greatest heroes is dying.

I have experienced Oliver Sacks as a beingof great wisdom and compassion. His workhas been a blessing and an illumination to me as both as a writer and a human being, and has gifted me with many deep insights into the human spirit that have informed my own craft.

Dr. Sackshas written extensively about conditions that impact the way affected individuals experience the world—migraine, sleeping sickness, manic-...

Off to Boskone…

Jeff and I are among the Guests of Honor at Boskone this weekend where we will be performing, filking, paneling and at which I will give the first ever reading from my soon-to-be-released novel, Devil’s Daughter.This collaboration between Hope Schenk-de Michele, Paul Marquez and myself is the first book in the Lucinda’s Pawnshopseries from Bird Street Books.

This is an urban fantasy filled with layer upon layer of dark secrets, plots and counter-plots, world-shattering stakes and the endgame t...

Guns and the Religion of Competitive Materialism

Thanks to my friend Mark Heinz for catalyzing this post. I started out to reply to something he said on Facebook, only to realize that exploring the subject made for a post that was just too darn long for a Facebook comment thread. So, here it is on my Pretending to Look the Other Way blog site filed under Mashed Potatoes. And if you don’t get that reference, watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind.



Mark replied to a post I made of the recent study from the American Public Health Association...

Healthcare Myth #5: Other systems are too “foreign” to work here

In other words: America is unique and, some would argue, superior.

Well, duh.Everycountry is unique. And every country probably has some area in which it is (depending on your values) superior to other countries. Alas, in the area of taking care of our own, we are not doing all that well; which is why I like TR Reid’s idea of taking a serious and deep look at what other developed nations are doing for healthcare with the idea that we can do it just as well, if not better.

Let’s look at the four...

Healthcare Myths #3 & 4: Bloated Bureaucracies & Cruel Necessities

This first of two related myths, as summed up by TRReid in The Healing of America, has it that the universal healthcare systems of other wealthy countries are run by bloated bureaucracies.

This is simply not true.

Every other system Reid cited islesswasteful than ours. This is true whether they are public or private systems. Our for-profit setup hasthe highest administrative costs in the world.

This is a major reason we spend more on healthcare and get less in return. Up until Obamacare, our ins...

The Spirit Gate is Available from Amazon!

My fantasy novel, THE SPIRIT GATE (new from Book View Cafe) is now available in Kindle format from Amazon.

Just sayin’

Healthcare Myth #2: Healthcare is rationed “out there.”

Here’s the big scary idea: Care in countries with universal health coverage is rationed with waiting lists and limited choice.

Yes, this is a real problem in some countries … including the US. I’ve had to wait for appointments simply because I couldn’t afford the out of pocket expenses or the copay. I’ve considered not renewing a prescription for a medicine I needed because of our financial situation at the time. I’ve had to wait because my doctor’s case load was too high. I’ve also had health...

Iron Axe

I’m trumpeting! My next book IRON AXE is out. It’s the first in a new fantasy trilogy. Check it out!

In this brand new series from the author of the Clockwork Empire series, a hopeless outcast must answer Death’s call and embark on an epic adventure….

Although Danr’s mother was human, his father was one of the hated Stane, a troll from the mountains. Now Danr has nothing to look forward to but a life of disapproval and mistrust, answering to “Trollboy” and condemned to hard labor on a farm.

Unti...