Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 110

Liveblogging Launch Pad

[written yesterday, posted this morning, because Reasons]

Oof. These Wyoming days are lovely, but we don’t see much of them; these Launch Pad days are long, and intensive, and challenging. (Okay, it’s largely Astronomy 101, but nevertheless: when it’s forty years since your last science lesson, full days in lectures and labs are a challenge to the atrophied brain.)

This morning was all electromagnetic radiation (that’s light to you and me), and its uses and abuses in and out of fiction; this af...

C is for Computer

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.

C is for computer.

Years ago, I attended a class at the Smithsonian — Historical Novels and the Authors who Wrote Them. For eight weeks, I got...

WWW Wednesday 7-17-2013

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

• What did you recently finish reading?

I j[image error]ust finished reading Georgette Heyer’s The Unknown Ajax. This book is memorable for two big set pieces: the arrival of Ajax (Hugo Darracot) at the home of his ancestors, when he discovers just how poor his aristocratic family’s opinion of him is, and resolves to live down to it; and the climax, quite close to the end of the book, when Hugo brings his many strengths and talents to bear to rescue his...

All Creatures Real and Otherwise: A Familiar’s Promise

<!--[if gte mso 9]>

Pacific Rim: A Very Short Review

By Brenda W. Clough

I do not usually go for the kind of movie in which the salient feature is explosions, mayhem, or things being crushed. These things are like capers, in cooking, or decollettage, in fashion — to be used judiciously, so that the palate shall not become jaded.

Nevertheless it is clear that every young writer should view Pacific Rim. There is no movie on the screens today that could give you a better survey of plot holes. It’s like a colander, a gap everywhere you look, so many...

Revisiting Nightmares: Fantasy/Horror Crossovers and Trauma Recovery

Fantasy and horror have a natural affinity, one that goes back to the pre-literate times when people sat around the campfire, terrifying each other with stories of ghosts and skin-walkers and things-that-go-bump-in-the-night or that-are-not-quite-dead. Supernatural elements infused these tales with delightful spine-tingling shivers. One might speculate that way back then, the entire world must have seemed a perilous place, filled with phenomena beyond human understanding. I think that does a...

BVC Announces Sorcerer’s Luck by Katharine Kerr

Sorcerer’s Luck

by Katharine Kerr

Secrets can be dangerous!

Maya Cantescu, an art student in the San Francisco Bay Area, has more secrets than she can handle. Some she keeps from herself, like her mysterious talent for sorcery. Some she knows too well, like the rare disease that threatens to kill her — or someone else.

When she meets Tor Thorlaksson, a sorcerer and runemaster, he seems to offer an escape from her deadly problems. But he knows secrets about them both, and these could turn her worl...

BVC Announces Beguiled Again by Patricia Burroughs

Beguiled Again

by Patricia Burroughs

When sexy, buttoned-down accountant Jeff gets sucked into Cecilia’s sticky, single-mom universe, his life turns inside out. Her checkbook’s a nightmare, her oldest kid hates him, and she’s messy, mouth-watering, independent, and annoyingly unforgettable. He can’t stay away.

Quirky Cecilia has her life (sort of) in order, and doesn’t need a man pointed out where it’s not. A single mom with three kids and a dog can’t afford a sex life, even if he is hotter tha...

Liveblogging Launch Pad

Q: What’s big and scaly?

A: The scale of the universe.*

We had a test this morning. Parts of it were really hard.

When did I last sit a test? I am not certain; possibly my solo year of college, way back when (’77, for those of you who count). If there’s been anything since, I don’t remember it. But these nice Launch Pad astronomers wanted to know the scale of our ignorance, so now they do. (As witness, Andria is sternly telling us to bubble in our answers, and I have to stick my hand up and say...

Sleep Deprivation

Nook First release 7/23/13

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 63% of Americans report they don’t get enough sleep at night.

Scientists are trying to put the blame on technology, saying the use of television and computers prior to sleep throws off natural melatonin and circadian rhythms with artificial light. Before computers, we sat in the dark? I don’t mean to make light of their studies (Ha, ha), but going to sleep isn’t the problem for most of us. It’s staying asleep. (and if I wat...