Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 111

Author Interview: Pati Nagle

PATI NAGLE

Interviewed by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Pati Nagle was born and raised in the mountains of northern New Mexico, and remembers when dusty dogs rolled in the Santa Fe plaza. She has eclectic tastes in reading, and writes fantasy, science fiction, mystery, and historical fiction, both for adults and for a younger audience. With boundless curiosity Pati embraces life, creating art, crafting entertainment, and constructing the best writer’s cooperative in the world. Just give her a littl...

Liveblogging Launch Pad

I have traveled widely, but not so much within the US — Wyoming is only my second rectangular state! However, I arrived without incident, having met up with four other SF writers in the airport in Denver. We drove three hours north to Laramie, through some beautiful empty country. Rocks, prairie, snow fencing. You can see why trolls were born from, and return to, stone.

And we also passed through some of the usual generic America. There are strip malls across the world now with a Starbucks, a...

Essay by Nancy Jane Moore in the Cascadia Subduction Zone

Nancy Jane Moore has an essay on Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In in the current issue of the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

The essay also discusses Linda Hirshman’s Get to Work, Anna Fels’s Necessary Dreams, and the Op Ed Project. and makes some suggestions on how women authors might use the principles Sandberg discusses to “lean in” in publishing.

The issue also includes a review of Joanna Russ’s classic How to Suppress Women’s Writing, along with reviews of some new fiction and non-fiction.

Liveblogging Launch Pad

Tomorrow is a momentous day. It’ll be the first time since we married (and tomorrow, let me tell you, is our fifteen-month anniversary) that m’wife and I have been parted for any significant length of time; and it will also mark my slightly belated participation in that great American custom, being sent away to summer camp.

Specifically, I’m off to Launch Pad, a week-long astronomy workshop for science fiction writers, where we get to play with telescopes and everything. We’ll live in a dorm l...

Beware the Cereal Dog Killer

This week’s edition of The Darcy Chronicles is a public service announcement about a distressingly common plant that can kill your dog (or cat), or at least drain your bank account. It is the also reason why we are teaching Darcy a full-body inspection routine for after romps outside. If you are distressed by graphic post-operative photos, even though the outcome was good, don’t click through past the introduction.

Instead, feast your eyes on the veritable puppy of the world to the left, three...

Borrowing a Voice

By Brenda Clough

Every now and then I write a story about a mythical figure set in his own time. I wrote about the death of Odysseus in “Home is the Sailor”, and about Gilgamesh in “Below, Between, Above,” which recently was published in the anthology How Beer Saved the World. I notice that when I’m wandering in Mary Renault territory, I try to write like her. Nouns get selected from the Anglo Saxon menu rather than the Latinate side; sentences become simpler in structure. We get very Attic. (...

Stalking the Wild Muse: Writer Rituals & Habits

By Brenda Clough

A series exploring the props, habits, and drugs that fuel the writer’s productivity. Past, present and future! Look for BVC writers, plus other authors we know and love.

You remember how Lord Byron was mad, bad and dangerous to know? Writers frequently fly close to the flame. We always say it’s because we need it for inspiration, but people don’t always believe us, and sometimes they’re right — it’s just self-destructive impulsiveness.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge did opium. Baudelai...

“This Land Is Your Land …”

The United States includes some stunningly beautiful country. And, thanks to Theodore Roosevelt and those who have taken up his mantle over the years, a lot of that country has been set aside in national and state parks so that all of us can share in it.

I traveled up to Boulder, Colorado, a couple of weeks ago to spend a long weekend with my sweetheart, and since I had time, I drove. (As I said in my “Stalking the Muse” post a few weeks back, I find distance driving unleashes my creativity.)...

Best of the Blog: The Romance of the Regency

Editor’s Note: Sherwood Smith’s posts always draw a lot of conversation in the comment section, but this on regency novels was particularly popular. It first appeared in 2010.

I discovered Georgette Heyer in high school, after reading an entire issue of the fanzine Niekas devoted to it, somewhere around 1967-8. At that time I hadn’t yet read Jane Austen, though I’d loved historical novels ever since I checked out Mara, Daughter of the Nile in grade school. My favorite by ninth grade was Annema...

B is for Book

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.

B is for book.

Once upon a time, the vast majority of books were published in two formats: Hardcover and Paperback. Sure, there were subsets —...