Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 113

Stalking the Wild Muse: #2 Pencils, Music and Tea

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.

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Detective fiction writer Lawrence Block tells a wonderful story about how he was having all kinds of trouble writing a Bernie Rodenbarr novel because of the chaos at home. He rented a cabin at a writers’ retreat back East and pushed the novel out in mere weeks. Next time he had a deadline looming, he r...

Best of the Blog: Not Even Mein Kampf: Why Hateful Books Should Not Be Banned

Editor’s note: We’re reprinting some of our favorite blog posts from the past five years. This week: Deborah J. Ross on banning books. This has appeared twice, in 2010 and 2012, but it continues to draw a lot of readers. It’s a particularly relevant post for U.S. Independence Day.

By Deborah J. Ross

In perusing the American Library Association’s list of banned and challenged books, I’m struck by the agenda underlying many of the objections. The general notion is that parents have a right, even...

Musing About Rights on the Fourth of July

It’s Independence Day in the United States — more generally referred to here as the Fourth of July — and the U.S. Supreme Court just ended its latest term by tossing out the so-called Defense of Marriage Act and at the same time gutting the Voting Rights Act that has protected racial and ethnic minorities from voting discrimination since the 1970s.

New York Times columnist Charles Blow had an excellent piece on the end-of-term court decisions and how the court can jettison some of the barriers...

WWW Wednesday July 3, 2013

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Sherwood Smith’s delightful Regency Danse de la Folie.It’s engaging and fun in a way that doesn’t ask you to leave your intellect or your knowledge of Jane Austen’s work at the door. Various characters have various romantic and other adventures before the couples sort themselves out. (Complete side-thought: our new German Shepherd Dog puppy, call name Casey, will be registered as Darcy vom Steinbeckland; h...

A is for Author

This post begins a new series here on Book View Cafe: The Author’s Alphabet. 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.

So. A is for Author.

I’ve been an author nearly all my life, beginning with the stories I told to my stuffed animals, when I was supposed...

Teeny tiny toads

two teeny tiny toads

I was walking in the Chicago Botanical Gardens with my spiritual advisor, Mindy the Pagan Hairdresser, when we spotted something that looked like crickets hopping across the gravel path. When we bent closer to look, however, we saw some extremely small toads. Here’s how small they were.

According to Prof. Chris Phillips, Curator of Amphib...

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All Creatures Real and Otherwise: Christmas in July

Snow makes the cat’s decision on inside or out even more fraught. Brenda Clough’s cat Tobemorey, a Scottish Fold more commonly known as Tobey, kept looking for the door into summer during the 2010 Snowpocalypse in the Washington, DC, region.

Notice that he’s sitting just out of snow range, waiting for it to go away so he won’t get his paws wet.

And now, of course, he wants back in.

Brenda, you have failed this cat. Clearly you were supposed to do something about all that snow!

BVC Announces Capitol Magic by Mindy Klasky

Capitol Magic

by Mindy Klasky

A Jane Madison/Fright Court Novella.

Jane Madison is searching for a job that will fulfill her, enabling her to combine her peerless librarian skills with her witchcraft. Sarah Anderson, clerk of court for the District of Columbia Night Court, is just beginning to figure out what she can do as a sphinx, an ancient protector of vampires.

Magic flies when Jane and Sarah team up to protect a rare collection of books. Along the way, both women need to balance personal go...

Women Heroes in The Seven-Petaled Shield

Novels begin in many different ways, drawing their “motive energy” or “visions of ultimate coolness” from varied sources. Which is a high-falutin’ way of saying that there is no one right way in which to begin a story. It can start with a visual image (very common with me, as I’m a visual writer), an emotional turning-point, or an idea that grabs the imagination. Or a line of dialog or a melody. Many writers experience a tango-like dance with their creative inspirations, which ranges from the...

BVC Announces Deeds of Men, by Marie Brennan

Deeds of Men

by Marie Brennan

Read a free sample

O, act, most worthy hell, and lasting night,

To hide it from the world!

—V.viii.389-90

Red Cross Alley, London: 2 June, 1625

They found him in a narrow alley, within smelling distance of the riverside wharves and the pestilential tenements that crowded them, with his throat slit from ear to ear.

Sir Michael Deven knelt in the muck, not caring that he ruined the knee of his breeches, and bit down hard on a knuckle to hold back tears.

The long, gangly lim...