Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 115

All Creatures Great and Otherwise: Wildlife

Leah Cutter, whose first BVC book came out last week, takes care of the feathered creatures in her neighborhood.

A well-balanced meal requires two! These are Northern Flicker Woodpeckers.

Of course, if you put out food for the birds, the squirrels will do their best to get at it, too.

We’re writers, so even when we’re looking at wildlife we don’t see only sweetness and light. Nancy Jane Moore saw this buzzard — probably a turkey vulture — making a meal out of roadkill on a highway along the Rio...

WWW Wednesday 6-26-2013

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

• What did you recently finish reading?

A Sprig of Blossomed Thorn, by Patrice Greenwood. This cozy mystery, set in a Victorian tea house in New Mexico, is the second in a series that promises to get stronger with each story. and funnier.

Elderly Mrs. Garcia falls dead in the tea room . . . the second person to die there. Proprietor Ellen, whose business is already recovering from a murder the day the tea shop opened (and who is coping with...

Making Word(s) Count #3: Immediacy and concurrency

Another form of convolution I see writers struggle with occurs when a writer is trying to suggest immediacy and concurrency of action. In other words, when things are coming fast and furious (or swiftly and furiously ).

This happens a lot in battle scenes, fight scenes, chases (and juggling) in which the writer is trying to convey that everything is happening suddenly or swiftly and/or all at once.

I often see writers over-use “as”, “while” when trying to suggest concurrency of action. That is...

Predator and Prey

There’s been a lot of unrest in the online world of late. A lot of speaking up and speaking out, and a whole lot of spelling out of uncomfortable things. Racism, sexism, inequality of all kinds–in the world of blogs and writers and genre as well as in the wider world.

My recent industry posts have been part of that. Saying what I believe has needed to be said. Expressing hard truths in a public forum.

When I put up the first post, I expected a horde of trolls to show up and start slinging offal...

BVC Announces The Lady of Han-Gilen, by Judith Tarr, Avaryan Rising II

The Lady of Han-Gilen

Avaryan Rising Vol. II

by Judith Tarr

Elian of Han-Gilen is the pride and scandal of her father’s princedom.

She has out-ridden, out-hunted, and out-shot every suitor. Now comes one whom she could bring herself to love: no lesser man than the throne prince of the Golden Empire. But Elian swore an oath as a child to a foster brother who is now a warrior king. Consort to an imperial heir or squire at arms to a conqueror: Elian must choose, and in choosing, decide the fate of t...

The Life and Death and Life of the English Major

I was almost an English major. My mother wanted me to be an English major (she was an English major until she had to drop out of UCLA, and I think in her mind my degree was her degree, and she didn’t want us getting a degree in something she didn’t like). But I was theater mad, and majored in Theatre Studies, which was more or less an English major with credit for doing stuff in the theatre (there is now a Theatre major at my college; there wasn’t then). My older daughter is majoring in Engli...

Author Interview: Sherwood Smith

Sherwood Smith

INTERVIEWED by KATHARINE ELISKA KIMBRIEL

Q.)What drew you to Book View Cafe?

A.)I first became aware of BVC when the announcement went out that it was forming. A group for getting backlist into ebook? Oh, yeah, it was like it was made for me.

Except I wasn’t in it. Argh!

But within a year or so, in talking with members Judith Tarr and Deborah Ross, I found out how it worked. In those early days, you not only were expected to pitch in in some way to help the labor flow (and there is...

What’s Black and White and Orange All Over?

What Is Black and White and Orange All Over?

Annals of Pard VI

Ursula K. Le Guin

I was defrosting the freezer, and Pard of course came down with me to survey and re-investigate the basement, which is big and has much to investigate, what with the Pre-Cambrian furnace, and dark corners and odd angles and crowded shelves and storage boxes and picnic baskets and 10-quart boilers and so on, and many spiders, and many spiderwebs. He often comes up from the basement with gluey cobwebs delicately festo...

Free Fiction Monday — The Tiger’s Shadow

On July 9th, my new novel, The Guardian Hound, is being published by Book View Cafe.

It’s coming soon!

In the five weeks leading up to the novel release, I am publishing a short story a week, and having each available for free for that week. All the stories are about the world or somehow involved with The Guardian Hound and the various clans.

Chronologically, I wrote this story, A Tiger’s Shadow, before I wrote the story for last week, A Prophesy in Shadows. But once I finished this story, I kn...

My Own Not-So-Private Writing Screed

I’ve been reading the entries over at theAerogramme Writer’s Studio. They have a lot of Rules of Writing by various writers. Many of these are very good. So I figured I should have some.

I came up with two.

Read intelligently.
Write honestly.

I amnot saying the other rules for writing are bad. They are often very, very good. But to me they are refinements. They are methods by which you can made bad writing better or good writing great. They are not (again, to me) rules for writing in and of itsel...