Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 117

Author Interview: Judith Tarr

AUTHOR JUDITH TARR

INTERVIEWED by KATHARINE ELISKA KIMBRIEL

Judith Tarr is always Judith Tarr, author of dozens of novels, fantasist and Storyteller, by turns the murmur of water over smooth stones and then a roaring of cataracts—but occasionally she is also Caitlin Brennan (The Mountain’s Call and sequels) and Kathleen Bryan (The Serpent and the Rose and sequels). She’s a professional historian, a breeder of exquisite Lipizzan horses, and quite often a screamingly funny woman. Pay attention—sh...

Free Fiction Monday — Prophesy in Shadows

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

I continue to be excited about this.

In the five weeks leading up to the novel release, I plan on 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.

This story is actually the first interlude of The Guardian Hound. It was second short story I wrote about the novel, when I was mer...

Blocks and Breakage

In talking about the changes in the publishing industry and their devastating effect on midlist authors, I’ve touched on the phenomenon of writer’s block. I talked about it briefly in a guest blog elsewhere. For authors whose careers have been shattered, this is a very real and debilitating problem.

Really? you may say. Just this week, a twitter link led to a set of advice for writers that stated categorically, “Writer’s block is bogus,” and instructed the writer to just sit down and write and...

Monsters Under the Bed

As children, we all fear the invisible, mysterious, unpredictable monsters that might be lurking under our beds or in dark corners of our small worlds. We need parents to come in and vanquish them with warm milk or reassurances.

As adults, we can put names to some of those midnight terrors—fear of fire, disease, terrorists, or any other uncontrollable, unspeakable horror that we realize can strike without warning. We have no one to come in and chase those terrors away.

In urban fantasy, our pro...

Consideration of Works “Past”: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind

Usually I talk about works I read when I was younger now rediscovered. But in this case, I’m going to talk about something that I’ve read relatively recently– not the film version of Nausicaä.The manga.

In a way, this is a cop out. I’ve been working on a set of posts involving regulation based on science and physics rather than on whim and appearance. I was going to attack gun regulation but it’s more work than I anticipated. So I’m taking a break from that one and talking about Hayao Miyazaki...

Story Inspiration Sunday

I have a secret.

But I’ll tell you.

Since it’s only just us two, right?

(Looks around)

Come closer.

I’ll whisper it to you.

I’m a geek.

I know! I know! I’m a writer. I’ve published books. I must know things, and be authorial, and wise.

I may be some of those things. But I am also, at my heart, a geek.

Let me show you my geekness!

See that? That’s a symbol of the team I play on. We’re called the Enlightened. (This is actually the Seattle Enlightened icon.) We are the artists, the explorers, the in...

Father’s Day

Jack Webb, age 20, US Army Air Corp

This post was first published on the author’s blog in 2011. It’s appears here in slightly modified form.

There’s been an ongoing, widespread discussion on the web about women writing science fiction. Today is Father’s Day here in the USA, so I’d just like to say the person most responsible for getting me interested in science fiction was this man right here, my dad, Jack Webb.

These days I think most dads know they need to encourage sons and daughters both to...

Magic and Goosebumps

This week I’ve been thinking about books and narrators. Put the right narrator with the right work and sometimes the result can be magical. And, for me, the absolute pinnacle of this is the combination of the words of Dylan Thomas and the voice of Richard Burton. If anyone hasn’t heard – or read, or seen the film – of Under Milk Wood, then do it now. Here’s a recording of the first 9 minutes of the ‘Play for Voices.’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uuPO2Kvqlms

And there’s another 90 minutes to l...

Stalking the Wild Muse: Writer Rituals & Habits – Cities

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 Madeleine Robins

All sorts of people write movingly about nature. And nature is a perfectly wonderful thing. I am not above being moved by the quilted green of an autumn hillside, or the lushness of a forest, or…well any of the natural phenomena of which writers write so enthusiastically. The silence, the sounds of nature, t...

Carl Brandon Society

Today (before midnight Pacific Daylight Time) John Scalzi, Justine Larbalestier and Scott Westerfeld, and @ArachneJericho are matching contributions to the Carl Brandon Society

Book View Café also supports the Carl Brandon Society. All the proceeds of Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars, ed. Nisi Shawl, go to CBS’s Octavia E. Butler Memorial Scholarship.