Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 125

WWW Wednesday 5-8-2013

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

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

• What did you recently finish reading?

Re-reading, actually. I bought and read the hardcover when it first came out in late 2009. It’s a rare sort of book: A sequel as good as the first of the series. Which is saying something, as one of the special things about Ariel: A B...

BVC Announces How Possession Can Help You Lose Weight by Chris Dolley

“I lost so much weight I could float above my bed!” – Lida Blair

The hilarious new spoof diet book from New York Times bestselling author, Chris Dolley. It’s a fun, quick read (about one hour) covering everything from ‘the science of possession’ to ‘Crapper Clinic’s Demon Dating Service’ that ensures clients are possessed by the demon most compatible with their slimming needs.

This is the diet book that everyone is talking about. Some of you may have read about the clinical trials undertaken by...

BVC Announces How Possession Can Help You Weight by Chris Dolley

“I lost so much weight I could float above my bed!” – Lida Blair

The hilarious new spoof diet book from New York Times bestselling author, Chris Dolley. It’s a fun, quick read (about one hour) covering everything from ‘the science of possession’ to ‘Crapper Clinic’s Demon Dating Service’ that ensures clients are possessed by the demon most compatible with their slimming needs.

This is the diet book that everyone is talking about. Some of you may have read about the clinical trials undertaken by...

Making Word(s) Count #1: Less is More … Sometimes.

When less is more

Over the years, as I’ve participated in writer’s workshops and mentored writers’ groups, I’ve encountered a number of literary habits that can keep a story from having the impact a writer so deeply desires it to have.

Why didn’t the reader get my clever punch line, or thrill when I revealed the full scale of the horror faced by my protagonist?

Sometimes the answer is simple: too many words.

I often am paid by the word. Literally. Magazines such as Analog and Interzone pay a per...

Music and grief

Our elderly and Highly Opinionated tortoiseshell cat, Cleopatra, died recently. She made it to her 20th birthday last month, which astonished us all. Privately, I think she wasn’t about to let the dog outlast her. (Oka, our wonderful German Shepherd Dog, died only 3 days earlier.)

It’s a bit much to take in, the loss of two pets within a week. We’re keeping an eye on the black cat who was Oka’s buddy. He wanders around the house, clearly looking for Oka. (He still has a cat friend, one-eyed la...

BVC Announces Knight’s Lady by Julianne Lee

U.S. Navy pilot Lieutenant Alex MacNeil and his wife,Lindsay, are stranded in medieval Scotland, brought there by magic. They’re pledged to Robert the Bruce, and their loyalty to each other will be tested to an extreme when Lindsay is abducted by her would-be faerie lover.

Book View Café is pleased to present a free sample chapter of Knight’s Lady, by Julianne Lee.

Chapter One

Lady Lindsay MacNeil bolted awake at the landing trumpet and her heart surged to pounding. A sleepy smile touched her li...

Vonda McIntyre’s The Moon and the Sun Adapted for Film

This is an official BVC shiny alert!

From Screen Daily: Good Universe has acquired international sales rights to Pandemonium’s The Moon And The Sun starring Pierce Brosnan and will kick off pre-sales in Cannes.

Yes, that’s right book fans—Pierce Brosnan will play Louis Quatorze in a screen adaptation of Vonda McIntyre’s book—which, by the way, you can purchase right here at Book View Cafe.

Read the book before you see the movie!

As Screen Daily writes: The fantasy-adventure centres on imagined ev...

Alabaster Horses

I try, as an all-around horseblogger, to be as breed-neutral as possible. Every breed of horses has its particular kind of wonderfulness, and its particular purpose, and its band of particular, and passionate, adherents. ((And yes, before the chorus strikes up, there are adherents of crossbreds, mixed breeds, rescues, ferals, and various national and regional types, too.)

But then, this past week, the show Nature on PBS in the US did an episode on “my” breed, and then this week’s usual Monday...

Story Inspiration Sunday

While I have a lot of pictures from fashion shows, those characters who walk the runway, I also get inspired by pictures of settings.

My favorite season is fall. I am a color junky. I go out and take pictures every fall of the colored leaves.

I particularly am drawn to trails, those paths leading out and beyond. What is there, just out of sight? As Tolkien said, “The road goes on and on.”

So here are a couple of pictures of settings that inspire me.

The first is a picture I took at the Seattle Ar...

Rational Bias

(Picture from here.)

We humans have a strong bias that our decisions are based on an intelligent, rational cognitive process. It’s embedded in our language– that was a “stupid decision.”

However, anybody who has lived a fairly full life must at some point slap their foreheads and say “What was I thinking?” about that boyfriend, that marriage, that job. Even when that boyfriend, marriage or job looked like the best decision at the time. We comfort ourselves thinking that we didn’t have all the f...