Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 131

BVC German Editions

It’s a mark of how far Book View Café has come over the past four years that we’re now releasing our second German language edition. Sherwood Smith’s Crown Duel was the first – Kronenduell came out a few months back. Now it’s French Fried’s turn.

Französisch mit Spickzettel: Zwei Engländer, zu viele Tiere, und ein Kriminalfall is available from the BVC bookstore, Amazon and, very shortly, B&N, Apple, Kobo, and all leading retailers worldwide.

Thanks to Catja for the translation, and Nadine for...

David D. Levine reads “Letter to the Editor” on Tales to Terrify

You can now hear BVC member David D. Levine reading his story “Letter to the Editor” from The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination (featured here during Mad Scientist Week) on the latest Tales to Terrify podcast:

http://talestoterrify.com/tales-to-terrify-show-no-65-joe-r-lansdale-david-d-levine/

Overwriting the world

If fantasy in general is like the folkloric mode of legends, then urban fantasy is even more so. Because legends don’t take place at the dawn of time or in a fairy-tale kingdom far, far away; they take place in the teller’s own world. Over the familiar face of that world, a legend writes an additional layer, so that it’s not just a castle but a haunted castle. Not just a hill, but one with faeries under it. Not just a pass through the mountains, but one carved by a giant’s dragging axe.

Back w...

Book View Café Writers Featured in Analog

Two stories by Book View Café authors are featured in the just-released June issue of long-time SF-zine Analog Science Fiction and Fact.

In Hugo-winner David D. Levine’s short story “Wavefronts of History and Memory,” a radioarchaeologist explores her own past in a far-future, post-human story world.

Nebula-winner Linda Nagata returns to the world of her Nanotech Succession novels with “Out In The Dark,” in which a police officer in a nanotech-drenched future confronts the implications of draco...

Reading the Obits

I like to read obituaries.

This is not a morbid preoccupation. I’m not a ghoul, looking for gory details of death.

Nor is this related to getting older and becoming more aware of mortality. I became very aware of mortality over the last several years as I looked after my father and visited him in his nursing home, but my obituary reading started long before that.

I read obituaries because I want to know about people’s lives.

I should probably make it clear that I am picky about the obituaries I r...

Sex demons: who’s the boss?

It’s been said everybody gets the government they deserve, that every woman has exactly the love life she wants, and that we all pass on to the afterlife we have imagined.

I maintain that we each get the sex demon we want.

I’ve written a lot of sex demons. Mine are rather sweet…a lot like the kind of guy Julie Brown meant when she sang, “I like ‘em big and stupid.” Some of course have a weaselly cunning, but no more than the guys who schemed to get me into bed in college. Sex demons know what t...

WWW Wednesday 4-3-13

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?

Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. I am pleased to see a very successful women who is willing to use the F word — feminist, that is. I’ll have more to say about it in an essay I’m doing for the next issue of the...

Crowdfunding Enters Adolescence

A year ago I was winding up my first crowdfunding campaign, for a YA novel that Book View Cafe published as Living in Threes.I undertook the experiment at the suggestion of others who had gone before me, researched and studied what was known at the time, and succeeded in getting the project funded with room to spare. This year I’m at it again, this time with a space opera which I’ve titled Forgotten Suns.

Crowdfunding has been around on the internet for quite a few years. It started as, basica...

Crafty II, or: Because Brenda Asked

Okay. I wrote a post two weeks ago about my work-related crafting activities. Beading and knitting (and sometimes beading and knitting) and making little clay figures and learning to do canework… And Brenda asked for pictures. So: herewith, some pictures.

The beaded rose. This thing could be used as a weapon: it’s heavy, something like twenty five petals of between 150-300 beads each, plus calyx. It is about the size of my palm. I have to note here that, because I was doing exploratory work, I...

BVC Announces Knight’s Blood by Julianne Lee

Knight’s Blood: Tenebrae Series Book 2

by Julianne Lee

U.S. Navy Pilot Lieutenant Alex MacNeil and his wife Lindsay have returned from their adventure in fourteenth century Scotland, and Lindsay has given birth to a son. But the magic is not through with them yet. The MacNeils’ child has been kidnapped by Nemed, the elfin king and the couple’s sworn enemy.

Chapter One

“Strike, Saber One Zero Five. Seven zero miles northeast with four, released from BARCAP, state seven point zero.”

“Saber One Zero...