Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 16

BVC Announces The Spirit Gate by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

The Spirit Gate

by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

The magic of Polia is broken, the delicate connection between its male and female elements, sundered. Blame for this and other calamities both natural and political has long been laid at the feet of the White Mothers–rare adepts who can handle both male and female elements.

The young widow, Kassia Telek, is one such woman. Barred from the legitimate use of her talents, she peddles herbs in the town square to feed herself and her son, Beyla … until, one d...

New Release from Book View Cafe: THE SPIRIT GATE

New Release! The Spirit Gate

December 16, 2014, Book View Cafe releases THE SPIRIT GATE, an alternate history / fantasy by Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff.

What’s it about? Well, magic and faith and political intrigue and I can’t say more without spoilers. Here’s the promotional copy:

The magic of Polia is broken, the delicate connection between its male and female elements, sundered. Blame for this and other calamities both natural and political has long been laid at the feet of the White Mothers—rare a...

The No Clothes Equation

“The emperor has no clothes” has never been a popular (or easy phrase) to utter. Not even in agility. But it can be easier to talk about things in terms of agility than in terms of the whole of life, so…let’s start here. By talking about those courses.

You know the courses I mean. During walk-through half the handlers are grimly unhappy and the other half are quite blithely and vocally certain that those who are unhappy would in fact be happy if they had only trained properly (or completely, o...

Story Excerpt Sunday: From “A Mere Scutcheon” in Conscientious Inconsistencies by Nancy Jane Moore

A Mere Scutcheon

from the collection

Conscientious Inconsistencies

by Nancy Jane Moore

“Our credit should still be good at the Café Maudite,” Asamir said, leaning toward the mirror to rearrange her blonde curls for the third time.

Anna d’Gart waited—with resignation rather than patience—while her fellow guardswoman primped. She had casually tied her own auburn hair back after training, but she was accustomed to Asamir’s vanity. “The King’s Guardsmen frequent the Maudite,” she said. “We might find...

Consider the Hand

(Picture from here.)

And I am back.

It’s been a rough month. I tore my biceps tendon in judo back in October and it had to be reattached. Which meant it had to be in a cast for a month. As keeping it in the thumbs up position is sort of counter productive, I’ve been working on moving it back to typing position for the last few weeks.

The biceps brachii isn’t just the big honking muscles that bulge out during a biceps curl. That is, the biceps gets bigger when you curl but there are a lot of othe...

Our First Rescue Dog: Bear

Bear came into our lives when we were still mourning our beloved Golden Retriever Worf, who was our constant companion at home, out windsurfing, or hiking and snowshoeing in the mountains. He was our Hero Dog who showed us the trail when melting snow concealed our return paths in the forest. He was “Happy Dog,” as a little girl in a stroller named him when we were out for a walk, and Test Anxiety Counselor for Thor’s and my students at the university. Big paw-prints to fill!

As we started pond...

Interstellar: A Very Short Review

by Brenda W. Clough

Recent events have shown that probably there will not be commercial space flight for a while. I accept that I will probably never make it into space; even if it becomes available in my lifetime I won’t be able to afford a ticket. And my health will no longer stand the stresses — getting older really sucks. Sometimes a bucket list is just a list.

However! There are movies, and by gosh, with modern effects and an IMAX screen some movies are nearly as good as going into space y...

Black Lives Matter

Sometimes a person puts into words something you’ve always known was true, but never thought of in quite those terms. The other day I stumbled across an interview with Chris Rock that gave me a new perspective on racism in the United States.

White people were crazy. Now they’re not as crazy. To say that black people have made progress would be to say they deserve what happened to them before. …

So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be presi...

BVC author, YA and Diversity in the GUARDIAN

Book View Cafe author Sherwood Smith co-wrote with PTSD and trauma therapist Rachel Manija Brown Stranger, book one of The Change series, a diversity-friendly dystopian adventure.

Today, the Guardian focuses on this book, and how it makes a gay character a protagonist. According to the article, fewer than 2% of protagonists in traditional publishing are persons of color, LGBTQ, or disabled.

In the book, diversity is a part of everyday life–but human prejudice is focused on mutant powers. The au...

WWW Wednesday 12-10-2014

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

• What are you currently reading?

The Clovis Incident, by Pari Noskin. Who can resist a murder mystery set in New Mexico, involving talking cats and aliens? Well, I can’t, especially if there is a female sleuth at the center. So far, so fun!

Lord Hervey’s Memoir, by Lord John Hervey. Hervey is one of the most interesting figures of English history of the mid 1700s. About him it was said that there are three sexes–men, women, and Herve...