Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 17

Guests of Honor at Windycon 42

I can now announced that Jeff and I will be Guests of Honor atWindyCon 42, which will be held Nov. 13-15, 2015 at the Westin Yorktown in Lombard Illinois.

Here’s the linkage:www.windycon.org.

We’re pleased to be returning to the Chicago area and I can say, without sarcasm or irony, that I am going to love being in Chicago in November because I expect to get my real weather fix for the year. As you may know, we do not have winter in paradise valley (aka Silicon Valley). In fact, the entire state...

Miracles and Visions: Kokopelli and the Virgin by Pati Nagle

Pati Nagle offers a new story set in her homeland of New Mexico.

Rosa Marquez and Sean Carpenter have two things in common: they’re both native New Mexicans, and they’re both seeing visions. Rosa encounters the mythical flute-playing hunchback Kokopelli on a hike in Albuquerque’s Petroglyph National Monument. Sean sees the Virgin of Guadalupe in the dry, barren bed of the Santa Fe River.

Both give cryptic messages that lead Rosa and Sean to join a fight to save the dwindling Rio Grande, one of...

Winter Reading, part 1

As the end of the year approaches, my stack of to-be-reviewed books grows ever taller. I realized to my horror that I am rapidly approaching the point of not being able to remember what I liked or disliked about each story. So here are reviews of varying lengths for your amusement – and hopefully a few will pique your interest enough to check out the books themselves.

Tin Star by Cecil Castelluchi (Roaring Brook Press, 2014). First, a disclaimer. I met (and instantly adored) Cecil (a she-Cecil...

Knowing a Book by its Cover

Knowing a Book by its Cover

by Ursula K. Le Guin

This is the front cover of a new translation of one of my books. I want to report as truthfully as I can my first response to it:

I looked, I liked, and (since I couldn’t read the title) I wondered: Which book is it? What language? I must have forgotten that I had something coming out in Africa? or maybe India?

I looked inside, and saw it was Four Ways to Forgiveness, published in Finland.

The publisher is Vaskikirjat. I’d like to credit the transla...

Animal Powers

Horses are very much a part of the space they live in. They’re meant to spend their lives within the structure of a herd: a complex social organization with a constantly evolving but ultimately consistent set of rules and hierarchies. Lead mare in charge, lesser mares and youngsters moving up and down beneath, stallion and any subsidiary males guarding the perimeters and fending off predators.

The territory they inhabit is likewise as consistent as terrain, predators, and natural phenomena all...

Story Excerpt Sunday: “Fantasy and Science Fiction in the Modern Age” from Speculative Journeys by Irene Radford

Fantasy and Science Fiction in the Modern Age

from Speculative Journeys

a collection of short SF and contemporary fantasy

by Irene Radford

October is the month of season changes, of chilly nights and increasing rains. The nights grow longer and the darkness creeps forward bit by bit. It is a time of harvest, preparation for the long winter, and celebration.

Since time began people have gathered their loved ones close at this time while hunkering down before the fire, waiting for the return of ligh...

Mary Coyle Chase

There is no perfect age to commence being a lover of books. It’s great whenever it happens. I think I can generalize about early book lovers in saying that the experience is so very intense.

Here’s a test.

Assuming you are over thirty, can you recollect your favorite books at age 19? 29? How about 9?

I can name my favorite books at age nine. I can even remember the exact shelves they lived on at the local library.

At the top of that list was Enid Blyton’s Adventure series, and Loretta Mason Potts...

Writing to the Music

Ah, the music. The music that fuels the fugue state when I’m writing. Never has music been more important to my writing process than now, because music is a magical gift, a power and a weapon. So of course, I find myself dwelling on the power of music in its more mundane as well as magical sense.

Sometimes the backdrop musice when I’m writing makes sense. It’s from the era I’m writing about, or the part of the world where my characters live. It helps me tap into the world and all of its realit...

The Tajji Diaries: Treat!

The foundational concept behind positive training techniques is that behaviors have consequences. Pairing a desirable behavior with a reward increases the likelihood that behavior will be repeated. (Punishment, or an unpleasant consequence, is far less effective because while it may decrease the frequency of the undesired behavior, it also increases the response of fear, which makes it harder for the animal to learn anything.) In working with dogs, we often use food as a reward. Since human l...

Ursula K. Le Guin Interviewed by American Libraries

Ursula K. Le Guin has an interview in American Libraries, the flagship magazine for the American Library Association, in which she talks about the importance of libraries and the need to “stick your neck out” for causes.

The introduction to the article noted that she is a founding member of Book View Cafe, “a cooperative publisher with a policy of discounting ebook sales to libraries.”

Here’s Le Guin’s response to a question about the high prices some publishers charge to libraries for ebooks:

I...