Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 18

Ferguson, Staten Island and National Triage

Eric Garner Memorial

National leaders and would-be leaders are weighing in on who’s to blame for the high profile deaths of Mike Brown and Eric Garner, among others. In Brown’s case, a law enforcement officer shot the young man until he fell dead in the middle of a Ferguson street. In Garner’s case, a law enforcement officer choked the man into cardiac arrest.

In Brown’s case, there is no video record, witnesses disagree on what happened—forcing the grand jury to decide whom to believe—and fore...

Exploring the California Coast

We took a two-day drive down California Highway 1 to visit my sweetheart’s family for Thanksgiving. Morro Bay is only 220 miles from Oakland, but Highway 1 is a windy road and we had to stop and see the sights. A lot.

Obviously, you can see the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes it’s bordered by sand, sometimes by rocks, and sometimes, as in this shot, by both.

And sometimes the rocks are out in the water, as in these two pictures of the same arch out in the ocean. The ocean looked calm when I first saw...

Westbound: Starting Now

by Laura Anne Gilman

I am – as anyone who knows me well will confirm – a New Yorker. In the good ways and probably most of the bad as well. I’ve lived in the city for the past eight years, and worked there for sixteen previous, grew up with it as an everpresent beacon at my shoulder as a teenager in New Jersey. It is the city of my soul, the place where I come alive.

But a year or so ago, I started playing with the idea of taking a leave of absence from NYC, and this autumn, I decided to do it...

WWW Wednesday 12-3-2014

BVC members have picked up this meme 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 are you currently reading?

I am currently listening to the 6th book in Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins series. I read it before, and I think this might be my second time to listen.

They are something like mysteries with a hefty dose of horror or paranormal, much di...

Top-Ten List at io9.com

io9.com likes to come up with top ten lists. Today it’s the “10 Most Important Science Fiction Books About Superintelligence” — and a novel by BVC author Linda Nagata is included!

Linda’s novel, The Bohr Maker, comes in at #7.

Click here to purchase the ebook edition of The Bohr Maker from Book View Cafe.

My Cyber-House…

[image error]I have become, in what I hope is the nicest possible way, a bit of a martinet about tone and discourse in my living room. I love good chewy discussions, but I try, regardless of my level of engagement (or frustration or incomprehension or general bogglement) not to name-call or make generalizations. And if I catch myself slipping, I try to reverse the trend. Because I really, truly do believe (in part from watching my kids, who are passionately political, but really good listeners) that we’re...

BVC Announces Three Dogs, a Horse, and a Cat by Jill Zeller

Three Dogs, a Horse, and a Cat

Five tales of animals and love

by Jill Zeller

A dog brings harmony to a choral group. A horse kick-starts a young man’s life. And peace comes to a broken love affair through a cat named Klaatu. Each of the five short stories in this collection describes us as we are forced to face our weaknesses—and our strengths—through our love for pets.

Buy Three Dogs, a Horse and a Cat at BVC Ebookstore

BVC Announces The Infinite Sea by Jeffrey A. Carver

The Infinite Sea

Book 3 of The Chaos Chronicles

by Jeffrey A. Carver

Beneath an alien sea!

Flung to an alien ocean world, John Bandicut and his companions find themselves plunged into the deepsea realm of the Neri. What will they find in the Neri’s failing undersea city, or in the terrifying object of the deep abyss? Book 3 of The Chaos Chronicles continues the hard-SF saga inspired by chaos theory–with an all-new Afterword by the Nebula-nominated author of Eternity’s End.

“Another splendid advent...

Knitting with Love

This post first aired in August 2011. Since then, my dear friend Jay Lake passed on June 1, 2014. My beloved relative still continues her fight against the demon cancer with grace and chemo caps. Now I have another friend battling cancer. I made her a bright purple and a lovely teal cap.

Sometimes all we can do is knit, pushing love and healing energy into each stitch. As the gift giving and insane shopping season descends upon us once again, I need to contemplate the gifts we give and receive...

Good Weather, Hat Hair, and Two Tracking Tests

Post-tracking boyz, synchronized sleeping

Yep, we had our big once-a-year local Variable Surface Tracking test on Sunday. Beautiful weather, for sure–the best I’ve ever had for a test. The best photos do not include me, because I wore a hat all day so no thanks, but the Beagle boyz are the important ones anyway!

Connery was track five of six and Dart was track six, so we watched the first tracks and then waited for Connery’s turn in the quiet of a parking lot distant from the test “home base.”...