Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 19

The Healing of America: Healthcare 101

I ran this series on my LiveJournal page some time back. I’m bringing it back because it seems somehow appropriate and because no one read my LJ anyway.

In his bookThe Healing of America: A Global Quest for Better, Cheaper and Fairer Healthcare, journalist T.R. Reid does what I had hoped for some time that our national leaders would do: he undertook to study (through first-hand experience), contrast and compare the healthcare systems of other “first world” nations. (He included a couple of de...

Cockroaches, Giants, Crying in Baseball and True Love

The image is from the cover of my novel,A Princess of Passyunk, and which seemed perfect for this purpose.Princess,by the way, is a story of magic, baseball and true love that features a fetching cockroach named Svetlana, who has some magic of her own. I’m betting there are going to be cockroach Giant’s t-shirts any day now … hmm, Zazzle…

Sam Harris, Reza Aslan and Hiding the Ball

Sam Harris

There’s a new volley in the ongoing feud between Sam Harris and people who question his crusade against Islam. During adiscussion at the Harvard Science Center, Harris made the claimthat Muslim violence is different than any other religious violence. Hemaintained that when any other religionists commit violent acts, they are individuals committing violent acts unrelated totheir faith’s doctrines and “articles of faith”. Islam’s articles of faith were uniquely different.

He used as an...

O, Columbus…

Because in some parts of our country it’s still Columbus Day and because so few of us really understand what Columbus (Christobal Colon) did, I offer this fictional re-imagination of the events of his landing on Hispaniola.

This is a novelette of alternate history entitled “O, Pioneer”. It was published inParadoxmagazine and short-listed for the Sidewise Alternate History award in 2006.

Click to download:OPioneer

The file is a PDF.

Me-attitudes, Civil Liabilities, and Guns

Clearly visible and viscerally feltat the recent Gun Rights Policy Conference held in Chicago were polarized factions within the Gun Rights movement. There are those within the movement who have been decried as traitors and turncoats for being willing to consider background check legislation, for example, and others who are viewed as being so extreme that they have become “the enemy” because of the harm their violent rhetoric has done to the public perception of gun rights activism. (Somethin...

Story Excerpt Sunday: from A Fatal Twist of Lemon by Patrice Greenwood

A Fatal Twist of Lemon

Wisteria Tearoom Mysteries Book 1

by Patrice Greenwood

“Vince Margolan and Donna Carruthers are over in La Plazuela having lunch right this minute.”

“Wow, really?” Gina looked up from her soup, grinning. “Let’s go spy on them!”

“Gina!” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “No!”

“Why not? We might figure out what they’re up to!”

“They’re up to having lunch with some friends. Speaking of which…”

I took a bite of my Napoleon. Gina pushed aside her empty soup bowl and picked up her for...

Revisiting “The Gay Divorcee” 1934 film

“Chance is the fool’s name for fate.” (the secret code phrase from the film)

As a kid, I loved staying up to watch old movies on TV, and some of my favorites were the musicals with such performers as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In a fit of nostalgia the other night, I persuaded (as in coerced) Thor to watch “The Gay Divorcee” with me, and this seemingly frivolous romp raised all kinds of questions. We felt like time travelers peering across the gulf of 80 years.

The dancing remains wonderfu...

Birdman: A Very Short Review

by Brenda W. Clough

I can resist super-hero movies — even Batman and the X-Men often leave me cold, and let us not speak of the horror that was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen! But I can never resist a movie about super-heroes — Hero at Large, or Kick-Ass or Unbreakable. And so I had to see Birdman.

Michael Keaton does a bravura turn as a washed-up action hero actor who is trying to redeem himself artistically by staging a highbrow Broadway play. This is clearly crazy — you might as well set...

Giving Thanks

It dawned on me the other day, as I was agonizing over the trials of moving and the petty annoyances of bureaucracies and such, that I have a great deal to be thankful for this year.

My personal life is going very well. I moved halfway across the country to live with my sweetheart. So far we’ve been doing a good job of merging the belongings and habits accumulated over many years by two independent adults. (Though there are still a lot of boxes waiting to be unpacked.)

I have a novel coming out...

WWW Wednesday – Nov 26, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

• What are you currently reading?

Currently a little more than halfway through Jacey Bedford’s debut space opera, Empire of Dust.I am a sucker for psi in novels when used in an interesting way (with consequences) as well as character-driven skiffy, and this one hits all those. Add in some skillful tension building and interesting world building (about world building!) and I’m thoroughly enjoying it.

• What did you recently finish reading?

Pari No...