Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 2

Book Quote Wednesday!

I’m celebrating the February 11 release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. Over in Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 if you purchase it directly from bookviewcafe.com.

“What’d he look like?”
“Like I could tell from that distance?”
I kept my narrowed eyes on her face.
She closed her eyes. “Dark hair, I think. He was wearing a baseball cap...

Book Quote Wednesday!

In celebration of the February 11th trade paperback release of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Books), I post this quote from the novel. (Oh, and BookViewCafe.com is offering the companion novelette prequel, “Tinkerbell On Walkabout” for a mere buck 99 during the month of February.)

I lay down to sleep with the sound of water lapping at the keel of my houseboat. Far and away, there was an underscore of pounding surf, like a mother’s heartbeat. Somewhere along the path to sleep, I stumbled...

CSI (Your City Here) vs Real Forensics

I did something really cool a while back. I went to a seminar sponsored byMystery Writers of America(MWA), an organization I joined after the publication of my first Gina Miyoko Mystery,THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER(from Pegasus Crime). The seminar was entitledFinding Evidence: CSI vs. Real-Life Forensics.

This was a day-long affair on on how real Crime Scene Investigations differ from the Hollywood versions we all know and love. It was fascinating, dare I say riveting. I still haven’t typed up...

Whence Gina Miyoko?

Before I had quite finished writing the manuscript that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime 2018), I penned detective Gina Miyoko’s genesis story, Tinkerbell on Walkabout, and posted it as a novelette on Book View Cafe.

Some of Gina’s backstory changed in the writing of the novel, so I reworked parts of the novelette, re-imagined the cover to be more in line with the one Pegasus gave to the novel and re-released it in anticipation of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER’s trade paperback release in February.

...

Today is Ray Bradbury Day

Today is the 99th anniversary of the birth of a man who filled me with the love of words, of sentences, of stories, of ideas, of possibilities.

A man who gave me the best advice on writing I’ve ever gotten (Don’t think, write.)

A man I wanted to name my daughter after. (The fam objected, alas.)

A man who looked out at a group of book-clutching, fannish outsiders at an environmental conference and said, in tones of wonder, “Oh, but you’re all my children” and brought us all to tears.

The ma...

This is … My Rewrite of Emma Lazarus’s Poem

I regret that it’s time for this again.

Some of you may have heard a song I wrote for the Möbius Street album entitled “Mother of Exiles.” This phrase—Mother of Exiles—was immortalized on a tablet installed in the base of the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor that, to this fraught day, carry the words of the poet Emma Lazarus in a work she entitled “The New Colossus.” This work was once believed (by my great-grandparents, no less than the society that put it there) to exemplify the “Amer...

The Name of the Prose on Re:Fiction

The writers’ eZine, RE:Fiction has posted the first of my two part craft article on names. Specifically, the names of the people, places, and things and the stories that contain them.

The first installment is entitled The Name of the Prose: Naming Characters and Novels.

Part 2, on naming Other Stuff, will run next week.

Book Quote Wednesday!

He smiled back, unaware that this was Rose angling to put him at ease, just as he was angling to do the same to her. This, I decided, might be fun to watch: investigator and investigated trying to out-investigate each other. Rose knew the limits of what she could tell him. I sat back to watch, wishing there was popcorn to go with my peanut-butter smoothie....

Finding Evidence: CSI vs Real Forensics

I did something really cool last weekend. I went to a seminar sponsored by  Mystery Writers of America (MWA), an organization I joined after the publication of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (from Pegasus Crime). The seminar was entitled Finding Evidence: CSI vs. Real-Life Forensics. 

This was a day-long seminar on on how real Crime Scene Investigations differ from the Hollywood versions we all know and love. It was fascinating, dare I say riveting. It’s gonna take me forever to type up my notes.

T...

Well, TA-DA! and all that…

Superheroes! Steampunk! High-stakes adventure! Cool characters fighting implacable enemies for the fate of the world while they’re battling their own demons!

If you like any or all of those things in your reading, Archangel: Ascension has it all. I was very pleased to have been asked to pen this novelization of Dave DiPietro’s script for the Archangel film. It was one of the most enjoyable projects I’ve worked on to date.

What’s it about?

In a gritty steampunk world of 1893 London, Brenden...