Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 21

WWW Wednesday – Nov 19, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is 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?

The Wanderer by Robyn Carr.

Although billed as a romance, this book is another gentle book about life in a small town on the Oregon coast and man who has commitment issues and prefers living in his trailer and working odd jobs. Then he inherits...

Publishing is Not a Monolith

As I have done a lot lately, I spent the past weekend with my aunt and uncle, helping them with some household stuff. My uncle is an emeritus professor of anatomy at UCLA; my aunt ran the Chancellor’s Communication Service. Both have decades of involvement with the university, and both of them are much accomplished and smart cookies.

At one point, as we were eating lunch, I was discussing my current search for employment, and a couple of jobs in which I am interested. My uncle seemed puzzled,...

BVC Announces Speculative Journeys by Irene Radford

Speculative Journeys

by Irene Radford

In Speculative Journeys, Irene Radford extends her short story collections into science fiction and contemporary fantasy with fourteen tales both old and new.

Why is time-travel reserved for wealthy tourists and forbidden to historians?

Can a spaceship captain keep secrets from her communication officer who speaks every language in the universe–even ones without words?

Is a maze cut into solid granite a portal to a safer world…or something else?

These stories a...

Plans Best Laid

My lesson for the month: Plans mutate.

(Probably my lesson for life, but let’s just stick with the month.)

I’d intended to blog about the treadmill thing again today, especially in the wake of my aggravated feet.

Then again, this fall I’d also intended to adopt a socialization-resistant kitten as a barn cat (yes, this cat sleeping here on my office chair), get caught up on my paperwork, get a book started/finished before the end of the year, target completion of Connery’s PACH title, and figure...

Story Excerpt Sunday: From How Like a God by Brenda Clough

How Like a God

by Brenda Clough

Rob knew that the comic books were a bad precedent to follow. Besides, he was just a little too plump around the middle these days to wear tights with dignity. Any public display would be repugnant, not his style at all. If he was going to dabble in crime-fighting and world-saving he was going to be private about it. The idea of being a secret benefactor was powerfully attractive — all the pleasures of do-gooding without having to cope with the people involved.

He...

Poet’s Walk and the Wayfarer’s Dole

Rambles in England, Part 5

On our last day in lovely England, Thor and I took the Poet’s Walk, the favorite ramble of John Keats when he stayed in Westminster. The mellow path follows the River Itchen through town and fields, allowing Keats to compose one of his last poems, “To Autumn,” which starts:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run….

Enjoying the sunny early-a...

STRANGER, Book One of THE CHANGE

Stranger, the post-apocolyptic YA novel written byBook View Cafe member Sherwood Smith in collaboration with Rachel Manija Brown, has been published by Viking.

This is the “Yes Gay YA” book of an Internet flurry three years ago. But you could just as easily call it “The one with the telekinetic squirrels,” or “The X-Men in the post-apocalyptic Wild West,” or “The one where the sheriff is super-strong, the doctor can speed up time, and the plant life is out to get you.”

Official plot description...

Anne Hills in Concert: A Very Short Review

by Brenda W. Clough

One of the things about being a Creative is that you have fellowship with all other Creatives. We are all in the same boat, doing our work, trying to get it out there in the face of the world’s indifference. And a fine case in point is Anne Hills, the singer-songwriter.

Folk music, like epic poetry, morris dancing, and tatting doilies, goes in and out of fashion. I am old enough to just remember its last heyday. Ms. Hills is clearly one of the great ones — listen to this and...

Transitions: The Cross-Country Road Trip

My sweetheart and I arrived in Oakland, California, last week after a five-day road trip from Austin, Texas.

Here’s a shot (looking back on the way we came) of one of the roads we traveled — U.S. Highway 60 in Western New Mexico. We took a lot of old U.S. highways on this trip, traveling through West Texas and across the center of New Mexico before we found it necessary to take Interstate 40 across Arizona.

Then it was back to the less-traveled ways up the eastern side of the Sierra Nevada and...

Let the Celebration Commence: Reviews of BVC Authors

Kristine Smith

Kudos and loud Hurrahs! for two Book View Cafe authors who have received rave reviews from Kirkus.

First, let us celebrate John W. Campbell award-winner, Kristine Smith, who’s upcomingnovel, GIDEON, (written under her Alex Gordon pen name) received this accolade:

“A seductive work of paranormal horror that will draw readers into its cold and gloomy world.”

Chaz Brenchley

We’re also partying down for Chaz Brenchley’s Starred Kirkus Review of this short story collection BITTER WATERS....