Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 22

WWW Wednesday – Nov 12, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

At Worldcon this year my friend Elise gave me a book she’d somehow bought two copies of: Spirits Abroad, by Zen Cho. Between this and that, I only started reading it this weekend. Short form: it’s wonderful. It’s a collection of short stories about magic and science and Malaysia. There are witches and vampires and dead grandmothers who still exert an u...

PEN International’s Global Campaign

This week, I’m passing along an article from the Bahá’í World News Service about the efforts of PEN International to defend persecuted writers the world over. I include a link to the original posting of the story interested readers can see the photos that went with the original article and follow the link there to a second article in the Guardiannews site.

PEN International is a worldwide association of writers, founded in 1921 in London, England,to promote friendship and intellectual co-opera...

Fight Scenes: Time Dilation

Sabre duel from The Duellists

I saw Interstellar last week, a hugely ambitious, very heady film about…oh, kind of everything. The future of the human race. Striving. Time. Love. Space. Loneliness. Duplicity. Ecology. Parenthood. It’s beautiful to look at (well, Christopher Nolan) and well acted, and curiously soggy in places when Nolan attempts to be genuinely affecting. And the dialogue is mixed so low in places that I swear I missed some important plot points (when you’re married to a sound...

On Beating the Winter Blues

It’s been a brutal year for me in terms of stress. Some of it was outright loss, other parts happy but pushing me over the edge of tolerance, for stress too, which is a loss of calm. Whatever is happening, I keep up the mantra, “This too shall pass!”

Life sometimes sideswipes us with occasions for rejoicing or unspeakable tragedy, but hard times run in cycles. It’s important to find ways of reminding ourselves of this rhythmic nature. Outward-facing periods of great vigor and challenge are fol...

BVC Announces The Changeling Troll by Leah Cutter

The Changeling Troll

by Leah Cutter

A different kind of ugly duckling story.

Christine works at her dream job in the archives at a university library, loses sleep most every night to reading, lives mostly in her dreams. But can’t find what she’s really looking for.

After losing a bet with her brother, Christine forces herself to go to a bar. Listen to some live music.

Live a little.

When she meets the impossible–her exact twin–her world starts falling apart until all Hell breaks loose.

Literally.

Dow...

Sometimes They Do Sparkle

I haven’t paid much attention to the dressage show world in recent years. The desire to show was never really there, and much of what I did see was painful. The controversy over Rollkur went back and forth continually, with the poor horses trapped in the middle.

Then there was the fact that the horses that were considered competitive were European Warmbloods: large, often huge, powerful, long-strided horses that tended to cost the earth. I tried, but they weren’t for me. I’m a short person and...

Story Excerpt Sunday: from ‘The Final Choice’ in Fantastical Ramblings by Irene Radford

The Final Choice

a story from the collection

Fantastical Ramblings

by Irene Radford

Death sat at the bar wondering what he had forgotten to do. 11:02 P.M. December 31. There was something he had to do before midnight or the new year would not arrive. Time would stop. Life would be frozen in an endless cold sleep. Souls would have no home.

Change would not continue to shape the universe.

Fates would not be fulfilled.

Death took a sip of his drink and concentrated on his duty.

The potential suicide in...

Harriet, fifty years a spy

While I was traveling in the US Northeast last month, a friend took me to the Eric Carle Museum, where they had on display all the illustrations that Louise Fitzhugh had done for Harriet the Spy, published in 1964, fifty years ago.

Fifty years!

I discovered the book on the library shelf not long after it was published, and glommed onto it without even looking inside. Of course I wanted to read about a girl spy!

Within the very first pages I was interested: Harriet not only considered herself a s...

The Tajji Diaries – Unexpected Help

Tajji on the field

It’s been a while since I posted our adventures rehabilitating our retired seeing eye dog, Tajji. We’ve had her about 8 months now and she has made progress on her reactivity to dogs (and sometimes people) that made it impossible for her to continue service work. Most of our focus has been on learning to read her signals of distress and teaching her ways of self-management as we keep her safe.

Our promise to her was that she would never have to work again. Guide dog work is n...

Whatever Makes You Weird: An Interview With Jacey Bedford

I first met Jacey Bedford when I attended the Milford SF Writer’s Conference in the UK some years back. We’ve stayed in touch ever since. I’m delighted to post this interview with her about her novel, Empire of Dust , which was released by Daw on November 4.

Nancy Jane Moore: When you’re not writing, you’re part of the musical group Artisan, though you’re not performing as much as you used to. I know you also handle tour management for Artisan and other musical groups and you do a lot of work...