Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 29

Location, Location, Location

by Brenda W. Clough

a mint julep should taste minty, not bourbony

Can environment boost creativity? This article zips through several suggestions, including

– Darkness and dim lighting. Umm, it ain’t me, babe. I have vision impairments and can never have enough lumens.

-Messy. Messy desk, cluttered office, noisy surroundings. I look around at my office and realize this one is probably gold. But yarn — the clutter has to be yarn.

-Writing by hand. Yes, this does work! But if you can do without it,...

What’s Happened to Beauty Queens?

I was surprised – but very pleased – to learn that the newest Miss America, Kira Kazantsev, had interned at Planned Parenthood. An icon of American womanhood interested in women’s reproductive rights. Imagine that.

She has also taken a strong stand on domestic violence.

Miss USA, Nia Sanchez, has a fourth degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do. She doesn’t find being beautiful incompatible with martial arts or the ability to defend herself. Amazing.

Predictably, Miss America is being attacked...

Building the Fictional House

There’s a very cute little meme on the Interwebs that is supposed to be a writer’s Mission StatementÂfor the day. It goes like this:

1) Drink coffee.

2) Make stuff up.

Sounds good. Gives writers a chuckle. But it’s only partly true. Yes, we do make some stuff up. But I’m realizing as I work on the project I can now talk about (Devil’s Daughter,ÂBook One of the Lucinda’s Pawnshop series from Bird Street Books), that a great deal of what I do as a writer is handed to me whole by Life,...

WWW Wednesday – September 24, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

• What are you currently reading?

Sorcerer’s Feud, by Katharine Kerr. Thoroughly enjoyable tale set in San Francisco with magic, runes, shape changers, and a fascinating twist on vampirism.

Memoirs of a British Agent, by Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart. Absorbing, sometimes painfully period, look at the experiences of a young diplomat who ended up in Russia during the last days of the Empire and the early days of the Revolution.

Published in 1933, so so...

The Writing Life: Re-Entry

Maybe some writers have uninterrupted careers. I don’t know any, and I certainly don’t qualify. Sometimes it seems that my writing life has been one uninterrupted series of interruptions. If it’s not one thing, it’s not another. Then I have to wrestle not just with getting back up to speed on the project du jour and making up for lost time, but wrestling with guilt, regret, and self-doubt.

Guilt because I should have been able to keep focused, keep writing, No Matter What. Isn’t that what a pr...

BVC Announces Down the Stream of Stars, by Jeffrey A. Carver

Down the Stream of Stars

Book Two of the Starstream

by Jeffrey A. Carver

Starstream!

A great interstellar migration has begun, down the grand, ethereal highway known as the starstream—from the remnant of the Betelgeuse supernova to the center of the Milky Way. Who could have predicted the wonders of the starstream, or the perils it would unleash—including the Throgs, shadowy beings of n-space that seem to understand only death and destruction? But life goes on, dangers or no, and colonists pour...

Crossbraining

Hard to decipher all the signage, but this was two rally novice titles with first and second place. Just starting the journey…

The Blue Hound Beagles are, primarily, agility dogs. But they looove tracking. They clamor for obedience work. Boy, do they want to hunt those ratties and chase that plastic bag lure! I’ve always done crosstraining with them to some degree, for both body and mind (but not for my wallet…).

Connery: CH MACH3 Cedar Ridge DoubleOSeven VCD1 RE MXC MJG MXP MJP XF EAC EJC CGC

(...

Story Excerpt Sunday: from Memory by Linda Nagata

Memory

by Linda Nagata

I sighed deeply and shoved the savant away, watching its silvery wing-shape bobble on the air, wondering what Yaphet would choose to do.It was Moki’s soft growl that brought me back to the present.

He stood on the rock beside me, staring down the escarpment, at the track we had come up that afternoon. I leaned forward, striving to see past the darkness beneath the trees, fully expecting Kaphiri to appear on the trail we had made, a shadow walking out of the shadows, but I...

Consideration of Works Past: Farnham’s Freehold

(Picture from here.)

I’ve been avoiding writing this post for a bit now. Heck, I’ve been avoiding readingFarnham’s Freehold for a while now. There is a whole lot of controversy on that book. While race showed up regularly in his work, FF was the only book where he attempted to actually confront it.

There was a controversy about Podkayne of Mars. It is nothingcompared to the controversy around Farnham’s Freehold.

Spoiler alert: it’s a bad book and not worth re-reading.

But not for the reasons one...

Haunted by Jane Austen

A literary ramble through England:

“We’re being haunted by Jane Austen,” my husband Thor declared by the midpoint of our recent two-week jaunt through the midlands and southern England. It seemed that every town or village where we lighted had the birthplace, a dwelling, or the gravesite of the author. Which suited me just fine, since I’m a big fan of her novels, but it was spooking my normally logical scientist mate–all Sense to my Sensibility. The cracks were starting to appear as we hiked o...