Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 33

Good Bad Books

Worldcon is now over, and if you were stuck home like me, your internet reading every day was full of posts about panels and discussions and finally the awards, which latter sparked some discussion, including the inevitable backlash of derision for various choices.

As far back as I can remember (the first Worldcon I attended was 1972, a few blocks from my house, directly underneath the LAX runway) fans and readers have enthusiastically praised or trashed the past year’s publications.

I’m always...

The Importance of Being Ernest: A Very Short Review

by Brenda W. Clough

For those of you who have just tuned in, I went to Britain and came back. While I was there I wedged in as much theater as I possibly could. Clearly reviews must be written!

We went to the TKTS booth in Leicester Square the first day we arrived and picked up half-price tickets for The Importance of Being Ernest on impulse. It was that or The Pajama Game, and my husband is easily overdosed with musicals. This production is an oddity — a play within a play, the central one bei...

Flash Memoir: ‘Spinster’

Note: I’m off hiking at Point Reyes National Seashore this week, so I’ve posted one of the stories from my flash fiction collection, Flashes of Illumination . This is what I call flash memoir: a type of creative nonfiction built on things that happened to the author. I’m working on more of these.

I wrote this story ten years ago. I’m still not married, but I am in a serious relationship these days.

Spinster

by Nancy Jane Moore

I got my first cat when I was 19. My grandmother said, “Oh, dear, you’...

WWW Wednesday – Aug 27, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

My reading of late has been sporadic, fitted around beta reading and proofing.

• What are you currently reading?

After Elizabeth, by Leanda de Lisle. Basic, eminently readable history about James I of England, when the Stuarts came to the English throne. There’s so much out there about Elizabeth Tudor, and about Charles I and the Interregnum, but not all that much about James, who is a complicated figure, to say the least.

Sorcerer’s Feud, by Kath...

What’s in a Word: Emotional Atmosphere

Like all writers, I have a special relationship with words. In my case, I love them. I am fascinated by the way they work (or fail to work), the myriad ways in which they can be misunderstood, misused, even abused by people who don’t know any better or who should know better or who abuse words with malice aforethought.

I know some writers who have a love/hate relationship with words, who claim they hate using them but love having used them. I don’t get that at all, so I’ll leave it to someone...

Meaning

Brenda Clough has been taking us along with her on her post-Worldcon journeys. Me, I front-loaded my trip to Europe, going to a friend’s 60th birthday party in Normandy.It was a loose sort of gathering–people hung around, or walked, or ran, or wrote, or did whatever they wanted. And there were day trips. Some folk went to see Normandy beach (this is the70th anniversary of the landing, and there were American flags everywhere). Some folk went farther afield. Me, I teamed up with a couple of fr...

BVC Announces Nine White Horses by Judith Tarr

Nine White Horses

by Judith Tarr

Nine stories of horses and their people. Nine tales of magic and enchantment.

Horses of the ancient world, horses of the Middle Ages and the Arabian Nights, horses of the present and the future, even horses (and not quite horses) of a world that never was.

When a mysterious stranger steals the Emperor Charlemagne’s favorite horse, the Emperor’s page goes hunting for the thief and the horse–and uncovers a secret older than gods.

Drawn to a stableyard full of legenda...

The McKittypants Diaries

This year, with the varmint invasion at an all time high–from rabbits to squirrels to pack rats to mice to gophers–we put into action tentative plan to acquire a barn cat–a cat of such nature so as not to be a viable adoptable indoor pet.

We have an agility friend with connections in high places at our awesome localish (in the city) shelter, Animal Humane. Okay, very high places. She runs the thing and is also a talented animal yenta. She hooked us up with a reclusive 7-year-old named Calypso...

Worldcon Report 16: Hadrian Fangirl

by Brenda W. Clough

Both my husband and I are going through a period of severe Roman fandom. I am writing a time travel novel and he is doing research on curse tablets. So this day was devoted to seeking Roman ruins across the north country. Luckily Hadrian’s Wall is right here near Carlisle, and here is a piece of it. I took this picture at a roadside site on the way to Birdoswald, a fort on the Wall. For many centuries the Wall was mined by the local peasantry for sheep walls and so on, but...

Story Excerpt Sunday: From Ardent Forest by Nancy Jane Moore

Ardent Forest

by Nancy Jane Moore

The late afternoon sun caught the gold mirrored glass in one of the dozens of tall buildings that stretched to the south. In that moment it was possible to imagine a bustling downtown, one where deals were made on the upper floors and people in search of a good time overflowed the bars and restaurants at ground level.

But as the Earth continued its inexorable rotation, the illusion vanished, leaving in its wake a canyon of decaying structures. The windows catchi...