Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 43

David D. Levine is the Westercon Fan Guest of Honor for 2016

We’re very pleased to announce that BVC member David D. Levine will be the Fan Guest of Honor at Westercon 69, to be held in Portland, Oregon on the Fourth of July weekend in 2016. The other GoHs are John Scalzi and Charlie Stross, with more to be named later.

Boys and Girls Together

Last week’s supreme court decision that the religious beliefs of corporations trump the rights of actual people who happen to be women was written by five men too old to have spent a lot of time dealing with women as equals.

Chief Justice Roberts, at 59, is the youngest of that group, meaning that even he went to law school before the gender balance among law students became roughly equal. In addition, the chief justice and Justice Scalia both went to all-boy Catholic high schools (all five of...

Don’t Crush That Writer (Hand Me the Duct Tape) – Three

Last time I talked about some of the responsibilities the members of a critique group or writers’ workshop had to the writer whose work they were critiquing. This time, I’d like to address the responsibilities of the writer, which go beyond the helpful “Don’t panic!” and “There’s no crying in writing!”

At a panel on critique groups at a recent science fiction convention, some of our audience members (aspiring writers, all)were surprised when the panelists unanimously agreed thatthe writer whos...

WWW Wednesday – July 9, 2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

• What are you currently reading?

Prisoner, by Lia Silver. The backbone of this romantic action series is werewolves, but Silver is doing her own thing with the world building, adding in powers as well as seriously bad-ass warriors male and female. Best of all, the characterizations are complex, as you’d expect from a writer who by day is a therapist specializing in trauma and PTSD, but there is plenty of wisecracking and humor to keep the story...

BVC Announces Risk of Love and Magic by Patricia Rice

Risk of Love and Magic

by Patricia Rice

Brilliant psychic Nadine Malcolm is held prisoner in an asylum by her stepfather, a power-mad general. As the Librarian, she secretly hijacks computers to prevent his plans to turn paranormal children into weapons. When her younger sister ominously disappears, Nadine reaches through cyberspace for help.

Ex-Special Forces warrior Magnus Oswin has focused his formidable talents on stopping the rogue general who once held him prisoner. After picking up the Li...

Creativity

New BVC Release

I’ve always wanted to write about a mad librarian.

Well, that’s probably a lie, but it’s hard to tell since I lie for a living. I’ve always admired librarians and wished I could spend my days surrounded by books—except librarians have to endure the demanding public as well. And that would make me insane—hence, the mad librarian.

That’s how creativity works. We recently had a discussion on the historical romance blog the Word Wenches on whether we develop our characters from real...

All the Colors of W00t

Qualifying! Winning! Titles! W00t! Rah!

Because hey, that stuff is fun. It’s lots of fun. The green Q ribbon is a revered thing. Add a bit of placement ribbon color and…you know…

W00t!

But if it was the only marker of success, I can’t imagine many of us would keep training, keep entering…keep running. Keep on with our little public humility lessons. Because with some dogs, those placement ribbons never come, and with others, the Q ribbons are a rarity, and with still others, the lessons in humil...

Author Interview: James Hetley

James Hetley

Interview byKatharine Eliska Kimbriel

James Hetley is a renaissance man, which is often the case with writers. He’s been an architect specializing in renovation and adaptive reuse of old buildings. Of course, he lives in a magnificent horror of a house from the 1850s, with an electrical system from Edison’s time and a furnace installed when Roosevelt was president.

Teddy Roosevelt.

He offsets all this by living in the present, learning about the past, and hypothesizing about the futu...

Deborah’s E/x/h/a/u/s/t/i/n/g Excellent New York Adventure, the Good Parts Version

In early March, I learned that my science fiction novel Collaborators had been named as a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award. Much celebration ensued. (Feel free to do so yourselves at this point – a little celebration is good for everyone. Ready to go on? Okay!) Once the initial giddy high had subsided somewhat, the Big Question arose: whether to go to New York City to attend the awards ceremony. Many reasons to do so presented themselves. OMG how could I NOT? topped the list, followed b...

Equilibrium

I hate change.

In what’s obviously a change year, that’s kind of a problem.

A lot of the comfortable and the familiar has for various reasons passed on or stopped being there. The Home riding Horse retired due to age and injury. The house is succumbing to entropy–leaks here, broken bits there. Even the years-long writers’ block that’s finally, mercifully unblocked is still–changey. What’s shown up in its place is not like the old writing self. It’s something, or someone, different.

That’s the wa...