Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 5

Gina and Boris (The Harley)

Every private eye needs a cool ride to get them around. Gina Miyoko’s cool ride is Boris, the Harley. Boris is a Cherry Red, 1983 Super Glide II.

Pretty, huh? Boris has been known to go through carburetors, so Gina keeps a spare on hand at all times and picks up refurbished ones whenever the opportunity arises.

She talks to Boris on occasion and has been known to speculate that if a person’s home has domovoi (which is a Russian word for the spirit of a house), perhaps vehicles have some sort...

Gina S. Miyoko, P.I.

She’s five-foot-two, gamine, and weighs ninety-four pounds in a soggy trench coat. The nickname “Tinkerbell” has followed her from high school. It’s hard to imagine her riding a Harley named Boris, or packing a baby blue .357 Magnum. She does both. She’s Gina Miyoko, private eye.

After a disastrous engagement, quitting the San Francisco police force, and going walkabout in Gold Rush country, Gina has opened her own detective agency. Her usual cases involve suspicious spouses and worker’s com...

Confessions of a Ghost (Writer)—Zombie Apocalypse

I’ve never sat down and counted all of my ghostwriting/editing clients. Every once in a while, when I go in to clean up my file folders, I realize that I’ve had more than I thought and that I’ve actually forgotten about some of them. Some I work with once and that’s that; some I’ve been working with for years. A lot of them, in one way or another, came to me from one of several editorial services I’ve done work for—companies who, in turn, came to me through a wonderful (but, alas, deceased) f...

Confessions of a Ghost (Writer)—Who Does That?

I have been a full time writer since 2005. During that time, I’ve penned eight original or shared-world novels, had five of them published with my first mystery-crime novel due out in October 2018, and am working on a ninth book (well, and a tenth and an eleventh . . . you get the picture.)

That activity not withstanding, at least half of my income in a given year comes from work I do that 1) may never see print and 2) doesn’t have my name on it and which I did not count in the above paragrap...

Readings and Pre-orders

The other thing is that the novel works out loud! People laughed in al...

The Advanced Copies Are Out—Reviews Are Coming In!

The ARCs (Advanced Review Copies) of The Antiquities Hunter have gone out to other mystery and crime writers and reviewers and I got a look at some of the reviews that are posted on the Pegasus website.

So SQUEEEEEEE!

Here’s one….

“Bohnhoff’s The Antiquities Hunter is a wild, breathless ride, a true pager turner. The plot alone, although full of exciting and unexpected turns, isn’t what makes it so compelling. Rather, it’s the energy, humor, and no-nonsense of its lead detective, Gina “Tink”...

It’s Official! I Am Now a Mystery/Crime Writer!

Yes, it’s true. I have sold my first ever mystery / crime novel to Pegasus Books—or rather my amazing and inestimable agent has. So, I have now stopped pinching myself and am ready to squee loud and long.

My first Gina Miyoko Mystery—THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER—will release on October 2, 2018 in hard back.

Let me tell you a little about Gina Suzu Miyoko. She’s five-foot-two, gamine, and weighs eighty-nine pounds in a soggy trench coat. The nickname “Tinkerbell” (or “Tink” for short) has followed h...

Mass Shootings, False Flags and False Logic

I wrote this essay in 2016 after the Pulse massacre in Orlando. I rerun it now in the wake of another Floridian tragedy—the Valentine’s Day massacre at a Parkland, Florida high school, which took 17 lives, most of them high school students. In between, of course, we had what is the new worst mass shooting in US history, Las Vegas’s Harvest Festival massacre, in which 58 people died.

This article deals specifically with the irrational leap to conspiracy theories that are thick in the air afte...

This is … A Marching Band Mom’s Squee

Where’s Amanda? There’s Amanda!

Watching the London New Year’s Day Parade was like playing a Marching Band Mom version of Where’s Waldo?

That’s my ‘Waldo’ (daughter Amanda) in the foreground of the photo to the left, marching tenor sax next to her BF, Stephen Matzas. This was a major league squee (“There’s Oak Grove!”) peppered with moments of frustration (will those blooming hosts never stop talking and let us hear the bands play?) and nostalgia (I wanted to go back to England so badly I cou...

Confessions of a Ghost Writer: the Big Scary

I read a column this morning in CodeLikeaGirl (on Medium) in which Kira Leigh eloquently expressed the sheer scariness of pursuing a career as a freelancer. I was compelled to respond because while Kira is fairly new at freelancing, I’ve been doing it for a while now and I wanted to share my story.

It seemed somehow fitting that I post it here, too.

I’ve been freelancing as a ghostwriter, editor, book doctor and cover designer for about twelve years now. The good news is that it becomes mostl...