Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 50

BVC Members Help Lightspeed Destroy Science Fiction

The long-awaited “Women Destroy Science Fiction” issue of Lightspeed is now available.

Three members of Book View Cafe — Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Amy Sterling Casil, and Nancy Jane Moore — contributed personal essays to the issue.

Ebook versions in a variety of formats are available here. There’s also a print edition available here.

Go out and acquire one or the other. After all, women writers can’t destroy science fiction without the help of readers!

Trees & Flowers & Desert Rain

One awesome thing about living rurally in the Sandia foothills is that I have the space for an agility field. A modest field, to be sure, and one with occasionally terrible footing–you don’t even want to know adobe mud–stick-tights, and wildflowers I do my best to spare. It also used to wend its way around several beautiful piñons, but those fell prey to the combined heat and drought last year. Now I’ve got more space but a lot less shade.

This year the fire season is coming on early, dry, and...

The Internet as Heaven

by Ursula K. Le Guin

Time and space are the basic parameters of being in the world. Plants and animals fill their time and their space without question: the tree or the cow occupies its place in the world and its life-span completely and comfortably, seeking only to continue in them. Human beings as babies and children do much the same.

But the developing human brain loses or abandons this seamless occupancy of the world. People begin to question the size and shape of the space they occupy and...

Story Excerpt Sunday: From Lies and Prophecy by Marie Brennan

Lies and Prophecy

by Marie Brennan

Robert started half out of his chair when the door crashed into the wall. He didn’t relax at the sight of me in the entrance to his dorm room, and I couldn’t blame him.

He eyed me warily from his half-crouched stance as though debating whether to bolt for cover. “Are you angry at me, my absent roommate, or some poor ill-starred third party?”

My only response was to show him the tarot deck in my hand. He nodded, lowering himself back into his chair as I shuffled...

TRAINS: Writing on the Coast Starlight

My spouse loves trains, and he heard that one of the most scenic lines in the country is the Coast Starlight. This train runs between Los Angeles and Seattle, and much of its route is right along the coast, so: spectacular views. He wanted to try it, and I said sure.

History buffs will enjoy starting a trip at Union Station in Los Angeles. This beautiful old building has been featured in a lot of film projects, often masquerading as someplace else entirely. Spouse enjoys spotting it in variou...

Champlain College: A Fine Place for a Young Writers Workshop

Last week I wrote about the time I’d just spent at Bread Loaf working with high-school aged writers. Well, now I’m just back from a similarly awesome event, the Champlain College Young Writers Conference, in beautiful Burlington, Vermont, overlooking Lake Champlain. This was my first time there, so I had to discover how things worked as I went. While extremely busy, it was a little more laid-back than Bread Loaf. (Sometimes that meant easygoing and sometimes it meant confusing.) I saw a bunch...

Great Covers: Lady of Ashes

This series will appear at random as I find covers that make me say, “Wow!”

This cover for Lady of Ashes by Christine Trent immediately caught my eye. It’s not only stylish, it sets both the era and the mood of the book. Victorian, funerary, with the rose for a touch of romance.

And again, plenty of open space. If this cover was filled up with extra stuff, the beautiful rainy background of the art would be lost.

Couldn’t find a designer credit. Congrats to whomever it is.

My Own Private WisCon

Even more than most conventions, WisCon is not the same experience for everyone. This was brought home to me on the last day of this year’s convention when I mentioned to a couple of writers I know that a friend of mine was agitating to get WisCon to invite Donna Haraway as a future guest of honor.

The first one asked, “Who’s she?” The second one acknowledged that they’d only heard of her because of a story they’d read recently.

I was stunned, because I’d just spent the convention going to pane...

The Moon and the Sun movie news

Recent news about the filming of BVC founding member Vonda N. McIntyre‘s Nebula Award-winning novel The Moon and the Sun.

Hollywood stars hit Melbourne


Yahoo!7 May 28, 2014, 7:02 pm

A touch of Tinseltown has come to Melbourne with former James Bond star Pierce Brosnan filming his latest blockbuster here, Melina Sarris reports. [view video]

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The Moon and the Sun films nautical storm sequence at Docklands in Melbourne on the Enterprize. (In an amusing coin...

WWW Wednesday–Cat Kimbriel is Always Reading

It’s WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading. I freely admit to having easily a half dozen nonfiction books and several novels going just now, so here’s a brief snippet of what I had at hand:

• What did you recently finish reading?

Rough Magic by Pat MacEwen

Wow. Grimdark Urban Fantasy.

You think you’ve been reading the hard stuff? Only if you’ve been reading Pat MacEwen’s work. MacEwen is a physical anthropologist who knows way too much about the horrors of genocide. So what if that gen...