Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 53

A Day in the Life

Unlike most GSDs, Tajji is a water dog.

With her retirement, Tajji’s life got a lot wider. Since she’s no longer a working dog, we’re able to allow her many more choices about what she does and does not want to do.

Yesterday I walked Tajji down to the San Lorenzo River, a trip that took us about halfway to town along West Park Avenue, about 3/4ths of a mile. That in itself was tremendous progress; a week ago or so it was hard to get her around the block. Despite several canine and human encount...

Legal Fictions: Bad Journalism

I started this series because I kept seeing errors about law in fiction. But bad journalism about law irritates me even more.

One of the unfortunate things about the way the digital world has changed journalism is that a lot of articles on legal issues are written by people who lack a complete understanding of what they are covering. It’s bad enough when this happens in your local weekly, where the reporter is probably just out of school and making only a little more than minimum wage.

It reall...

Truthers vs Writers: Time, Freeze Frames, Connections and Back Story

I had the truly bizarre experience of conversing with a Sandy Hook truther or two this past weekend. After listening to the litany of “reasons” that they have for suspecting a hoax or conspiracy of some sort (what sort varies), and hearing their questions, and reading some of their source material, a pattern began to emerge.

They seemed to have little awareness of a number of things that, as a writer, I must take into account in every story I write and every plot I conceive.

These include such...

Reaching Out with Reaching First

Like most of us who stop by Book View Cafe, I can’t imagine living without books.I keenly remember my Dick and Jane readers, and all my memories of childhood are illustrated with the books I was reading at the time events transpired.I’ve met most of my close friends through shared love of books, and I knew my husband was my perfect Match.com match when he also listed The Lord of the Rings as the most influential book in his life.

Imagine my challenge, then, as I set out to write a character wh...

Planned Obsolescence

A billionyears ago (actually 24) I worked as aghost-writerfor a psychiatrist whose specialties were 1) working with women with serious psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar depression, etc.) who were the mothers of infants, and 2) infant depression (you will be unsurprised to know that they are frequently linked).About the time my older daughter was six months old, I quit–having my nose that deepinto psychiatric dysfunction in infancy meant that every time my daughter hiccuped I was a...

BVC Announces The Right Bitch Trio by Doranna Durgin

The Right Bitch Trio

by Doranna Durgin

The Right Bitch x3: one blue-ticked bitch, three stories, & three times the irreverent adventure.

A Bitch in Time: With her handler, Shiba patrols her territory for illicit magic. But Shiba has just lost her lifelong partner, and his replacement doesn’t trust her. With nasty illicit magic sneaking across the border, what’s a bitch to do? Of course, the real question is, will she do it in time…



The Right Bitch: Shiba isn’t your average bitch in chain mail…she...

Transitions

There are a great number of transitions happening around our equine world of late. It’s breeding season, of course, and various connections are busy raising or awaiting this year’s foals and getting ready to make next year’s models. We thought we might try that–briefly; but economics and practicality intervened, along with the horses’ own biology. The young ones are stuck and not coming into season. The ones coming into season are the elders, who have given at that office, repeatedly, and who...

Song vs. Story

(Picture fromhere.)

My father was a musician and my mother was a writer. Apparently, it’s harder to teach story than music so I started piano at four and have kept it up ever since. Think of me as a determined and talentless, but enthusiastic, amateur.

But my mother got me in the end.

Over the years I’ve been thinking over and over how music and narrative are related. I don’t mean sound tracks intended to support or tell actual stories or things like opera where stories are performed with music....

Report from Versailles: Pain au chocolat to peanut butter toast

Vonda on Chapel Balcony

By Vonda N. McIntyre

Monday. The chateau de Versailles is closed to the public on Monday, so the production of The Moon and the Sun had permission to film inside during the day. It was the last day of filming in France. Tomorrow, the production would head to Melbourne for studio work, and I would head home to Seattle.

A lot was going on and I, a visitor, wanted to stay out of the way. I found myself on the King’s Balcony, above the Chapel where most of the filming was goi...

Indie Discoveries–Lindsay Buroker

This is the second in my occasional postings on indie discoveries. My latest binge has been through the works of Lindsay Buroker.

One of the most remarkable aspects of this author is that in many ways she runs against the current received wisdom of independent writers. Not that the ever-evolving rules are consistent.

Some swear by constant PR and self-plugging on Facebook, Twitter, and personal blogs; they join blog tours, they constantly fiddle with price pulsing, and so on.

Some say you have t...