Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 56

Report from Versailles: The Musketeer

by Vonda N. McIntyre

As folks who follow the BVC blog know, I’m having an adventure.

My novel The Moon and the Sun is being made into a movie. Producer Bill Mechanic invited me to visit the production while it filmed at Versailles, France, with unprecedented access to the chateau de Versailles.

The chateau was the site of the 17th-century court of the Sun King, Louis XIV. It’s designed to overwhelm visitors with the power and gloire of the king.

Hall of Mirrors. The Chapel. The gardens of the cha...

Trains: Writing on a Train? Yes, please!

I love trains, and always have. When I was a kid, growing up in Huron, Ohio, I lived maybe half a mile from the New York Central main line (now Amtrak’s) between New York and Chicago. Sometimes we would get ice cream cones and go down to the tracks at about 9 p.m. Nighttime trains were always the best. If they were running on time, we’d get to watch two great eastbound passenger trains—thePacemakerand theTwentieth Century Limited—fly past about ten minutes apart.

The show opened in stages in t...

The Tajji Diaries: Doggie Dental Woes

Dogs, like many other carnivores, have specialized teeth for shearing. These teeth come in pairs – an upper and a lower – and are modified fourth premolars (upper) and first molar (lower). The sharp cusps create a scissors-like action, obviously important for chopping up chunks of flesh into pieces that can be swallowed. (Sabertooth cats had carnassial teeth, too – they did not use their elongated canines for chewing!) Apparently, these teeth are particularly susceptible to fracturing and abs...

Legal Fictions: How to Practice Law (in the Future)

By Nancy Jane Moore

One of the reasons I went to law school was to be able to work for myself. It used to be common for people to come out of law school and hang out a shingle.

So when I graduated, I did just that. In retrospect, I’m not sure it was a great idea. I certainly never made any money. In fact, I was a lot like the lawyer character Eileen in my story “Revision”, available in Mad Science Café, who describes her early years of law practice like this:

So I helped communes buy their prop...

WWW Wednesday 4-23-2014

WWW Wednesday. This meme is from shouldbereading.

To play along, just answer the following three (3) questions…

• What are you currently reading?

• What did you recently finish reading?

• What do you think you’ll read next?

• What are you currently reading?

I have books stashed in several locations around the house. At the breakfast table I currently am readingThePlantagenetsby Dan Jones. This is a big book and he only gets through the Edwards. The War of the Roses will be another volume. Jones wri...

The Mathematics of Writing

History—and nonfiction of various types—offers a wonderful smorgasbord of events and interrelationships for writers to base stories on. Most writers—myself included—have mined nonfiction for fictional ideas. My collectedhistory books havemany pages with the words“Story here!” scrawled at the top, often with multiple exclamation points, highlighting and arrows pointing to the text that made the hair rise up on my neck and my ovaries twitch.

It’s easy to get ideas from nonfiction—books, magazine...

A Woman Goes to War: A Call to Arms by P. G. Nagle

A new historical novel by P. G. Nagle

1861: as America erupts into civil war, Emma Edmonds is roused to such intense patriotism that she joins the Union army…as a man.

Raised on a farm by a father who would have preferred a son, Emma can ride, shoot, and hunt as well as any man. She defies convention to become a soldier, an army nurse, even a spy. Dangers surround her, from enemy fire in battle to the risk of discovery by her friends, which would end in court-martial and disgrace. Always she se...

Food: New Uses For Winter Squash

Tajji guarding squash

I love winter squashes. They’re delicious, versatile, and packed with nutrients. Some varieties you can find in markets pretty much all year round — acorn and butternut, sometimes chunks of banana squash or Hubbard, with specialty or health food markets carrying kabocha and a few others, too. Others are seasonal. Pumpkins are easiest to find in the fall, and I think it’s a tragedy that so many end up rotting when their decorative days are over. Delicata doesn’t store well...

The Breedist Beagle

Connery is a breedist Beagle.

“BEWARE!” he bays, if a problem breed comes into his orbit. “DO NOT WANT!”

If he spots such an individual while we’re running an agility course, I can be pretty sure he’s going to bring down a bar or pop a weave, because he just can’t think beyond the worrisome presence of that dog. He tries so hard that it’s palpable but he just. Can. Not.

To be fair to Connery, he has reasons. Good ones. Like his objection to Boxers? The first dog who attacked him was a Mastiff—...

More on Health Insurance for Writers

by Brenda W. Clough

Earlier this season this report surfaced from writer Elizabeth Hand.

She is a single mother with two kids living in Maine, and she calculates she spent at least $60,000 since 2001 on her health care. And this is a healthy woman with healthy kids, living on a writing income. I wince just thinking about this. She signed up this year for ACA benefits, and her monthly payment has dropped from $466 to $52.

Furthermore, now that she can afford it, she had a colonoscopy. Click throu...