Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 70

Stop the Timer! The Aging Agility Dog…or Not?

When this blog topic came up with the Dog Agility Blog Event, I immediately thought about my first agility dog: Jean-Luc Picardigan, the boy no one ever thought could or would compete, due to his birth-related brain-injured strangeness.

Jean-Luc’s joy. Several of us cried over this picture, knowing how far agility brought this boy.

Then I thought about Belle Cardigan, whose loss still seems so recent I could reach out and touch it. She wasn’t supposed to run again after her non-agility injury a...

POETS Day: Antisocial Sonnet #2

Gesundheit!

The drama of a sneeze can’t be denied,

Its setting of the stage is masterly,

It starts with just a tingle deep inside

In nasal preface to catastrophe.

And then it builds to twitchings of the nose

With halting gasps that interrupt your speech

To give fair warning by your facial throes

That soon you’ll splatter all within your reach.

But if you try to stop it by main force

Or stifle the inevitable blast,

You find that goes against its nature’s course–

Just let it go and get relief at last.

For s...

Legal Fictions: Worshipping the Constitution

I’ve been reading The Red: Trials, the sequel to Linda Nagata’s much praised The Red: First Light – don’t worry, you’ll get your chance to read it soon – and it got me thinking about constitutions.

In military science fiction involving the U.S., the soldiers’ oath to uphold the Constitution often comes into play. An individual or a troop may decide to take a rogue action – that is, disobey orders – if they think someone in power has betrayed the Constitution and the country as a whole.

The Red...

Locus Recommended Reading List – No Others Are Genuine by Gregory Frost

BVC congratulates all the writers on the 2013 Locus Recommended Reading List, including BVC member Gregory Frost for “No Others Are Genuine” (Asimov’s 10-11/13).

WWW Wednesday 2-5-14

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?

Katharine Kerr’s Polar City Nightmare.

Actually re-reading this, first read in ms yea-these-many years ago. Like Pat Cadigan’s Synners, it’s worn surprisingly well. I liked it then because it used present tense, and I had two unpublished novels t...

#Watched100times: Out At The Wedding

I watch my favorite movies over…and over…and over. I will watch a movie I’ve seen thirty times rather than a movie that I suspect may disappoint me or give me nightmares. Far too often, my darling husband has been wakened by his wife’s screaming. To people who assure me, “But X is a great movie!” I reply that I’m protecting him from this kind of surprise. It’s partly why I watch so much romantic comedy.

Another reason I rewatch my faves is to try to figure out what’s not perfect about them. (A...

BVC Welcomes Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mary Anne Mohanraj is author of Bodies in Motion (HarperCollins) and nine other titles. Bodies in Motion was a finalist for the Asian American Book Awards, a USA Today Notable Book, and has been translated into six languages. Previous titles include Aqua Erotica and Wet (two erotica anthologies edited for Random House), Kathryn in the City and The Classics Professor (two erotic choose-your-own-adventure novels, Penguin), and The Best of Strange Horizons. Recent publications include Without a...

Writers’ Wall

Brick Wall by I, Xauxa.

Sometimes you just hit a brick wall. At which point there are several things you can do. You can sit, rubbing your nose or forehead or elbow or whatever part of you took the impact. You can look for a way to scale the wall (or get around it). You can do all the things you need to get done before returning to deal with the brick road. You can wonder whether you really want whatever is on the other side of the wall. (That last is particularly pernicious–I have never had a...

Author Interview: Mary Anne Mohanraj

Mary Anne Mohanraj

Interviewed by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Noted author Mary Anne Mohanraj was born in Sri Lanka and came to the United States as a toddler. Her classical, traditional parents did their best to raise their eldest daughter for the life they expected for her—the educated wife of a man she might meet only a couple of times before accepting him in an arranged marriage. Mary Anne had other ideas. She looked around, decided that she wanted a different life, and headed for the Univers...

Locus Recommended Reading List – Halfway Home by Linda Nagata

BVC congratulates all the writers on the 2013 Locus Recommended Reading List, including BVC member Linda Nagata for “Halfway Home” (Nightmare, ed. John Joseph Adams).