Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff's Blog: #42 Pencil: A Writer's Life, the Universe, and Everything, page 73

WWW Wednesday 1-22-14

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?

I’m in the middle of Dragon Virus, from BVC’s own Laura Anne Gilman. It’s a series of linked stories about a genetic mutation that causes…well, interesting results, shall we say. I just love Laura Anne’s writing. I discovered her when I read the...

The Name of the Prose, Part 2: The Name is Bond—James Bond

Ah, but what if the namehadn’t been “James Bond”? What if the name Ian Fleming gave his super spy had been “Crane, Ichabod Crane?”

Clearly, a name that worked for the nebbish, nervous protagonist of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow would not work for the decisive, suave hero of Fleming’s tales of espionage and danger.

Why not? Let’s take a closer look.

James Bond: neither given name nor surname is flowery or unusual. They are short, simple, strong. Together they give us an impression that the charact...

Unintended Consequences

After writing about the question of death in fantasy last time I was here, I started thinking about deaths in my own work. Like who I’ve killed off and why. My first full-length fantasy was The Stone War, in which I more or less blew up my home town. Since my home town is New York City, there’s a fairly significant body count before my protagonist even makes it back into the city and starts trying to rebuild. Even once he gets back and starts to gather survivors together to try to keep the ci...

BVC Announces Kindred Rites by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

Kindred Rites

Night Calls Book 2

by Katharine Eliska Kimbriel

“…we are all Death’s pupils, we practitioners—students of the great healer.”

When magic broke free in my blood, I chose to follow our ancient family path and become a practitioner. I’m learning to heal, and to protect innocents. I dip into minds, stalk vampires, and set wards by the light of the moon. I can hear the children of the night calling.

But there are other families…and other paths. Families with twisted ambitions and frighteni...

Year of the Horse

Everybody’s been jumping the gun on this one–calling the Western, begins on January 1st year 2014 “The Year of the Horse,” when in fact the Chinese Lunar New Year doesn’t begin until January 31st. Horse people are terribly excited, more so than I can remember in previous Years of the Horse.

It’s a Thing. Probably it has to do with social media, which whip up frenzies on a regular basis. Plus all the like-minded people are gathering and sharing the love.

Yesterday I happened across an article th...

Resonance

There are currently two popular Sherlock Holmes TV shows: Elementary and Sherlock. Elementary is set in NYC (though with a British actor as Holmes) and—what drew me to watch it in the first place—Lucy Liu as Watson.

While I was watching an episode set in London, and Mycroft and Holmes were arguing over the Baker Street flat, I thought, in this world, are there tourists searching Baker Street for Sherlock Holmes’ apartment? In other words, did Arthur Conan Doyle even exist?

Then I thought, why d...

Rabbit for Rena

A Blue Hound Beagles Blog AKA when-not-writing…

For the past six weeks, Rena Beagle has been on a rabbit-only diet.

Here’s something that most people don’t ponder very often: rabbit is a lean meat. A leeeean meat. It is not, in fact, enough of anything but lean meat to keep a little girl Beagle going, even when fed whole prey.

(Yes, we got her whole ground rabbit, from the most awesome Hare Today. Every bit of said rabbit put through the grinder. And don’t let anyone ever tell you that a dog can...

The Music of the Spheres

At 4:31 AM, January 17, 1994, a previously unknown blind thrust fault under the San Fernando Valley near the town of Northridge ruptured. About twenty seconds later, much of western and northwestern Los Angeles suburbia lay in ruins. Even in Tujunga, where I lived, more than ten miles from the epicenter, the shaking was fierce. I found later that the back bedroom had slid partly off its foundation and then back, and the chimney had broken in half and was held up only by some twisted rebar.

My...

Japan In Late Fall

This post was originally published at the author’s blog Hahvi.net.

Last spring we made our first visit to Japan, arriving in Fukuoka at the height of cherry blossom season. It was a terrific trip, and my husband and daughter were soon plotting a return that would let us view the fall foliage. We’ve just returned from that adventure, and it too was a success.

The Internet decreed that early December would be the peak of the fall foliage season in southern Japan, so we set our trip for that time...

Legal Fictions: Documenting Your Vampire

Those commenting on my initial post in this series brought up another fascinating topic: How do people who don’t legally exist in our world get the documents they need to pass as human?

John C. Bunnell wrote:

An issue that crops up for me both as a reader and a writer: when someone of non-mortal origin is living incognito in our everyday world — be they faerie or vampire or werewolf — they’re often portrayed as maintaining a normal human identity. But now that so much identity information is co...