Writer of speculative fiction as the result of a horrible childhood incident involving Klaatu and a robot named Gort. New York Times bestselling author of science fiction and fantasy. Singer, songwriter, performer, Bahá'í.
Welcome to my new website. My God, it’s full of books!
Specifically, MY books. Books that contain characters and places I have loved and nurtured from a dream or a feeling or a sudden sense that a story just tapped me on the shoulder through all the stages of their evolution until they appeared in pixels or print in what we call the Real World.
In these books, you’ll hang with all sorts of people: A lost-in-space amnesiac with unsettling abilities. A pint-sized PI who carries a baby blue .357 magnum and rides a Harley blessed with Holy Water by a perhaps-too-anxious mum. A young man from Philly who watches ghost baseball games and wonders if he really has to marry a cockroach named Svetlana. A Jedi named Jax who thinks he may be the last of his kind, and his droid bestie, I-5, whom Jax is pretty sure is the first of his kind. A NYPD detective who worries about being yanked into the misty past at any second. Did I mention Han Solo? He’s in one of these books, too.
You’ll also visit a lot of very different places in these books, from the familiar present-day San Francisco, to a very different future-San Francisco peopled by Ohlone ghosts and a wizard named Chickpea. From Philadelphia, circa 1955, to a past Poland where magic lives in the elements and contains the seeds of vast ruin, to places that don’t exist in this world, or exist only in this or that book.
You can travel in space with an intrepid xeno-anthropologist who’s the best trade negotiator the Tanaka Corporation has to offer. In fact, you could find yourself time-traveling in a variety of ways with a bunch of different folks.
And wherever you go or whomever you’re with, there’s always a chance you might save a people or a world or the entire universe … or maybe just your best friend.
So, let’s make Reality behave together, I invite you to step into my bookshop and choose an adventure.
(We’re open, though the rest of the site is a work in progress.)
Well, we’re at the midway point or thereabouts with the Kickstarter for our newest all original music album, LABYRINTH.
Yes, I know, it’s the first I’ve mentioned it here because I am woefully bad at self-promotion event though I have been schooled by the best (Kevin J. Anderson, I’m looking at you).
But here’s the deal: Jeff and I are especially excited about this album for a multitude of reasons, some musical and some not.
What can I say about the music? I love it. especially the final track, “It’s Quiet Here.” That song was a late entry into the lineup which we decided to record when we pulled another song from the album because Jeff was unhappy with the lyric. “Quiet” was one of those songs (I think there may be one on every album) that was written, composed and recorded in a matter of days.
I fell in love with the song while I was working out the melody lines for it. I love the way it builds up with every verse and how the vocal turned out AND (as a big old bonus) the fact that Steve MacDonald happened to be here recording a selection for another project. So I did what any red-blooded singer would do: I begged him to put a harmony on the track. He also sings on “Don’t Look Away,” which is another favorite of mine.
Most of the reasons I’m excited about the album involve the work done by our incredibly talented friends who contributed their awesomeness to the mix. Stevie Mac and Vixy Dockrey on vocals, Mary Crowell and Jared Norris on keys, Chris French on sax, Betsey Tinney on cello and, of course, the absurdly perfect bass lines of Mike Mallory. Each of these extraordinary folks did signature work on this album, bringing elements to it that sometimes redefined the songs for us.
My non-musical reasons for loving this album include the stunning art and design work of Beckett Gladney on the cover and the campaign premiums and the love and support of friends and family in this effort. There is no end to the number of people we have to thank. (Remind me to tell y’all about the photoshoot we did in Seattle with Beckett and Taunya Gren on the hottest, steamiest day of the year … well, it sure seemed like it to me. And then there was our fab lunch at the Blue Star Cafe in Wallingford that we spent brainstorming premiums.)
Right now, I’m getting into TLDR territory, so I’ll wrap it up by saying thanks to all the folks that are contributing to the campaign.
I was hopeful about Coulter’s THE TARGET (second of a series) because I’d enjoyed her gothics so much back in the day, but this novel, even more than the previous one, THE MAZE, had some deep issues without the unique crime angle.
Editorial absence: There were so many confusingly vague sentences, plot errors, timeline errors and reality issues that I kept putting on my editor hat and gnashing my teeth. I wondered if Ms. Coulter’s editor had developed Jane Auel syndrome, an affliction in which an editor is afraid to actually edit a very popular author. (The author may not even want or be aware of this happening, by the way.)
Fits and starts plotting: More than once, the plot reached a point at which the entire cast was breathing sighs of relief and saying, “It’s over, at last.” From the reader’s POV, it was clearly not over. Bad guys were still on the loose, murderous movers and shakers still had a vendetta going, the main characters were still in danger. These people were mostly seasoned crime-fighters (FBI agents and a judge) and should’ve known better. Those elements can’t be thrust aside just because the writer has a character say, “Oh, Really Awful Criminal wouldn’t continue to strike back.”
All of the above contributed to an overall sense of Puppet Master Syndrome in which characters do things just because the writer needs them to do them at this point in the plot. As a result it was sometimes hard to get a handle on the personalities of the characters.
Unclear and unrealistic action sequences: Example: at one point the hero has dived into the ocean from a pier and is pursuing a criminal. Criminal shoots hero in the shoulder, yet the hero is able to hold the criminal in a headlock and tread water with one useless arm. He is fully clothed and wearing shoes and his injured arm is described as hanging down, with blood streaking down his arm and his shirt plastered to the wound … though our hero would have to be up to his neck in sea water in order to maintain the headlock on the criminal. This is not my experience with the way bodies behave in water. This got more complicated when we suddenly realize the hero’s family and others are watching from directly above on the pier and then, equally suddenly, “two men were in the water.” You realize a sentence or two later that the two men referenced are not the hero and the criminal but two FBI agents who have jumped in to offer assistance.
In any story that relies on action sequences, it’s important for the reader to be able to visualize the scene in which action is taking place. In the above sequence and others like it (including sex scenes) I had to keep stopping and going back to revise my take on what was happening because I was supplying all the details.
And finally, the reason I wanted to read the book was because of Savich and Sherlock but they were rarely in it. The main relationship tension was between the new characters Ramsey, Molly and Emma whom, I gather, got their own series. Though they are the focus, left unresolved, after drawing attention to it repeatedly, was Molly’s sense that Ramsey married her because he had become attached to her little girl, Emma. I totally get her uncertainty, under the circumstances, but it was disappointing not to have Ramsey set her straight, given how many times it came up.
I probably will try more of Coulter’s detective fiction, but not just now. Or I may just go back to enjoying her gothics.
My daughter, Kristine, reads constantly. The day I originally wrote this little essay, she was, in fact, sitting in the living room reading Lord of the Rings with a stack of history books and Jane Austen-related material next to her chair. She got her exercise by walking to the library and lugging home books. This makes her My Hero.
On one of her library safaris, she introduced me to another writer who has also become My Hero. She bagged a library a book about a very particular publishing phenomenon—series children’s books. There were a number of writers who gave their talents to this effort, but the paragon that stood out in my reading of the book was Mildred A. Wirt, the original Carolyn Keene. (The title, for anyone who’s interested is Girl Sleuth: Nancy Drew and the Women Who Created Her by Melanie Rehak.)
I expect that most women reading this know that byline. Carolyn Keene was the author of record for the Nancy Drew Mystery series that most of us grew up with—that girls are still growing up with and which, after repeated tries to bring Nancy into the new age or to make her adhere to modern assumptions about what girls want to read, has reverted back to the character she was when the inestimable Ms. Wirt was writing her.
So, why is Mildred Wirt My Hero? It’s not just that she wrote 23 volumes of the Nancy Drew series. It was that she also wrote:
Kay Tracey (as Frances K. Judd) Penny Parker (as Mildred A. Wirt) Dana Girls (as Carolyn Keene) Penny Nichols (as Joan Clark) Connie Carl (as Joan Clark) Madge Sterling (as Ann Wirt)
It was that in her most prolific year, 1939, she wrote nine novels. She wrote when she was pregnant, raising a child, caring for a sick husband and sustaining his loss, dealing with her own health problems.
She wrote from spartan outlines and from very detailed ones—both of which can be a blessing or a curse for a writer.
She dealt with editors who were disengaged from her issues and who were jealous of their creations.
She worked under wraps—sworn to secrecy about her involvement with the books she wrote—and reacted with measured calm when others took credit for her work. (Since I also ghostwrite for a living, I understand what this feels like better than I’d like to).
Millie Wirt could fly a plane, climb a mountain, and paddle the Amazon. She could be self-confident yet self-effacing, assertive yet measured, bold yet polite—even in the face of unjust criticism. She was a journalist, too, who worked until the age of 96, using a magnifying lens so as to be able to see the computer display. She turned in her last column one evening in May of 2002, went home and died that night. If that’s not dying in harness, I don’t know what is.
All of that is why she is My Hero. She exemplified something science fiction writer and fellow MAFIA (Making Appearances Frequently In Analog) member Michael Flynn wrote years ago about how writers deal with the changes and chances of the material world. I can’t quote him verbatim, but I can paraphrase and condense his comments thusly: If the world around you seems to be going mad, keep writing. If the sky is falling and you have no means to prop it up, keep writing. If things are splodey-sploding all around you, keep writing.
From Book View Cafe member and New York Times bestselling author Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff comes a new private detective series featuring Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, who goes undercover in the Mexican jungle to hunt down a ring of thieves responsible for looting pre-Columbian archaeology sites. Here fellow author Deborah J. Ross chats with Maya about her book:
Deborah J. Ross: How did you come up with Gina S. Miyoko?
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff: I honestly don’t remember except that she arose from a dream I had, the plot of which (yes, my dreams often have plots) I don’t remember. I knew I wanted to write her as the protagonist of a mystery novel, and I knew I wanted her to be different from the female P.I.s I’d read. I love mystery and crime fiction but I noticed that all the female protagonists were alienated and broken and party to dysfunctional relationships. I wanted Gina to be flawed and have enough pain in her life to be relatable, but I also wanted her to be part of a very functional, if quirky family and support network. Among the Japanese names I was considering, Gina Suzu Miyoko meant, “Silver Bell Temple;” Tinkerbell became an inevitable nickname. And her personality just grew out of that.
DR: And Russian Orthodox witches?
MKB: Around the time I was developing Gina and the characters that would surround her, I was reading a book entitled THE BATHHOUSE AT MIDNIGHT: An Historical Survey of Magic and Divination in Russia (WF Ryan). I was reading it because the novel I was working on at the time (MAGIC TIME: ANGELFIRE, from Harper-Voyager) had a Russian ex-pat as one of the central characters. Okay, and also I’m Russian-Polish on my father’s side and have been fascinated with the folklore and history of Slavic culture since I was a child. Probably more so because my grandmother was so adamant that I not be taught anything about the Old Country but be brought up thoroughly American. In any event, the book sparked the idea that I wanted Gina’s mother to be Russian and fascinated by arcana. She was originally going to be a psychologist, but by the time I started writing the book that became THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER, she had morphed into a cultural anthropologist and folklorist.
As tends to happen with these things, as I began to write the characters, they essentially told me who they were. I’m sure you know the feeling—as if the character is inside your head whispering sweet somethings to your Muse.
DR: Did you research PI procedures like the post-it notes and Who/What/When etc?
MKB: I have to laugh. The post-it note method is something I’ve used to plot novels for years. It seemed to me that my post-it process would be as ideal for working out the nuances of a real world mystery as it is for plotting a novel. My editor suggested editing the scene in which you first see Gina use the post-its so that she just wrote on the white board. I declined and explained the beauty of post-its to her by having Gina demonstrate it for the reader.
DR: How did you become interested in the problem of looting of antiquities? Why the Southwest?
MKB: I have loved archaeology for as long as I can remember. I subscribed for years to Archeology magazine, and KMT (Kemet – which is the old Egyptian name for Egypt). I happened to read an article about a female undercover agent for the National Park Service and the sort of work she and her teammates did, chiefly in the Southwest where there are a lot of vulnerable caches of artifacts, mostly on First Nations land. But I’d also been following several international cases at the time—the Elgin Marbles that the British Museum had to return to Greece and the black market cases that big US auction houses and museums alike had been implicated in. I was also following the rediscovery of the Rosalila (an utterly fantastic nested temple at Copán in the Honduras) and some amazing finds at Bonampak, which is in Chiapas, Mexico.
It was that last item that gave me the location for some of the action in the book. I sort of let all of that percolate and it seemed natural to have my protagonist have the experience I’d dreamed of having—seeing those antiquities first hand. More than that, I wanted her to have a hand in saving some of them. The lack of funding for preserving these sites is a real and persistent problem in the world of archaeology.
DR: These days cultural appropriation is a sensitive topic. How did you go about portraying Hispanic, Asian, and Native characters in a respectful manner?
MKB: I suppose every writer has their own approach; mine is to love the people I write about and to recognize that they’re people first, not representatives or symbols or archetypes of a particular culture. But, in writing them, I have to recognize that their cultural framework will condition their responses to things. So, to Rose Delgado, though she’s married to a non-Hopi, living in Sausalito and working all over the country, she’s still Hopi. That means that Hopi lands are still sacred to her and that she takes the theft of native artifacts personally. Her job is more than just a job because of her cultural background and her investment in it is different than the other members of her team.
To me, Gina’s tattoo is exemplary of the cultural intersectionality I’m portraying. It’s a Russian Orthodox True Believer cross with a Buddha seated at the nexus in a lotus blossom. The cross is for her mom, the Buddha for her dad. Gina calls herself a Russian Orthodox Buddhist, which is an echo of what I told people who asked about my religion before I became a Baha’i. I’d say I was a Hindu-Buddhist-Christian. So, what I was trying to capture in Gina was a character who was an intersection of three cultures—Japanese, Russian and American.
I’ve been privileged to have been surrounded by people from diverse cultures all my life and I think that if you approach characters of any culture with curiosity, love and an attitude of learning, you’ll strive to portray them as complete, three-dimensional human beings.
DR: Is there such a thing as SASH (Society for the Appreciation of Sherlock Holmes), and would you join?
MKB: There’s a Sherlock Holmes Society of London, but as far as I know, there’s none in the Bay Area—at least not like the one Gina’s dad, Edmund, is part of. I made it up. Or maybe Edmund did. I would totally join SASH if there was one around. I love Sherlock Holmes—in fact, I have a Sherlock Holmes pastiche idea I’d love to write.
DR: What have you written recently?
MKB: I’ve been doing a lot ghostwrites lately. And they have been diverse and interesting. I just finished up a YA set in Seattle, and am still working on one that also makes use of my deep love of archaeology. Beyond that, my dear agent is shopping a crazy range of novels I tossed at him, including an SF novel with a peculiar genesis that I’d love to see be the first of a trilogy, a YA paranormal/contemporary fantasy featuring a 14 year-old-protagonist who discovers she’s a witch from a long line of witches, a magical realism yarn that is my take on the old Russian fairytale, Frog Princess, and a paranormal romance that I collaborated on with a couple of show runners from LA.
DR: What lies ahead? What lies ahead for Gina Miyoko – are new novels in the works?
MKB: I’ve been working on what I hope will be the next book in the Gina Miyoko series. I’ve got about eight or nine novels sketched out and more ideas popping into my head all the time. I’ve also been outlining a steampunk novel I’d like to write, involving yet more artifacts. (I got the idea from a book cover someone asked me to design, then didn’t want.)
DR: How does THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER fit into your repertoire of published works?
MKB: It’s a real outlier among outliers. I started out writing science fiction. In fact, I’d published a bunch of stories in Analog before I shifted gears and wrote four epic fantasy novels all based on dreams. Then I discovered magical realism and fell madly in love with it. That caused my writing to take a weird turn that peaked with “The White Dog” (Interzone). In moving over to crime fiction, I’m really pursuing something that’s fascinated me as a reader for years. I’ve been in love with mysteries and detective fiction forever. So, even though THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER looks like a departure from the outside, from where I sit, I’m just writing what I’ve always read. I also realized, when I looked at the fiction I’ve written, that most of my stories have a mystery embedded at the core—sometimes blatantly, as in “The Secret Life of Gods” and “Distance”(Analog), or in a veiled way as in my novels THE SPIRIT GATE (originally from Baen, in reprint from Book View Cafe) and STAR WARS LEGENDS: SHADOW GAMES (Del Rey/Lucas Books).
DR: What authors have most influenced your writing? What about them do you find inspiring?
MKB: My greatest prose heroes are Ray Bradbury, W.P. Kinsella (whom I cast in DISTANCE with his permission), and Tim Powers. These are the writers whose use of language, storytelling chops, and sheer imagination made me hungry to write. Bradbury and Kinsella have written some of the most beautiful and evocative prose in the English language and Powers has given me epiphanies about the many ways reality can collide with the fantastic.
I admire Dean Koontz, JK Rowling and Sue Grafton as well, especially for their character development chops and the uncanny way they connect the reader to their characters from page one. I also have to credit Harry Turtledove (who’s written some of my favorite Analog stories) with making me stray into alternate history, with my novelette “O, Pioneer” (Paradox) which takes an upside down and backwards look at Christopher Columbus’ ”discovery” of the Americas.
DR: Why do you write what you do, and how does your work differ from others in your genre?
MKB: I write what I do because either a character demands to be written about (Gina Miyoko being a case in point) or an idea demands to be explored. I thrive on exploration. It’s why I love road trips (What’s around that next curve?), research, archaeology (What is that thing I just dug up?), first contact stories, and mysteries of every kind. Writing is exploration I undertake to satisfy my insatiable curiosity about what if.
I’ve been told that I write fantasy with rivets, meaning that my fantasy work tends to take a very pragmatic approach to the fantastic. It works the other way, as well. My Gina Miyoko stories have an undercurrent of the supernatural to them if the reader chooses to read the pragmatic references to obereg (the good luck charms her mom is forever sneaking into her pockets), Holy Water, and spells as being more than just a concession to Nadia Miyoko’s avocation. This means that my fiction often falls through the cracks. When I sent “The White Dog” to Interzone, the editor wrote back and said essentially, ”I loved it, but where’s the fantasy element?” I responded, “In the eye of the reader.” He bought the story and it was a finalist for the British Science Fiction Award.
DR: How does your writing process work?
MKB: Mileage varies … a lot. With short fiction, I’ll sometimes scribble a handful of questions that become notes and when I see a beginning and end, I start writing. With novels, I sometimes get out the sticky notes. I had a great little flow chart app I used for a while, but they stopped making it. I use Evernote to toss bits and pieces into, as well. The sticky note brainstorming is still the best method I’ve found of plotting a novel because it allows me to visualize relationships between characters, their motivations and other plot elements.
Tartlets with chocolate ganache and raspberries, selective focus
Once I’ve charted something that way, I write a synopsis that becomes a living document that I can add to as I work. At some point the characters start yakking and doing things and I have to start writing. I used to have to write everything in #2 pencil on lined paper first, then edit as I committed it to the computer. Then I’d do that until roughly the last third of the book when the boulder started rolling downhill. But for some time now, while I still love writing notes long hand, I do all my writing at the keyboard. I’ve only ever had a laptop, because I feel the need to be portable. Sometimes a silent house is the best place to write, and sometimes a noisy coffee shop is best. I’ve also learned to give myself permission to do what I heard one writer refer to as “moodling”. It looks (and feels) like I’m not doing anything, but my mind is hard at work looking for connections. And when enough connections are made between elements and characters, the writing happens.
Whenever I sit down to write, I always read back what I did previously. I tried Hemingway’s stopping in mid sentence and it only led to frustration.
DR: What advice would you give to an aspiring writer?
MKB: First, write without editing. Ray Bradbury famously said of writing, “Don’t think.” He advised hiding your editor hat and just getting the bones of a story or a scene down without worrying about whether you found the right word. THEN, put on your editor hat and edit. This can make the difference between a story ending up attached to an email on its way to an editor’s inbox or ending up in an obscure file folder.
Second, learn your tools—words. Know what they mean, what they imply, how they taste, how they sound. Read your prose out loud before you submit it. Here, I find Mark Twain’s advice sage: “Use the right word, not its second cousin.”
Third, be flexible. The method you used to write one story may not work for the next one. That’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re broken or that your process is broken. It just means it’s different this time. This was a hard-learned lesson for me. It took reading Lawrence Block’s learning experience with regard to flexibility (in one of this Writer’s Digest columns), to understand that I wasn’t losing “it”; “it” had just morphed a bit.
I’ve learned a lot from the experiences of other writers and from their prose. One of the most valuable learning experiences for me is to read other writers’ prose with an awareness of my own responses to it and analyze why it makes me feel how I feel. Then I try to apply that in my own work.
Oh, and when you’ve written that story and read it out loud, making sure that (as Twain said) you’ve used the right word, not its second cousin, send it to the magazine or agent or publisher you really want to see it with, not something less. When I sent my first story to Stan Schmidt at Analog, the wisdom in all the writing magazines I’d read was that I should send it to a small non-pro market first and work my way up. And I should send something short that stood a better chance of being accepted. I went against that advice and sent a 19,500 word novella to my favorite magazine and got accepted.
Short form: Always shoot for the moon.
THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER is available in print (trade paperback and hardback), audio book, and eBook formats.
“Ha! Serves you right for trying to set me up with your stalker.” “You think that’s who it is—Cruz Veras again?” “I don’t know,” I admitted, chewing thoughtfully on a ring of calamari. “It’s hard for me to imagine him making threatening moves on you in a Chrysler LeBaron. A Beamer, maybe, but a LeBaron? Never.” She tossed a shrimp at me. “Tth’izi,” she called me, Hopi for “goat.” “Mule,” I corrected, and went back to my squid.
Excerpt From: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, The Antiquities Hunter
This week, I had the singular experience of being suspended from our Next Door online neighborhood group for allegedly breaking the following guidelines:
Those of you who know me may be surprised, nay shocked, by this and you may well wonder what happened to the usually mild-mannered person you thought you knew. What, you may well ask, did Maya say that got her tossed out of her neighborhood chat site?
I happened to stumble across a thread about San Jose’s attempts to house the homeless, focused on finding stable living situations for those who have contracted Covid-19. Authorities formulated a project to build tiny homes on an available piece of property so these folks could shelter in place like those of us who have a place in which to shelter.
After being NIMBYed out of at least one neighborhood, our officials had found a piece of property with good road access but more toward the fringes of the community and after a series of public hearings, went forward with the project. This caused some of the homeowners in the area to panic.
The posts I responded to spoke of filth and drugs and how “those people” would destroy property values. They suggested camping on the mayor’s lawn and other forms of retaliation against named public officials, including lawsuits. Some waxed political and called those officials names.
So what did I say? Here’s the most characteristic example, written when someone with whom I was having a companionable and solutions-oriented discussion made a comment about looking at underlying issues rather than trying to solve the problem with a bandaid (the tiny homes):
I’m not suggesting that we don’t look at underlying issues, which are legion. In fact, I’d argue that we are where we are with this because of our tendency to focus on individual symptoms of the disease our society is riddled with, without considering those underlying or related issues. It’s not just mental illness or addiction. It’s also the vast disparity in wealth and poverty, the lack of a cohesive safety net—including social services and healthcare, the underlying philosophy that each American should be self-subsistent and sovereign with its companion ideal that everyone ought to be able to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps—regardless of whether they actually possess boots. Our educational system is involved, our lack of social cohesion, our partisan political system, even our disregard for the fundamental imperatives of faith.
A huge part of the issue of homelessness is that a significant portion of the American public believes that if you are homeless you must have done something to deserve it. If you’re that poor, it’s your own fault. This creates a deeply ingrained reluctance to consider systematic means of helping these people. Because in this philosophy, everyone is responsible only for and to themselves. This, too, is rooted in fear, because if we acknowledge that homelessness for a great many people (such as the families that live in RVs along streets near my home) is circumstantial, we must acknowledge that it could happen to us.
So, yes, this is a multi-faceted symptom of deeper issues. If we are to address those issues, we need to come to a point of unity about their causes and the responsibility we share in solving them. Otherwise we (and our elected leaders) will endlessly argue from self-interest, fear and political rationalizations, and not consult—frankly but respectfully and compassionately—about how to work toward a solution. Having said that, when a patient is brought to the ER bleeding from a gunshot wound, the ultimate solution maybe to remove the bullet. But the first task is to simply stop the bleeding.
That was not the mildest thing I said. Nor was it the strongest. But it was the most succinct. The strongest thing I said was that it made me sad that we were more concerned with our property values than with what these souls were suffering.
In the backlash, I was told I was a “dominant supporter” of the project itself, though I’d never once made any statements about it other than that we might treat it as the fruit of honest concern for the homeless rather than a plot by our officials to harm us for Reasons and view it as a health crisis rather than a pitched battle against the forces of evil.
I was asked if I’d be willing to have tiny homes in my backyard (I would, if it were part of a larger plan), and I had the usual insults to my intelligence and motives that I’m well-used to hearing and which ceased to bother me long ago.
And then, I got suspended.
I will admit that my arguments may have caused some folks in the group to feel shame. Most human beings react to shame with anger and protest that they should never have to feel it. But in my experience, I’ve found shame to be a very instructive emotion. One that can be the seed kernel of positive change and the cultivation of valuable virtues. Shame has made me a better person than I was before I experienced it. It’s made me less selfish and more patient and careful of other people’s feelings, especially when I’m trying to engage them and get them to think about something—like which is more likely to effect change—anger and fear, or reason and compassion.
Am I ashamed of anything I said in the dialogue? No, but I do regret having once resorted to sarcasm when, in response to a call to get out and whip up more fear and anger, I said: “Wow. So is it time to get out our torches and pitchforks?”
I made that comment back at the very beginning of the discussion and never said anything remotely like it after that. Ironic, that the one sarcastic comment I made wasn’t what got me in hot water.
One heartening thing was that while, in the beginning, I was the lone voice asking for compassion for the homeless and the possibility that our officials were doing their best to solve a difficult problem, I soon started receiving privately messaged “thank yous” from people. Then some of those people cautiously began to comment themselves.
Sometimes the people you’re speaking to aren’t actually the people you’re speaking to. 😉
I did get blocked from a comment thread once long ago on a different forum when I suggested that there are things that transcend politics and issues—like homelessness, poverty, healthcare, and immigration—that should be sacrosanct from politics. If they aren’t, they will be with us forever.
A while ago, I witnessed an exchange between two members of a panel discussion on the ”caravans” of refugees from South America that had once dominated the 24 hour news cycle.
Panelist A described watching a report in which a child fell prostrate from heat exhaustion. For her, she said, it would always be ”humanity first.”
Panelist B retorted, in direct response: ”We are also a nation of laws and borders, which is part of my problem with the way some of this is being spun.”
Both of the panelists identified as Christians. This allegedly means they believe that God is revealed through Jesus Christ. One would assume, therefore, that they 1) believe in God and 2) believe Christ’s teachings to be the Word of God and any commandments he gives to be divine Law. At least, this was my understanding of the faith I grew up in.
Leaving aside the fact that these refugees are repeatedly referred to as ”illegal aliens” when they have as of yet done nothing illegal, and have expressed no intention of doing anything illegal, I had to wonder what sort of ”spin” one might put on human suffering that a professing believer would find problematic.
Is stating, as Panelist A did, that she put humanity first merely ”spin?”
As it happens, there is a lesson from Christ’s ministry that applies directly to this situation. It’s in the book of Luke (chapter 10, starting at verse 25), and in it Christ reveals—in answer to a direct question—the core of his teaching about the salvation of the human soul. Most Bibles label this passage The Parable of the Good Samaritan. I’ve written of it before in different contexts because it is unique in the way Christ uses it to quadruply emphasize what he identifies as God’s primal Law. He does this through
verbally establishing primacy
repetition
illustration, and
direct instruction.
The question Christ answers is pivotal to Christian belief. It is: “What must I do to have eternal life?”
Christ’s answer is to ask the petitioner—a scholar of religious jurisprudence—what is written in Jewish law.
The young lawyer answers: “ ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind,’ and ‘your neighbor as yourself.’ ”
Christ’s response is direct and clear: ”You have answered correctly. Do this and you shall live.”
With this response, Christ unambiguously links eternal life with what we do with respect to our fellow human beings. In so doing, he establishes the primacy of these two laws originally given by Moses. In other instances, Christ repeats these laws and stresses their primacy yet more by adding, ”On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matthew 22:40)
Of all God’s laws, these two take precedence.
But the young legal scholar isn’t satisfied. He asks a second question: “And who is my neighbor?” (Luke indicates he thinks this question is an attempt on the lawyer’s part to justify his own beliefs about this.)
In response, Christ tells the story of a Samaritan who saved the life of a severely wounded Jew when a Jewish priest and a Levite would not. The Samaritan not only takes personal responsibility for this man, despite their religious, ethnic, and cultural antipathy, but he pays someone to care for him by proxy.
At the conclusion of the story, Christ asks the young lawyer: ”So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”
The answer is obvious: “He who showed mercy on him.”
Christ then puts the finishing touch on his lesson; he gives a second direct commandment: ”Go and do likewise.”
The Parable of the Good Samaritan applies directly to the disagreement between the two Christian panelists over the refugee crisis because it is both a story of humanity and a story of laws and borders.
Laws and borders were why the priest and the Levite refused to help the dying man, though he was a countryman and a fellow Jew. They “passed by on the other side” of the road out of a fear of crossing boundaries of ritual purity imposed on them by Jewish law.
The Samaritan was also bound by laws and borders—specifically, borders between Jew and Samaritan that were ancient, abiding, and rooted in theological differences. His religious leaders had set strict boundaries between Samaritans and their despised neighbors, the Jews, whom they regarded as heretical, apostate, unclean. They were not to cross through Jewish territory, nor consort with Jews in any way.
The hatred was mutual; to the Jews, the Samaritans were heretical ”dogs”—vermin who pilfered scraps from the table of their betters.
Unlike the two Jews in Christ’s scenario, the Samaritan acted on God’s word that love of his neighbor was a primal commandment. The Samaritan’s act was not one of defiance, but a recognition that God’s commandment to put humanity first took precedence over any other laws.
One more observation about that dual law: By binding the commandment to love Him and love one’s neighbor together, God put love for our fellow human beings on a par with love for Him. The two laws are inseparable. He also makes eternal life dependent on the observance of this law.
So, this is the context of the disagreement between the two panelists. Panelist A advocated for the behavior of the Samaritan in Christ’s illustration, which Christ unequivocally endorsed when he said, ”Go and do likewise.” Panelist B endorsed the behavior of the Levite and the priest. In her version of the parable, the two co-religionists of the dying man were in the right, practicing a higher virtue by upholding their laws and borders over God’s command to put humanity first.
As I read and prayerfully meditate on Christ’s lesson in Luke, I must ask if he is not demanding more of us: That we see ourselves as a people obedient to the Law upon which all others depend—to put humanity first.
O Children of Men! Know ye not why We created you all from the same dust? That no one should exalt himself over the other. Ponder at all times in your hearts how ye were created. Since We have created you all from one same substance it is incumbent on you to be even as one soul, to walk with the same feet, eat with the same mouth and dwell in the same land, that from your inmost being, by your deeds and actions, the signs of oneness and the essence of detachment may be made manifest. Such is My counsel to you, O concourse of light! Heed ye this counsel that ye may obtain the fruit of holiness from the tree of wondrous glory. — The Hidden Words of Bahá’u’lláh, Arabic vs. 68
Still celebrating last week’s release of the trade paperback edition of THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER starring the inimitable Gina “Tinkerbell” Miyoko, private eye. Daughter of a retired police detective and a Russian-American professor of folklore, Gina rides a Harley named Boris, packs a titanium blue Taurus Magnum, and has a lucky charm for every occasion.
THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime) tells of her first major case in which she joins forces with her National Park Service agent friend to thwart thieves of black market antiquities. You can get your trade paperback copy from Amazon or Barnes & Noble or a bookstore near you or you can get the eBook from all the usual suspects. The hardback release is also still available for those of you who like the fashion statement of a hard cover in a lovely dust jacket.
Over in Book View Cafe’s online bookstore, the prequel novelette, “Tinkerbell on Walkabout” is on sale for $1.99 if you purchase it directly from bookviewcafe.com.
“I’m still being followed.” Those were the first words out of Rose’s mouth when I reached her on her cell phone.
“Our reporter-archaeologist friend?”
“If it is, he’s changed cars. This one is a metallic green Chrysler LeBaron.”
I felt a shiver run through me at the mention of LeBarons. My last encounter with one did not conjure pleasant associations, mostly because I’d found a body in the trunk. I reflexively reached for my lucky Caddie wire, which was sticking jauntily out of my pencil cup. “Well, like you said—his cover was blown, so I suppose he might have changed vehicles. When did you notice this?”
“This morning, when I drove to the courthouse for the pretrial deposition with the Blankenships’ defense team. Listen, Tink, this guy—whoever he is—is a little more aggressive than our professor. I mean, maybe it is him, but . . .”
“What do you mean ‘more aggressive’?”
“I mean, pacing me in the left lane, pulling up, then dropping back, tailgating. Weird stuff.”
More shivers. “Close enough to get a look at?”
“Except for the smoked windows, yeah. All I can see is a silhouette with shades.”
“Where are you, Rose?”
“I’m still at the courthouse. I called Ellen Robb and told her about it. Tink, this has really got me spooked. I mean, the timing and everything. I’m supposed to go back down to Albuquerque for the trial in five weeks.”
“And you think someone is trying to dissuade you from doing that?”
“That’s what Ellen thinks. Listen, can you meet me at the NPS offices in about half an hour?”
“I’ll do better than that,” I told her. “I’ll meet you at the courthouse in ten minutes and escort you there.”
“Woo-woo!” she said gamely. “A one-Harley motorcade.”
“Don’t diss Boris. One Harley is better than half a dozen lesser machines.”
I sounded flip, but I was seriously worried.”
Excerpt From: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, The Antiquities Hunter
February 11, mystery/adventure lovers, my debut mystery novel, THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER (Pegasus Crime) releases in trade paperback. I await my author’s copies as I type.
It’s hard to spring for a hardback novel. I admit I only do it for a handful of writers whose work I simply cannot wait to purchase in a more (ahem) cost effective form. So if you are, like many readers, not that fond of eBooks, the trade paperback offers an enjoyable reading experience (I promise!) at a more affordable price. (But if you do like eBooks, you can purchase it from all the usual online bookstores.)
I’m celebrating the book’s release all month with a special on the genesis story (“Tinkerbell on Walkabout”) from the BVC bookstore, and by telling you about my protagonist, Gina Miyoko, PI.
Booklist has said of Gina that she “sweeps across the pages like an adrenalin-fueled soul sister of Janet Evanovich’s flamboyant characters, presented in an equally biting and outrageous narrative that turns on a dime.“
Publisher’s Weekly called her “A tough, sassy, and relatable investigator, Gina drives a Harley, packs a baby blue Magnum, and is trained in the martial arts. Her rich backstory and family life—her father was a San Francisco cop; her mother, a Russian émigré, plies her with oberegi and other good luck charms—adds unusual depth to a fun story. Readers will want to see a lot more of Gina.”
Well, I sure hope you will! I love this character and her quirky family. I’ve been living with them for a long time now and I’d like to keep them around and, of course, continue to share them with you. In that spirit, I’d like to share this excerpt from the book as a sort of teaser.
What is THE ANTIQUITIES HUNTER about? It’s about a young private investigator named Gina Suzu Miyoko (aka, Tinkerbell—Tink for short) who solves mysteries. This is the prologue from the book, which was published in October 2018 by Pegasus Crime, and got wonderful reviews.
oOo
PROLOGUE
When you are alone in the dark, hurting and frightened—no, terrified—that the next sound you hear will be the dying scream of a friend, or a round being chambered, you find things to do.
I prayed. I checked my watch. I checked my jacket pockets. I had a little pack of Kleenex, my compass, my camera, and a hair clip. That was on the practical side. On the arcane side, I had a jumble of good luck charms: a Hopi tinu, an obereg, and a piece of wire from an old Cadillac’s taillight. And then, firmly in a class of its own—Things That Were Once Practical But Are Now Junk—was the cell phone that wasn’t much of a cell phone this deep underground.
I turned it on and was immediately mesmerized by the pale luminescence of the little screen. I hoped there was enough kick left in its battery to light my tiny world for a while. I used the wan light to check my bandages. They were fairly dry. I had stopped bleeding.
Mercy.
I shut off the cell phone-cum-flashlight and mentally checked the rest of my personal inventory. Earrings, a fake engagement ring, a watch, my Saint Boris medallion. I had a small custom tattoo on my right hip. Or at least I had before tonight. For all I knew, the bullet that had grazed my hip had cut a bypass through that neighborhood.
I prayed not. I was a bit superstitious about that tattoo. It was a Russian Orthodox “Old Believer” cross with a Buddha seated in an eight-petaled lotus in the heart of the second crossbar and surrounded by beams of light. I’d gotten it the year I obtained my private investigator’s license. Other than the tattoo artist who put it there, my best friend Rose and I are the only two people in the world who know that tattoo exists. No one else has ever seen it. Not even my mom. It’s probably the only secret I’ve ever been able to keep from her.
My reeling mind wandered to places more pleasant than the pitch-black guts of the Mayan temple, in which I was trapped like a wounded animal, aware that tons of rock pressed down on my hiding place, and that a man I had once liked and trusted pursued me with one aim—killing me.
How had I come to be here, you might wonder? Hell, I wondered myself. One day I’m chasing down delinquent dads in San Francisco, the next I’m trying to avoid becoming part of a South American archaeological site. All Cruz Veras’s fault.
A jolt of raw terror shot from one end of my body to the other; I was falling asleep.
I couldn’t fall asleep.
Okay, so the Wicked Witch of the West had routed me through her infernal oppy fields. I’d think of snow.
I pulled myself up off the stone stairs I’d been huddled on, wobbly and dizzy. My hip whinged. I took deep breaths and held them for three seconds, then let them out . . . quietly. I was in my fifth rep when I heard something that woke me utterly: a gunshot.
A gunshot.
I pressed myself to the wall and moved down the stairs one shallow tread at a time, pausing to listen. Sounds found my ears—movement, shoes on stone. In the maze of tunnels under Itzamnaaj Balam, I couldn’t tell where it came from. All I could do was continue to move, descending slowly to even lower levels. I paused, put my head against the cool stone, and listened.
Sounds rose up from below, sounds that might have been the scurrying of mice anywhere else. But there were no mice down here. My eyes were starved for light, yet dreaded to see it. It would be him, searching for me.
Keep moving, Gina. Just keep moving.
I fell into a sort of stupor, shuffling through the shadow lands, listening and watching. So when my eyes finally saw light, it didn’t immediately register with my brain that it meant Something Bad. I found myself being drawn toward a strange, gray, faded spot on the left-hand wall of the corridor ahead. I was nearly on top of it when I realized that it was reflected light from a cross-passage to my right.
I flattened myself to the near wall and peered around the corner. Ambient light washed out of everywhere and nowhere to illuminate the narrow way. I could see clear through to its other end, where there was a wall as solid and opaque as the one behind me.
Where was the light coming from? Curiouser and curiouser.
I stepped cautiously out into the junction. And was turned to stone. He seemed to emerge from the very wall of the maze not four yards distant, his flashlight in one hand, his revolver in the other.
I gasped.
He swung slowly toward me, bringing the muzzle of his gun to bear. I stood and clutched my useless cell phone and waited for him to shoot me.
He didn’t.
“Hello, Gina,” he said, sounding like Eeyore—relieved to have found me, but depressed as hell. “You don’t look so good.”
