{"id":882,"date":"2015-06-19T20:51:31","date_gmt":"2015-06-20T03:51:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/?p=882"},"modified":"2015-07-18T09:36:44","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T16:36:44","slug":"the-clarion-west-write-a-thon-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/?p=882","title":{"rendered":"The Clarion West Write-a-thon 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Clarion West Write-a-thon<\/a>, which always runs concurrently with the Clarion West Workshop,\u00a0starts next week.\u00a0 While I’ll still be\u00a0working on the same project<\/a> (yes, the one I was sure I’d finish drafting last year!), I’m excited and confident that I really will<\/em> get this manuscript completed soon.\u00a0 (My only excuse is that becoming\u00a0one of the owners and editors of a small press\u00a0last year\u00a0took up\u00a0a fair amount of time and\u00a0creative energy. \u00a0At least it’s writing-related, right?) \ud83d\ude1b<\/p>\n

The other\u00a0exciting incentive for\u00a0reaching my goal this year\u00a0is that in August, shortly after the end of the Write-a-thon, I’m finally going to visit\u00a0Lassen Volcanic\u00a0National Park to do research for this book.\u00a0 This is a trip I’ve been thinking about for years.\u00a0<\/em> (I won’t say\u00a0how many \u2014\u00a0I don’t want to\u00a0give away\u00a0just how long<\/em> ago I got the idea for this book!)\u00a0 The original plan had also included taking a glacier-climbing course on Mount Shasta on the same trip, but for a number of reasons that’s not going to happen; in any case, I’m just thrilled to finally make it\u00a0to Lassen.<\/p>\n

The region that the young hero in the story travels to\u00a0has lots of volcanic ‘stuff’ (how’s that for scientific terminology?)\u00a0similar to the features at Lassen.\u00a0 And the name in the title, Elebfar, refers to the\u00a0mountain (an\u00a0active volcano)\u00a0that’s central both\u00a0in regards to the location\u00a0of the latter half of the novel and to the source of the main conflict in the story.\u00a0 (You can see\u00a0a little more about the book here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

Since I’m\u00a0so\u00a0obsessed with realism, getting to\u00a0experience\u00a0that setting\u00a0(or re<\/em>-experience it, since I did visit Lassen with my family once, although\u00a0I was\u00a0only about seven) is\u00a0important to making\u00a0it all come alive in the book through vivid (and sometimes disturbing!) details.\u00a0 (And it also has\u00a0to do with a certain word <\/a>I like.) \ud83d\ude42 \u00a0\u00a0In any case, I think\u00a0it’s always great for an author\u00a0to visit either the actual setting of a story or something similar\u00a0if\u00a0the real location is either too impractical\u00a0or simply impossible\u00a0to visit.\u00a0 (And for some reason locations on imaginary planets generally fall into the latter category.) \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Clarion West Write-a-thon, which always runs concurrently with the Clarion West Workshop,\u00a0starts next week.\u00a0 While I’ll still be\u00a0working on the same project (yes, the one I was sure I’d finish drafting last year!), I’m excited and confident that I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-882","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clarion-west-write-a-thon-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":61,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":943,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lcmcgehee.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}