The Clarion Write-a-thon began yesterday. I got some decent writing time in, despite a late start to the day and having to confront a would-be pervert attempting to flash his private bits at my favorite writing spot. I expect the first several days of writing to go slow as I revise the first chapter of the novel, trying to set the right tone and pace. The 25k words I wrote during last year’s Nanowrimo are, I realize, mostly outline but do span the length of the novel. My task now is to fill in…

There are now four days until the Clarion write-a-thon begins on June 24th, where I will continue work on my novel-in-progress and attempt to add 30k new words over the course of six weeks.

I’ve been a fan of Crossed Genres for a long time — just shy of three years, which is forever in Internet time. As a small press, they’ve done a massive amount of good work publishing hundreds of authors (including myself) but Bart and Kay, proprietors, fell on hard times and were forced to turn to Kickstarter to keep CG alive. And made their goal of $4,000 in just 22 hours.

The Clarion Write-a-thon starts on June 24^th, running parallel to the six week workshop I attended in 2010. While this summers workshop students toil away in San Diego, I’ll be one of many writers helping to raise awareness and solicit donations to a cause we believe in.

We built the house, my ex-wife and I, a decade ago. We poured our love into her foundations as we watched her bones rise over the snowy plains of Illinois. Vein and sinew were strung throughout and were covered by skin. A miraculous thing, to witness for the first time.