hey team,

As many of you know, I attended the Clarion West Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Workshop last year. It was an amazing experience, and I walked away with great affection for the workshop and (strangely enough) Seattle, where the Clarion has been held for the 25 years.

Clarion is a non-profit, and the tuition students pay doesn't begin to cover the costs of putting up and feeding attendees (student and teacher) for almost 7 weeks in rather nice digs on the UW-Seattle campus. In order to offset costs, Clarion engages in the usual fundraising gambits, one of which involves getting alumni to shadow the workshop in what has been dubbed The Clarion West Write-a-thon. Over the next six weeks, a number of alums (including your droog and humble narrator) will be writing away in parallel with this year's workshop.

If you'd like to support/sponsor me over the next 6 weeks, you can do so here. My Write-a-thon goals are pretty modest - I need to revise 6 old stories and complete first drafts on 3 more - as are my fundraising goals. If 20 of you were to donate a buck a story - 9 in total - I'd be golden. (Those of you looking for more bang for your donated buck should consider supporting Michael Swanwick, who is on some kind of crazy streak that involves 80k+ words a Write-a-thon.) In addition to helping out an organization that has come to mean a great deal to me, you'd also be helping me out personally, as I would be more likely to stop procrastinating on these stories if I knew people I knew and liked had paid 9 dollars for them. As an added inducement, I'll be sending out the finished/revised stories to sponsors on a weekly basis.

Thanks in advance for your help, and for forgiving this intrusion into your blog-reading day. And (again) the donations page is here.

best,

gary/ebog