{"id":4028,"date":"2015-01-27T12:47:24","date_gmt":"2015-01-27T17:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.old.caraghobrien.com\/book\/?p=4028"},"modified":"2015-01-28T08:33:35","modified_gmt":"2015-01-28T13:33:35","slug":"a-blizzard-a-qa-and-revising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/the-vault-of-dreamers\/a-blizzard-a-qa-and-revising\/","title":{"rendered":"A Blizzard, a Q&#038;A, and Revising"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4031\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15-300x660.jpg\" alt=\"SnowPath1.27.15\" width=\"200\" height=\"440\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15-300x660.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15-450x989.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15-250x550.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/SnowPath1.27.15.jpg 600w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 200px) 100vw, 200px\" \/><\/a>Maybe it&#8217;s because of my Minnesotan roots, or because we don&#8217;t get huge snowfalls too often in Connecticut, but I like shoveling. Give me a big, two-foot dumping of snow and a decent shovel, and I&#8217;m at it. I&#8217;m a machine, a mole, a survivor. I like separating off the top layer in one stroke, and the crunchy, digging noise of scraping sidewalk with the second stroke. I like throwing the white stuff in piles that grow ridiculously high and impressing myself with how strong and industrious I am.<\/p>\n<p>When a police car drove slowly by, I waved. Imagine my surprise when the two policemen pulled over and helped with the path. \u00a0One even insisted, disarmingly, on using my shovel. It was nice, and once they were gone, I still had plenty more to do, so I could still feel noble.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/topic\/show\/2129682-caragh-m-o-brien-author-of-the-birthmarked-trilogy-q-a-event--jan-26-\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-4032\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner-300x76.png\" alt=\"EstesBanner\" width=\"300\" height=\"76\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner-300x76.png 300w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner-450x114.png 450w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner-250x63.png 250w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner-900x227.png 900w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/EstesBanner.png 970w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>These days, I&#8217;m a guest author for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/topic\/show\/2129682-caragh-m-o-brien-author-of-the-birthmarked-trilogy-q-a-event--jan-26-\" target=\"_blank\">David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite!<\/a> group on Goodreads, which is fun not only for its superbly long name but for its upbeat, positive, book-loving people. I&#8217;ve had a nice time connecting with <a href=\"http:\/\/davidestesbooks.blogspot.com\" target=\"_blank\">David<\/a> and his team behind the scenes, and the questions for the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/topic\/show\/2129682-caragh-m-o-brien-author-of-the-birthmarked-trilogy-q-a-event--jan-26-\" target=\"_blank\">Q&amp;A<\/a>, like <em>who is your top book boyfriend?<\/em> are a hoot. The whole scene is wildly tempting to me, and I&#8217;m only able to resist chatting around there non-stop because I&#8217;m revising.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-4033\" src=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Icycles-300x231.jpg\" alt=\"Icycles\" width=\"250\" height=\"192\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Icycles-300x231.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Icycles-450x346.jpg 450w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Icycles-250x192.jpg 250w, https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/Icycles.jpg 624w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 250px) 100vw, 250px\" \/>It is nothing new, to be revising, but my novel is in a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Ariel's_Song\" target=\"_blank\">sea-change<\/a> phase, gradually shifting into something richer. Instead of casting about hungrily for any idea that might work, I&#8217;m able to sink into particular scenes and ponder them longer. It&#8217;s more satisfying than earlier stages, and completely engrossing. Have I said before how happy I am that I&#8217;ve received an extension on this novel? It&#8217;s even sweeter than shoveling.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Maybe it&#8217;s because of my Minnesotan roots, or because we don&#8217;t get huge snowfalls too often in Connecticut, but I like shoveling. Give me a big, two-foot dumping of snow and a decent shovel, and I&#8217;m at it. I&#8217;m a machine, a mole, a survivor. I like separating off the top layer in one stroke, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[445],"tags":[37],"class_list":["post-4028","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-vault-of-dreamers","tag-writing-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4028"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4041,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4028\/revisions\/4041"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4028"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4028"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.caraghobrien.com\/book\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4028"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}