Clarion West is a unique experience. It helped me become a much stronger writer and editor, though I use those skills outside SFF. I want others to continue to have this opportunity to hone their skills and explore the possible paths together.

I don't have a lot of time right now, between work and summer chores, and actually enjoying the brief season between deep freezes and slush. So I'm going to set a goal of working on fiction writing 5/7 days for at least 20 minutes.

7/5/25: I hadn't realized they shrank the writeathon into a two-week event until Neile noted it in an update email. Just as well, since it got me started early. Making some progress with a story I have most done research for since a few early drafts. 888 words in the writeathon draft, as of this morning. I really don't like the cluttered, dumbed-down, generic look of this Butter fundraising platform, but I'm going to use my CW skills to just pretend it's much better than it is and throw up a few more updates. Write on...

Lapinlahden mielisairaala (mental hospital), 2019 

When it was still abandoned: https://helsinki100.wordpress....

7/12/25: Wrote my pages this a.m. after picking raspberries, watering, and weeding. Excited to hear about the possibility of a 'haunted asylum' future site for the workshop. Revisiting websites last night about my favorite partially restored haunted asylum turned arts & community center (complete with seaside sauna, next to a historic graveyard, where Tove Jansson's bones rest) gave me a little extra inspiration. Glad to learn the city of Helsinki is working to preserve it better. Til the next update, kirjoita kuin tuuli tukisi selustaasi tällä viikolla. Heippa.

Kruunuvuori, a group of abandoned Swedish summer houses on the outskirts of Helsinki, when only a few were left in 2019.

Hiawatha Ave (Hwy 55) Mpls 7/25

7/19/25: Coffeeing up before hitting the Midtown Farmers Market for fresh veg, lime panela lemonade from the Colombian stand, and Hmong spring rolls, Trini doubles, or Krishna pakoras depending on who's there today. One of the highlights of CW for me was hitting the Seattle farmers markets and cooking with a solid group of other foodies. I'd never seen so many varieties of cherries! Dominica made a really good coconut milk dessert experiment in the big Hobart mixer. Chris made a killer pot of gumbo. Can't remember what the rest of us made for our guest instructors except that it was generally tasty. Now I'm thinking about my favorite coffee and food haunts near the sorority house (not haunted, iirc, but had a creepy basement, and foam party at the frat house next door that worked their way into horror and fantasy stories) that summer.

Abandoned and soon to be abandoned grain elevators are the big sights on that bike trip down Hiawatha Ave, also known as Highway 55 between downtown Mpls and the burbs. No asylums, ; (. But I've managed to work the grain elevators into more than one story. I'll do my pages later, and hit up my many "followers" for those last week push donations, but wanted to get an update up (and bike down memory lane real quick). See you on the flip side, and give, give, give because otherwise it's going to the billionaires anyway... 

Mel-O-Glaze bakery, with its donut glowing through the night

Sunset by the mini-lake, making the ill-fated Hiawatha golf course look like a tropical island

7/21/25: Made good progress this weekend, pushing through more scenes than I'd hoped in the story that seems to have settled on being the one I focus on for the writeathon. I've done enough research and prep for this one, including some preliminary spit it all out drafts, that it's coming out nice and compact this time. Hoping I can hold onto that tightness and momentum through the workweek and stifling midsummer heat. I took a long walk last night, and it was just cool and breezy enough to be nice. Caught these scenes of the area around Lakes Hiawatha and Nokomis in South Minneapolis. 

Thanks to everyone who helped me meet my fundraising goal! I have a few more aces up my sleeve. Hope to pull off a little more before the end of the week. Write on. I'll do my best. Kippis! 🥂

Gotta love a library that looks like a castle and is guarded by a bear

7/23/25- Making good progress. Got lots of ideas last night when sleep would have sufficed... Went back to my orginal research stunning on a few books in the library that restarted an old idea and gave it a better frame. Here's to libraries and little nonprofits.

🚀 🖥️ ⌨️ 💾 🖨️ 📬

The Baker's Wife, Mpls, 7/25

6/27/25: Got more writing in this weekend, since that is when I actually have time. I met my set goals of getting 20 minutes in 5/7 days, and got about 4,000 words done, give or take done because I didn't put them all in one place and still need to do some typing of handwritten pages. 

All in all, I made good progress on this story I started researching a while ago but got a decent draft done for last summer in the Writeathon. I'm going to try to keep momentum going in August to get a solid draft of this thing done. Thanks again, those who put together and ran the Writeathon and donors. Paljon kiitoksia,

-C

-Crankypants Oldster Badge, '07