TRANSCRIPT

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C: My favourite aspect of Worldbuilding

D: Is that a stumper

C:That's a tough question.

Intro

Hello and welcome to the finding elara podcast. Building worlds with words and sharing those words with the world. A podcast for writers worldbuilders and artists that would like to take a mindful look inside their creations. Join me as I dive into the depths of mindfulness and explore worldbuilding in all its diversity. Ever searching for Elara.

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Intro

Hi Guys this is episode 11 of the show. This is Dianna host of exploration into your mindful creative. If you haven't had a chance to listen to the backlist then all the episodes should all be available wherever you choose to listen to your podcasts. If you have any drama you can contact me via my email which is dianna@dlnix.com that's Dianna with two nn's in it. Or you can go to the show notes at my website which are found at dlnix.com/011 I am planning on keeping it that way so every episode it will be dlnix.com/ ... insert three digit number here. In last weeks show I told you that I am now a five time Nanowrimo champion. Now that was awesome but after I had a chance to reflect on my win I had a little bit of Nano hangover. I am meant to be finished finishing up my Christmas tale but my inspiration tank seems to have sprung a leak and I don't actually know the best course to fix it at this stage. I hope by managing a couple of words this morning that I'm slowly on the mend. But I am suffering from a pretty severe case of impostor syndrome I know that everyone goes through this at some stage but I am determined to get this Christmas book finished so I need to find my best way out of it. 

First thing I did was accept that I'mm feeling a little bit down I spoke to my kids about it and they helped my set some goals. which worked really really well until I met the first goal I have my chocolate which was awesome but three days later and I still haven't met my second goal. So, I needed to move to a plan B. Plan A is still in place I still need to meet my second goal and get a trip to the pool for the win but I still haven't got there yet. Plan B is to reach my feelers out a little bit further to find the help that I need from the people that are closest to me. So, I spoke to a few close friends about the story and what I was being challenged with the they shared ideas with me and it's really good to just bounce off other people sometimes. and sometimes that's all you need to get back on track. Unfortunatly I got back to my computer and it didn't really stick. I was still in procrastination overload. 

Plan C. My husband came home and I spoke to him about it. He didn't really get it straight away but he did just come off two weeks of work and he finishes his swing on night shift. So the next day I was talking to him and he actually said one of the sweetest things that he has said to me in a while. I explained to him exactly what was going through my head and what problems that I had and it was just everything. Just everything was bothering me. He said that it's my story and it doesn't matter what's normal and what is expected from other people I need to tell my story my way. I admit that I might had had a bit of a leak but it was fine my tear ducts cleared out and it was really really helpful. I just couldn't believe, just hearing that, it was something so basic, something that every writer should really know but  I think when you are a little overwhelmed even the basics just slip through your fingers and you just forget it but, I found that really helpful.

I also reached out to a good friend of mine Georgia. Georgia was in episode 5, I explained how I explained how I was feeling and she said that she understood. Again that was amazing to have someone who actually knew what I was going through so we could have a bit of an email conversation about it and that was really really helpful.

I have now decided that due to this little emotional setback I am having I am going to delay the release date. I am not sure what the new date is yet it is definitely going to be this year before Christmas but it is not going to be the 10th. Seen as that's five days away and it's definitely not going to be done by then. Georgia actually sent me a list of things that I have to do before I get the book out and that is amazingly helpful as well so I am going to print that off and make a checklist of things that I need to tick off if I want to get this book our before Christmas. 

My day job is driving the school bus and it's almost school holidays leading to the end of the year. I am really looking forward to not having to leave the house as much. One of my major projects during the holidays is to stay in my PJ's as long as possible. SO that's just my recent events. 

I wanted to shout to all the members of the finding elara facebook community we are growing nice and slowly and it is really nice to see. Thank you for everyone for being a part of the group and slowly building it up which is awesome. I finally added and announcement post at the top of the page for everyone to look at. It is mostly just saying play nice with each other, don't be mean. I set themes for each day, they may change but that is what I have decided to start with so we will work with that. It's an exciting time for the people in the group because they are really starting to engage with each other and that's really what it's all about. I wanted to give you guys a space that you can talk to other artists and creatives and to share your ideas in a community setting. All the previous guests are actually members so far which is fantastic and they have been active in the group. commenting on things and talking about new compeitions that they have going and all that. 

I started a Ko-fi page the week before last this is my alternative to putting adds on the show if you would like to support me in a monetary sense then you can buy me a cuppa through Ko-Fi. Ko-fi is K O - F I . com / findingelara. So yeah, If you wanna just buy me a cuppa I have black tea with honey and it's $3 per cuppa. I am really really thankful to anything any one wants to give. 

On this weeks show I interviewed Cari Jehlik a couple of weeks ago. Now, I met Cari through Authors Tale on facebook and I was lucky enough to be one of her Alpha readers for her Tamerna novel. 

Cari's Bio is...

I'm Cari published author, accomplished runner and yarn crafter. I have short stories in two anthologies and have a handful of other projects in the works. Most notably and epic fantasy which I have drafts in various stages for the first three books. I love to learn and constantly surprise myself with what I need to learn in order to keep up with my own worldbuilding. 

We covered a really wide variety of things in this interview and I did have cut a bit out to make it fit in one show. but it was so lovely talking to her and I hope you really enjoy what she has to say. 

If you want to know more about Cari then it will be all in the show notes dlnix.com/011 for episode 11. It will have all of her contact information for her website, facebook twitter, instagram and youtube. 

I hope that you enjoy this interview and on with the show. 

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D: Hello Cari, how are you today?

C: I am doing really well how are you?

D: Not to bad it is nice and early here it is just after 4am.

C: Oh My gosh it is two o'clock in the afternoon here.

D: Nice and casual, how has your weekend been?

C: It's actually been really good. We had a pretty relaxing day yesterday and today is super crazy actually. Once we are done here I have a full evening but it should be fun.

D: That's good. So tell me about yourself and how you got into writing?

C: I am currently a mother of two children and i have a dog and I also have chickens like you do. I have 12 right now. One who will not be with us much longer because he is a rooster and I cannot have roosters in town. I live in a small town but we still can't have roosters. So we will be down to eleven hens by the end of the week. Yeah, so I live in a small town. I have been writing for as long as I can remember actually. Always just writing little things here and there. writing little short stories when I was younger in high school and college I preferred assignments that were, you know, write a big paper on that. I always preferred to do that but I didn't really start taking novel writing seriously until after my daughter was born. She will be five this Christmas and I first started staying home with her during nap time I would write to kind of regain some sanity. Because taking care of infants is really difficult. so I started really getting in to writing about five years ago and getting really serious and then about 2 years ago now I built a website and I am really really going for publishing my own novels. as some point when they are ready. Though it's been a life long passion of mine but I only just started really pursuing it in the last few years. 

D: Awesome. What inspires you to write?

C: Life in general Actually. Interesting things that happen, I want to put into writing. I like, writing is the best way I process life. So if anything happens it is easier for me to process through my emotions and and thoughts about it if I can get them down.

D: as a fellow fantasy writer do you try and relate things that way or?

C: I like to create whole entire worlds I like it to be very very unique and of its own world if that makes sense.

D: Yes it does. So how do you get into the writers mindset and find mindfulness within the writing process?

C: The easiest way for me to find mindfulness while I am writing is to find a good sound track generally on you tube and I just listen to music. for whatever reason music just switched my brain in to creative mode in a way that writing in silence does not do for me. So with that background music I can really focus and be in the present of my story rather than just being present of the moment of my life as it is in that time. So it's easier for me to push away all distractions when I am listening to music and I am trying to write. 

D: So it helps you to just step into the zone. 

C: Yeah, I think it just helps to distract part of my brain that really needs to be distracted. SO that I can use the rest of my brain to focus on writing.

D: I have the same sort of thing and I noticed that if I am really on a roll the music can stop and i can just forget because I'm totally in the zone,

C: uh-hmm

D: I understand that you actually had a few short stories published in a couple of anthologies lately how did you get into that.

C: So I'm a part of the online group authors tale and they put together an anthology every year. This coming march will be the third anthology that they've published and so I was published in last years anthology and i will be published again in this one. I just started writing short stories based on prompts that they shared every single week and when I learned about the anthology of course I wanted to try and get a story in there because who wouldn't. I can be really competitive and so going into a writing competition type mode was actually really appealing to me. I happened to write. For last years anthology I wrote a very imagination based story which is not really what I do. If that makes sense like it's sort of a fantasy story but it's all in the imagination of this kid whose point of view I am writing from. and I, up until that point I had never written a story like that before. and it was just really fun an really whimsical. I enjoyed it quite a bit and apparently it fit really well into the anthology theme and the judges really liked it. so I was published. Yeah and so and this last time I wrote like a sci-fi fantasy combo. because my main character discovers she is an alien and so like that feels really sci-fi to me but there is definitely a fantasy magical element that I can only hint at because it's a short story. I don't have the space to explain it all. which is nice because then I don't have to spend the time developing it all. because I am a discovery writer and I just write things and I make them up. Then I go back later and figure out how it actually works if I need to. 

D: So as a discovery writer it's all in your head to start with and then you work on your world building on the second and third versions. 

C: Yes, so I basically get out what would be considered a rough draft I end up at the end with a draft of a story and then I go back and I essentially have to make sense of what I've written. and I have to, like that's the point that I build in the continuity and the real story ark and character arks like all of that needs to be developed post first draft. When I know other writers they do all of this stuff first and then they write the story but my brain does not work like that.

D: So walk us through your approach of world building in these second and third versions. 

C: Okay so right now I am working on an epic fantasy series and I have a, I'm on the third or fourth draft of book one and for Nanowrimo this year I am writing what will be book two. So right now for book two I am basically ust coming up with the draft but for book one which was a Nano project two years ago I think is when I finished it as my Nano project. I had the rough draft and then I went back and I started to work on the magic element and really building a solid timeline for this story. SO it was kind of discombobulated at this point so I was cutting out pieces and re-pasting them and moving things around and then when I went back for my next edit it was really fleshing out scenes cause things were still really sparse and I was still building the timeline so I added a lot of Dialogue and I added a lot of setting. I had to do some character development because I needed to understand why. Why this particular act in this particular way. I didn't really have a reason for it other than I needed them to act that way to move the plot forward. which is you know a cheater way to do it so I had to really go back and dive more into character motivation so that was basically that pass and then that was when I pulled in my alpha readers so after that draft I pulled in my alpha readers and i had three people including you who read the story and gave me a lot of really good feed back and after that I edit it again I just keep developing the world building between my alpha reader edit and now i have some critique partners who are going through it. I've realised that my main character needs to be a lot younger than she is. There is a lot of confusion about how old she is emotionally a human equivalency age if you can call it that. and so now I basically have to go back and overhaul everything because I need to make her like half as old as i thought she was going to be. 

D: That makes sense.

C: Yeah. So there's still I have a lot of work ahead of my but it feels, basically it feels like, it kind of feels like building with lego's where you just kind of have my foundation and every time that I go through it I'm like adding another layer of bricks to this structure that will eventually be my story. and my world if that makes sense. 

D: Have you gone so far as to build maps and such?

C: I do have maps. I started out with a map on Inkarnate.com  I think that's what it is. It is a map building program. It has little Icons and you can like draw on it things like that and I am a terrible visual artist so their all abysmal but it gives me and idea of what the world looks like. I found another program or website called map to globe where I could upload and image and it turned it into a globe Gif. So I actually have a globe gif of my world yeah so it is really helpful for visualising what the planet looks like but I still need to decide how big it is and how far away all the continents are and how long it take to get from one place to another. SO there's still a lot of development that I need to do in that direction but I have a rough idea of what the maps look like. I have also sketched out portraits of my, of most of the characters that have appeared in book one. Because my main race is very, they're very colourful. So one of them might have emerald coloured hair and navy coloured skin. And another one has red skin and yellow hair. And you know their eyes can be different colours and I could not keep track of what everybody looked like. because it's so varied, so I have a visual representation of what all of my characters looked like so that I can keep them straight in my own head.  So I've got some really terrible drawings of all my characters aswell.

D: So do you do this in the drafting stage. like do you have a little note book next to you while you're drafting to get these ideas down and keep them?

C: No. I do this on more of an as needed basis so when I was going through one of my editing stages and I found myself not able to remember certain characteristics of characters, when I wanted to put in like a reminder this is what colour their hair is and I personally couldn't remember so I had to go back and dig through my whole manuscript until I found the place that I was looking for I actually just grabbed some old old old printer paper that my parents had given us for my kids to draw on and I just grabbed a bunch of those pages and drew it with my kids crayons actually.

D: That's pretty cool.

C: So that was fun. Oh gosh they look so terrible. I am completely embarrassed to share them with people they are so bad but they are useful.

D: That's the important thing.

C: Right

D: Do you find using prompts for your stories limiting or do you think it helps spark new ideas?

C: I actually have another story that I am working on that is entirely prompt based and I find it to be really helpful actually. Because I don't have a really set idea where the story is going. A prompt can be a great way to add in a twist or to force a certain kind of development that maybe I wouldn't have thought of on my own. So I actually really like writing prompts personally.

D: It will definitely give some different ideas things that you wouldn't normally think of.

C: Yeah, absolutely even if it is really far off base. Even if it doesn't seem to directly relate to my story I can still find ways to bend the prompt a little bit to fit. For example a prompt should say share what would happen if your character met a dinosaur or something like that. Well there aren't dinosaurs in my world but there could be a big monster of some kind. You know a big wild animal and i could take that prompt and build that story in a direction that it wouldn't have gone because I wouldn't have thought ooh what would happen if they met a really big animal by themselves. They are really fun and really helpful.

D: That's a really interesting point of view. I find prompts to be, I jast can't grasp my own aspect within prompts. 

C: uh-hmm.

D: I can't go anywhere with them. That must be just my style though. The way that I write.

C: oh yeah, absolutely. I think that everyone is wired so differently. It's the way that, that way that we all approach writing or reading or creating is all entirely independent of who we are and what out experiences in life have been and how our brain works. I think that it's super fascinating to learn about different ways that people write so I think it's I now sure what's the right word I don't want to say amusing that you struggle with prompts but it's fascinating to me where I find prompts super useful and they are absolutely not useful to you in any way. and I find that to ver very interesting.

D: Yeah. just a different perspective.

C: Absolutely.

D: I know that you are quite religious, you go to church every Sunday. and it's a Sunday now do you find that creeps its way into your stories?

C: It does in a way. About a year or a year and a half ago because I write fantasy which generally tends to be very, you can call it tribal type of religion. you know definitely not Christianity. I struggled with that idea that my characters might be following these gods who are obviously fake and made up. Because I made them up. So I really had to wrestle through that. and make the decision that my stories are not evangelism. That's not the point of the story. They are entertainment and it's not up to me or I don't need to...

D: Justify 

C: Yeah. I don't need to make everything super religious. Like, it's ok if there's something out there That's entertainment for entertainments purpose. If I create something that's entertainment that's only purpose is entertaining. it doesn't have to have to have or need to very directly point to what my personal beliefs are. Even though I do hold them very close and very dear and they are a very important part of my life. It's ok if everything that I do is not a reflection of my own beliefs. But I did have to really wrestle through that. To come to that decision.

D: That sounds really deep.

C: Yeah. and I talked to other writers because there are a number of other writers in Authors tale who are also christian in the same you know. who's beliefs are very important to them. etc. etc. and I had to ask them how do you reconcile your writing. You know writing fantasy writing these made up things, these made up gods these made up religions. With what your beliefs are and it was through some of those conversations that I was finally able to land in the place where I am right now. 

D: A happy place.

C: Yeah a happy place. and where I feel very comfortable writing something that it completely made up and doesn't necessarily point to god and to jesus and to what my christian beliefs are. It's Okay for fantasy to just be fantasy.

F: That's wonderful. So you are quite active on your blog, you've got a pretty fantastic website.

C: Thank you.

D: How do you manage your time with kids and with your work and everything like that to have so much output? 

C: Oh dear. thank you for those kind words. That actually means a lot to me. I feel like I've been doing a very bad job lately actually generating any content. but for a while I was doing a lot of batch post writing. So I would sit down and I would write up three for five blogs at a time. and I would spend several days in a row doing that and I would just schedule the content out. You know, a month or six weeks even. so it would just auto schedule and auto post but I had only spent a few days generating all that content with having little kids and with my life just feeling really busy right now it's hard to keep coming up with all this content. So I feel like recently, especially with nano going on it's really it's been really hard to generate anything outside of my update of my word count or whatever. But I'm hoping in the new year to get back on track with what I am doing. It does help that I have scheduled days that I do things. like on Mondays I only post book reviews or interviews with authors and Wednesday is like a writing tip or exploring a topic like recently I just did a series of posts on tropes. And then on Fridays I share some of my own writing so it's something that I have already written and I don't necessarily have to generate something new for it. So breaking up posting in that way if I have something to share I can share it. But I don't necessarily have to be coming up with something three times a week.

D: That's a good ides. I have heard of batching as a productive way of maintaining the blogging lifestyle. 

C: I mean to be honest it really can feel like I'm cheating to do that because you are doing do many posts but you have to write them all like Oh, I just wrote this today. But i know that I wrote that post like 6 weeks ago. So it can feel a little cheating but it is such a great idea and it is so helpful for being able to think about other projects. and not be just constantly thinking about my blogging because it's only a part of what I do. I'm also trying to write novels and trying to do all of these other things and so I just don't have a tonne of time. to write a tonne of blog posts. I'm not trying to make a living by blogging. I eventually. fingers crossed, would like to make a living by writing novels and so I have to remind myself that that's where my focus needs to be. If I want to make money making fiction then I have to spend a lot more time writing fiction than anything else that I am doing. 

D: For Sure, going from that what are your plans going into the future. 

C: Once I have written the second draft of the current book that I am working on I want to go back to book 1 and through all of my critique partners comments. do my own personal adjustments that I know need to happen like changing her age and then changing a whole bunch of things to reflect that. I would like to do a developmental edit with an editor I really respect who is the founder of authors tale Cayce Berryman and then after that. Once I go through that edit I would like to pursue an agent I think. So you know all of that is probably like two years into the future but I doubt that I will try and pursue self publishing. I think that I want to try traditional publishing but things could change.

D: Just have to wait and see how it goes.

C: Yeah. I just think that being picked up by a publishing house lends a certain credibility to your writing versus self publishing because i have read some of the self published stuff out there and I totally get why self publishing gets a bad wrap. I don't have the time or the energy in this stage in my life to do the kind of marketing that needs to happen for a self published book. 

D: Yeah it's a bit hit and miss there are some fantastic self published authors out there.

C: Yes very true.

D: And some they are definitely back yard jobbies. 

C: Right I totally understand that. So I think that's the direction I want to Pursue and I'm not sure that I want this epic series to be my Debut novel. I do have, I am thinking I might try and get my prompt based novel finished up and then and then have that be my debut noel and then follow it up with my series that I am writing. SO I think that's the direction that I  want to go but we'll see.

D: Time is fluid.

C: Time is absolutely fluid and for now, nobody is paying me to write so I can just do whatever I want. 

D: Is hubby really supportive of your writing, is he?

C: Yeah, he is, very very supportive. If he wasn't there is no way that i could do this. He's not a huge fan of my participating in Nanowrimo That's not his favourite month of the year. But he tolerates it because he know that it's finite. Because before our, before you called me I was actually working on my word count for the day and he wanted to do something else for a little bit but said well that's fine I'll let you write I can do this a different time. So it's really nice to have his 150% support. On all of my writing stuff and he's my biggest cheerleader. and he reminds me often that I am a talented writer and that i should continue to pursue this even when you know i want to give up the most. You know when this isn't working, you know this is dumb why am I trying to do this. he is the first one to look at me and say because you are a really good writer. an you know that I'm not going to say that just to make you feel better. If he was not supportive I would know for sure. he would not pretend to be supportive.

D: It's good that he's honest with you.

C: He's very honest. painfully honest sometimes. But it's good and I feel very very fortunate that he is so supportive of my writing and I'm also a long distance runner, like marathon distance or longer eventually and he's also very supportive of that especially which can become really difficult during a training time. The months of training where I could be gone for 4 hours on a Saturday morning running and he just has to get up and you know deal with the kids and deal with all those things by himself. But he's always been super super supportive of the ventures of mine. I think as long as I keep it down to just one or two. If I start to get out of control then 

D: He'll pull you back into line.

C: With too many hobbies then he'll have to be like eek this isn't happening. I cannot have you gone every free minute that I'm home. SO yeah, as long as I just as long as I focus on these two which is fine because i love writing and I love running and I'm perfectly content having those be my hobbies.that I get to do just for me.

D: and they're healthy hobbies too.

C: They are. They are very healthy and they keep me. I think these two things more than anything else that I do. help me to be the best person that I can be. So I notice that I'm a better version of myself, when I get to write and when I get to run. In the seasons of life where I don't get to write and I don't get to run I notice that I'm definitely not as good. Not as of a version of myself as i could be. So, yeah. So it's very special that he really really supports these. 

D: Awesome. So you said in your bio that you love to learn constantly and surprise yourself with what you need to learn in order to keep up with your own worldbuilding?

C: Yeah, I think that leaning new things is one of the most exciting things that happens in my life when I get to learn something new. for example in a scene I recently wrote I needed to, I needed to understand better how waves and the ocean work like during severe storms and like how they can swamp islands things like that. So basically the complete destructive force of water on an island during a storm. I needed to understand that better so I went to you tube and I just started watching videos about tidal waves of tsunami's things like that and it's not just the shock and awe of the power of water but I wanted to understand like how does the water move and how does. like how does it break on the shore. How does it. Like I was watching it with a very scrutinous mindset and not just like a curiosity oh my gosh look at all these things wash away so when I go back and edit I can be more accurate with that theme. Like right now it's just a roughed out scene and whatever, that's fine. But when I go back I'll have this little pocket of knowledge about how waves work and how just what happens when a large wave of water meets a tiny little island. and i can go and I can learn that. I think that you know with writing fantasy it's really fun to go and dig into these things that I might not have thought about before. Or I might not, I might have just held a passing curiosity about. but when I can really dig in and I can really learn about things. I love to watch documentaries and things like that and when I can learn something that I didn't know before I feel like it's the best day ever.

D: I remember reading in one of your blog post where you needed to learn how to skin an animal for your story.

C: Yes.

D: That's not something your would do in everyday life now-a-days.

C: No it isn't as I mentioned at the beginning we have a rooster that we can't have it is thanks giving in America on Thursday I s'pose it will be passed by the time this episode airs in just a few days it will be thanksgiving here.

D: Are you going to pluck it?

C: So we bought the turkey from the store, no, we think we are just going to pull all of the skin off. Cause again me and my husband watched you tube videos on how to... How to kill a chicken. like what is the most humane way to do it. and how do you get the feathers out and I s'pose some people would find that to be extremely gruesome and not a great way to spend the evening. 

D: Oh I've done it once and it's not easy.

C: So we've got to figure out how and where we're going to do this because it is like 10 degrees fahrenhiet outside which is 22 degrees below freezing so it's really cold outside. And so I don't know how we are going to harvest this rooster outside in the snow because most people don't. They don't do this in the winter. This is a summer/fall activity. and we are not in cold and snow so we just kind of have to figure out what we're going to do and how we're gonna..

D: You might just have to put a big slab of plastic one the ground in the kitchen and go for it there.

C: RIght yeah because we were thinking we would so it in the back yard and get a bucket and all this stuff. I was thinking how are we going to keep the chicken from freezing before, like before it's done. So, I have no idea we'll figure it out. It should be quite an experience if nothing else. I'll learn something new.

D: Learning new experiences is always good. 

C: Right. I don't want to make light of killing an animal to eat it because it's certainly, taking a life is not something we should take lightly but,

D: If it's for sustenance thought.

C: Yes and I am definitely am not, like i love meat and I am never going to become a non meat eater and we want to eventually get into raising our own meat birds but we haven't quite gotten to that stage yet. We had thought that all of these birds were chickens. until this one started crowing and we were like oh-oh I don't think that's a hen. and so in one way or another foghorn has to go. He can't stay at our house. 

D: Oh, you named him foghorn.

C: We did because he looked so different than all of our other chickens. we have 5 that are black, we have 5 that are grey, and then there's foghorns and then there's another, she's a rhode Island red. and her name is little red. because she also looked very different from everybody else but non of the other chickens really have names. Because we can't tell any of them apart but these twp are different and when we talked to my like nearly five year old saying that we can't keep him and we are going to have to eat him and she got very very upset. She was really sad and we thought oh gosh maybe we can't do this like maybe we will have to give it away to somebody else and then they can eat him but she's come around to the idea now. She wanted to like invite a bunch of friends over to have a fog horn eating party.

D: OMG!.

C: and we were like he's not that big. He's not going to feed 12 people but I so appreciate her generous spirit and she just so wants to share with other people.  SO we figured that thanks giving was probably the best time because then we can you know we can have a turkey and if things just really go Awry with our rooster it's ok because we are not depending on him being the main course. 

D: There you go.

C: It's been quite the experience discovering he was a rooster and trying to figure out what to do with him. and working through my daughters emotions with her and finally coming to an acceptable conclusion for this and trying to decide like how are we going to do this and are we both going to do it together or does one of us have to stay in the house with the kids because the kids are not going to participate in harvesting him. They're just too young. We have decided that they are too young to experience that. So working out the details has been a little more challenging that either one of us had anticipated. But that's life right you just got to roll with it. and do what you have to do. Yeah.

D: Definitely. 

Music.

Buffy night.

The one night where I'm allowed to have access to the big tele in the lounge room without any complaints from hubby or the kids. I can watch shows with my friends and talk about the great value content in the episodes that we watch. It is awesome to have that connection to the people that are close to you and we watch one or two episodes a night. So I've asked most of my guests if they would be interested in providing something for Buffy night and Cari was happy to oblige so i am going to hand you over to her. She is going to share something that she has been interested in lately. 

C: I was thinking about this and there is a podcast that I listen to at work when I am working and it's called heroine. I'm the kind of person who goes to the very beginning of a podcast series and i will listen to every single episode they have ever released in order.

D: So how many episodes did this heroine have.

C: I have no ides how many episodes heroine has but I'm like 12 or 13 episodes in. But I just listened to one which I believe is from 2016 so that's how far behind I am. But she had gone on what she called a vision quest where she prepared for what she called a vision quest. for an entire year ans she worked with a native american medicine woman to go on what's called a vision quest. Where basically she goes onto an island with no food or water for three or four days and like just communes with nature with herself, with whatever creator/power/higher being that she believes in and then comes down from the mountain and spends time you know processing this vision. apparently it's an old lacoda tradition where all young men would be sent out into the wilderness on these vision quests. So that they could understand who they are, their place within their tribe, and kind of get a vision for the future of their lives. SO she was sharing her experience of this vision quest and how, how difficult it was. and the intensity of even the preparation was almost more than the intensity of the experience itself. I found that to be really really interesting. and really inspiring because as an ultra distance runner it feels similar to you know like running my first marathon. Which is probably the most painful experience of my entire life including giving girth to my children. I think running a marathon is harder than giving birth. You know you just, during those kinds of time you just learn so much about yourself. and you have this ability to dig down into layers of yourself that you had no idea existed and bring  forth. you don't even know what it will eventually bring forth but it does it show you something new. about who you are and shows you to again find a find a better version of yourself and try to integrate that better version of yourself into who you are. I found that particular episode to be super inspiring and it just spoke to me in a really really deep way.

D: That's wonderful well I've just googled it and it looks like there are 91 episodes and

C: Oh my gosh that is so many.

D: it's still current.o you're going to be able to catch up with it eventually.

C: I am never going to catch up unless she stops producing this podcast. But that's okay because i am really enjoying it. And I only listen to podcasts when I work, I just have a very part time job at night and so sometimes if I feel like it I listen to podcasts but sometimes I don't and I just work in silence. And that's okay too.

D: You don't listen to Podcasts while you are running?

C: No, because I live out in the middle of no where and I don't trust people in cars. and do I would rather hear traffic around me. I just assume I'm going to be run over by a car if I don't hear it coming. and I like the silence of the road. "Silence" The sound of my steps, the sound of my breathing, I find that to be very calming and that's when I do some of my best thinking actually is when I am out running. and yeah just being able to be alone. I don't mind being alone with myself. I know some people really struggle with that but I am not one of those people. I am perfectly fine just being alone and quiet and with myself and just letting my brain go where I want it to go. and i am comfortable in that space.

D: It's a good place to be. Thank you so much for coming onto the shoe with me today. I hope that it was illuminating to my audience.

C: Yeah I hope so too. I really enjoyed being on here and talking with you. I am so honoured that you would want to interview me. SO I really appreciate that.

D: No Problem. As I said I do really love you blog and i have actually read both the anthologies that you're in.

C: Oh, Thank you. 

D: So It's good. It's good having you, having someone so amazing on the show. 

C: Thank you so much. I really appreciate that. 

Music

and there you have it. That's the show for another week. The music is from bensound.com and i hope that you really enjoyed listening to the interview with Cari. I really enjoyed talking to her. I was really surprised with just the things that come up. I'm not the most structured interviewer so it tends to just go with the flow. If you do want to know more about Cari she is in the finding Elara facebook group which is awesome so if you wanted to talk to her you can talk to her there or all of her contact information is on the show notes. You can find the show notes at dlnix.com/011 for episode 11. I am planning on talking about my selection process for next year in ext weeks episode.

So I put a call out for new interviews on the show and I had 26 slots because we have my solo and then my guest so I had 26 slots available and I had an overwhelming response. Too many for the year. SO I have decided that I am going to do a little selection process and I'll talk you through what I have decided to do. So next week I am contacting all of them and talking to them about what they have going on and if they have any book releases or any specific times that they want to be interviewed on the show. I'll go from there but I will talk about that next week and we will see what I have decided to do and make some plans which will be awesome. 

I hope that you enjoyed this show today I have learnt so much from Cari it was so interesting especially the way she does her blogging. I hope that you also find something interesting from the interview, something that you can take with you for your creations. until next time. Keep up the search.