Photos from Mongolia (shale)

When I realized my story STAND ON THE SKY needed to be set in Mongolia, I scratched out a couple of sample chapters so I could beg for a grant. I got the grant – and I stopped writing. I really wanted to find the shape of the story after I’d been. (Turned out that I found it while I was there.)⁣ .⁣ Naturally many of the things in the sample chapters turned out to be a little off, because I’d only done book research. But I’d written the bit where Aisulu rides up to an outcrop of shale to seek the eagle nest and rescue the orphaned baby eagle. And when I finally got to Western Mongolia, there it was, just as I’d pictured it, the shale outcrop.

It was almost eerie. I wanted to put a blue scarf and a good stone at its base, to thank the universe. ⁣

I am grateful to these stones, this land. ⁣ ⁣