Burning Blog Tour Stop

Burning
by Elana K. Arnold
Pages: 320
Release Date: June 11, 2013
by Delacorte Press

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Ben: Having just graduated from high school, Ben is set to leave Gypsum, Nevada. It's good timing since the gypsum mine that is the lifeblood of the area is closing, shutting the whole town down with it. Ben is lucky: he's headed to San Diego, where he's got a track scholarship at the University of California. But his best friends, Pete and Hog Boy, don't have college to look forward to, so to make them happy, Ben goes with them to check out the hot chick parked on the side of Highway 447.
Lala: She and her Gypsy family earn money by telling fortunes. Some customers choose Tarot cards; others have their palms read. The thousands of people attending the nearby Burning Man festival spend lots of cash--especially as Lala gives uncanny readings. But lately Lala's been questioning whether there might be more to life than her upcoming arranged marriage. And the day she reads Ben's cards is the day that everything changes for her. . . and for him.

Guest Post:

I am a big fan of research, and so far all of my novels have allowed me to fall into interesting worlds. I become kind of obsessed with my subject matter while I’m researching, and I begin to see my “special interest” all around me. When I was writing SACRED, I delved into Kabbalah; for BURNING, I got to research Romani people, gypsum mining, and the Burning Man festival. What a wonderfully rich combination of topics!I love Google. I think that had I been writing BURNING fifteen years ago, it could have taken me years to gather the information I needed to write it. But in the magical world we inhabit today, I was able to find out-of-print collections of Romani poetry and fables, connect with an agronomist who send me pictures of the gypsum mine where he works, find Burners who were eager to share their stories, and read articles about the real town of Empire, Nevada, on which I based Ben Stanley’s town of Gypsum.In fact, it was a picture in one of these articles that inspired the opening scene of BURNING—Ben and his friends skating in an abandoned gypsum mine. I can’t seem to find that picture again, but here’s a link to an article about the town: http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada-and-west/empire-death-nevada-company-town. I originally heard about Empire by chance, just listening to NPR as I drove. Here’s a link to the transcript of that interview: http://www.npr.org/2011/06/20/137304964/shuttered-plant-marks-the-end-of-a-nevada-town. I had already decided that my female protagonist would be a Romani Gypsy, and when I heard that the residents of Empire mined Gypsum, my Scooby ears stood up. Then I learned that Empire was located near the entrance to Burning Man, and I knew I had discovered my setting, and the home of my male protagonist Ben Stanley. Really, everything about BURNING is linked to that setting—the desperation, the shuttering of a town, the hard choices, the end of things, the blistering heat and unrelenting, oppressive sun. 

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