Laura Schlitz: Hello, my name is Laura Amy Schlitz. I am the writer of Amber and Clay, which is a book that came out from Candlewick Press. It has some really interesting visual elements by Julia Iredale. Amber and Clay was my ninth book. I don't know how many of you know history of music, but a lot of composers, they write nine symphonies and then they die. This book did not kill me, but it was a very interesting book to write. There were times when I really felt like I didn't know what I was doing.

Well, I began with wanting to write about Socrates, or Socrates, and about the slave boy in one of the plays that survived, Plato's little play, the Meno. I wanted to write about this boy and this philosopher because I find Socrates fascinating. But a lot of elements came into the story and it had a supernatural element. It's also about this young girl, Melisto, who goes to serve the goddess Artemis as a bear. Young girls were sent to a place called Brauron, where they served the goddess as bears, whatever that means, and we don't really know. And so I had this kind of triangle in my head about this girl and Rhaskos, the slave boy who seemed to want to be Thracian, although it's very hard to find out much about the Thracians. Socrates.

A lot of the time, when I wrote this book, I didn't know where it was going or if it would hang together. Sometimes when you have no idea what you're doing, you're actually doing something really interesting. And I think writing is particularly strange that way, because you can't look at a piece of writing and have your five senses tell you whether it's any good. Bad words on a page look pretty much the same as good words on a page. It's only some kind of thing in the brain that tells you whether something is alive or not.

With this book, I really had to trust my intuition and I didn't know what I was doing a lot of the times. In fact, I would even lean back in my chair and yell, "foreign language musa," means, "Sing to me, muse," asking for help from the muses. But I like the book a lot. I think it's an interesting book. So sometimes if you are a young artist, you have to sort of keep going with something even though it's not making any sense to you. Because sometimes when it's off the map, that's where the magic and the mystery and the energy lies.

I'm going to read one of the turn and counter turn pieces. It's one of these pieces where one character speaks and there's a syllable pattern and then the other character speaks afterwards and copies the same syllable pattern. I got that idea from Greek drama. So here's Likos's part.

Likos: I thought I had more time. I thought I'd grow up and be an athlete crowned with olive leaves. I wanted to grow strong so I could pound Meno. I wanted to go swimming with Rhaskos. Instead, I've come here, this steep and crooked canyon, darkening, forcing me forward, closing in. It reminds me of something. A sound in the dark. The splash of running water. This is the boat for the dead, and that monster of nightmare, Caron, the boatman so hideous with his red and feverish eyes. I want to run. My feet are rooted to the ground. Music? Someone is whistling. A God, boyish and radiant, light footed as a goat. His skin sheds fragrance and flakes of dazzling light. I'm afraid of them both. I've come to the land of Gods and Ghosts and I don't like either one. I'm afraid of where they're taking me and I'm afraid of the dark.

Hermes: This is the fate of man, to run out of time, to pass from the earth to the house of death. It's time to say farewell to everything you've known.