Eighteen apparently.
Every week at Clarion, Shaun Farrell of the podcast Adventures in Sci-fi Publishing would pop by and interview the instructors, then in the final week he interviewed us, the Clarionites. You can listen to the result here.
Be aware, I have not yet listened to this myself. The thing they don’t you when they let you in, is that leaving Clarion is PAINFUL. Imagine making eighteen best friends and then losing them all on the same day. Thats the last day of Clarion in a sentence. Add in my new found longing for the blue skys of California, and I’ve been pretty miserable since my return. I almost wish Clarion 2008 had collapsed into internecine squabbling and awful cliquiness so I would now have some hatred to buffer me against the pain, but no, I love all of my Clarion friends equally. Consequentialy, its still a bit too raw for me to listen to everyone on that podcast just yet. (Yes I know, beneath that British stiff upper lip I’m just a big softy)
But as the pain of Clarion withdrawal has lessened over the days, I’ve realised that far from being an end, Clarion is really a beginning for all of us. No force in the verse will keep me away from at least one con a year where I can hook up with as many Clarion alumni as possible. And I’m going to carry on reading, critiquing and writing for our online Clarion group, and staying up late to IM accross the Atlantic. And I even feel an extra incentive to scale the heights of Mount Publishing, just to get an American book tour.
Damien Walter 
Just to let you know, I had to look up “internecine” in the dictionary (and yes, I do still use a paper dictionary). I am such a philistine.
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Listened to the episode, and found in extremely inspiring. The whole series Shaun Farrel made me jealous as hell, but it’s got my head down and got me writing. The whole thing sounds absolutely amazing. If ever I manage to find a way to take 6 weeks off… there in a hearbeat. Can’t wait to see your stuff taking over the magazines.
(Btw – Neil Gaiman in his interview says “there’s actually a chap here from England” which I thought was cool, just because I knew who he was talking about)
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