{"id":22450,"date":"2022-11-30T10:29:58","date_gmt":"2022-11-30T15:29:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/?p=22450"},"modified":"2022-11-30T10:29:58","modified_gmt":"2022-11-30T15:29:58","slug":"spun-gold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/spun-gold\/","title":{"rendered":"Spun Gold"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"position: relative; padding-top: max(60%,326px); height: 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe style=\"position: absolute; border: none; width: 100%; height: 100%; left: 0; right: 0; top: 0; bottom: 0;\" src=\"https:\/\/e.issuu.com\/embed.html?backgroundColor=%23f0f0f0&amp;d=dec22_flipbook_11.18-reduced&amp;hideIssuuLogo=true&amp;pageNumber=46&amp;u=portlandmagazine\" sandbox=\"allow-top-navigation allow-top-navigation-by-user-activation allow-downloads allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-modals allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox allow-forms\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h2>Move over, Harry Potter and Rumpelstiltskin! Maine author George Jreije\u2019s debut fantasy novel is all about alchemy.<\/h2>\n<p><b>Interview By Natalie Foster<\/b><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?<\/span><\/p>\n<p>T<span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">ypically, you talk to a writer and they&#8217;ll tell you about how they grew up loving books and reading and writing, but <\/span><b>m<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">y writing journey began mid-college. I\u2019d just read a novel that I loved, and that voice in my head said, \u201cHey, I can do this!\u201d But it turned out I was wrong. Everybody will tell you, those first few manuscripts\u2014we don&#8217;t talk about those. Five years later, I said, I&#8217;m going to try to write\u00a0 a middle-grade book. I really like this age category, but you see so many middle-grade fantasies, and I wanted to do something original. I\u2019m an <\/span><strong>Arab-American<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I have Lebanese citizenship. I lived in <\/span><strong>Lebanon<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> for a few years, and I speak fluent <\/span><strong>Arabic<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. I was like, what part of my culture can I draw from that\u2019ll be unique in this book? And I thought, no one&#8217;s really done anything with <\/span><strong>alchemy<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, even though it\u2019s one of the original magic systems in the world and the precursor to science itself. Being that it was so prevalent in the <\/span><strong>Middle East<\/strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> and in the region I grew up in, I said, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">all right<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, I&#8217;m going to write an Arabic character who becomes an alchemist. Shad is in many respects a reflection of who I was at twelve years old.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><em><span class=\"s1\">Read the full story in the digital magazine above.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-22487\" src=\"http:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1200\" height=\"628\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold.jpg 1200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold-300x157.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold-1024x536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold-768x402.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold-200x105.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/11\/spun-gold-620x324.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Move over, Harry Potter and Rumpelstiltskin! Maine author George Jreije\u2019s debut fantasy novel is all about alchemy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1269],"class_list":["post-22450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","tag-december-2022"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22450"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22511,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22450\/revisions\/22511"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.portlandmonthly.com\/portmag\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}