This Is My Secret: The Blog and Website of Writer Kristin Cashore

Hi again, everyone. This is really hard, isn't it?

First, I want to plug two services that are working harder than ever right now to save independent bookstores felled by the pandemic. As an alternative to Audible (which is owned by Amazon), please, please consider buying audiobooks from Libro.fm. And as an alternative to Amazon for hard copies of books, please, please check out Bookshop.

So, on the topic of coping. I thought I might describe what my days are like right now, the challenges that arise for me, and how I've been trying to meet them. As it happens, I have some special qualifications for meeting some of our current emotional challenges... because I've spent the last 25+ years living with and recovering from PTSD, which means that I have a lot of tools and perspectives that are helpful in traumatic times. All around us today, people are experiencing not just physical but emotional anguish that may be traumatic, whether directly from COVID-19 or from the ef…

Well, hi there, everyone.

It's hard to know where to begin, isn't it? I'm just going to dive in, because I want to reach out, share some pictures, be distracting for a few minutes, and hopefully make some of you feel less alone.

I am thinking of all of you, every one of you, and hoping you are okay. Knowing that a lot of you aren't, and wishing that weren't the case. I am okay. Or rather, in the words of the immortal Anne (of Green Gables), "I am well in body although considerably rumpled up in spirit." The people of my life are also okay. Tonight I am dashing off this blog post before disappearing into the kitchen to make some banana bread. Two weeks ago (it feels like months ago), Kevin and I were simultaneously hit with a dreadful and violent bout of food poisoning, and for a week afterwards, all I could eat was applesauce, rice, broth, and bananas. Then suddenly, my appetite returned, and since generally I am not a human who voluntarily eats a banana,…

I have, and have always had, the wildest, most vivid dreams when I'm sleeping. Some of them are hilarious in retrospect and I wake up laughing, then laugh at them all day long. Some of them are terrifying and horrible. I might share my dreams with a few people, but for the most part, I keep them to myself, because dream reports can be tedious.

BUT. I need to share the dream I had last night.

Last night, I had a dream that I had a dream that I had a very dramatic dream I somehow figured out how to record on my phone like a movie, then text to Kevin (my husband), so that he could see my dramatic dream.

Hang on. Let me start over. I'm going to start with the dream inside the dream inside the dream. (I think?)

I have a dream. While dreaming, I record the dream and text it to Kevin. He'll be amazed! But wait! Won't he also be confused? It's impossible to record dreams! Kevin will think this is a movie I filmed, with me as the main character and with clearly expensive pro…

About a year ago, I finished knitting a blanket that was a gift for someone else and realized I missed its pieces piled up in my lap. I decided it was time to knit a blanket for myself :o). Wanting something cheerful for the cold, dark months, I chose this free pattern at Lion Brand.... and got started.

First I collected my colors.

This blanket is knitted in three parts: the reds and oranges in one big triangular corner; the yellows and greens in a stripe across the center; and the blues and purples in another triangular corner.


The pieces are worked in intarsia colorwork. This means that most of the time, I was actively knitting with more than one color, which I admit can become a bit of a tangled headache. Below, I'm knitting the center stripe in three different greens and one yellow, and I have all four colors attached to my needle at the same time.


When I went to a writing retreat last February, half my suitcase was full of my blanket :o)

Below, I've knitted the red/oran…

This year's Halloween costume involved less preparation than usual. I'll be honest, I'm still recovering from the year I dressed up as a library. My goal this year was something creative yet simple to assemble.
I glitter-striped a unicorn horn and made myself some ears...

Then attached them to a Cruella deVil style black-and-white wig.

I figured a zebra unicorn wears something sparkly and striped, right?

Nothing odd about this dress... *cough*

And this is when things got intense. The plan all along was to study the way stripes sit on a zebra's face, then paint that pattern on my own face to create something magical. But it turned out SO CREEPY!

 Creepy's okay with me, though.

Click on any picture to embiggen/get a more focused view.
Till next year! :o)

The Boston Festival of Independent Games, BostonFIG Fest, is on Saturday, at the Harvard Athletic Complex in Allston.

Local people, if you're interested in the best new indie games, whether tabletop or digital, you should come! And when you do, stop by Kevin's booth to visit Kevin and his indie game, Starcom: Nexus. I'll be there too, being Helpful. Come say hi! :o)

We also saw a lot of animals that were impossible to photograph, in particular, an Arctic fox. The animal sightings were frequent and always special. Most of the time, I tried to take a few pictures, but then I reminded myself to put my camera down and enjoy. Consequently, this is only a hint of what we saw, but I hope it gives a nice sense of things.

If you're coming late to my report from my