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

Announcement: I ♥ librarians. Why? Because librarians love information, know how to find it, know how to use it, and know how to help other people find and use it; and because librarians love, care for, and offer us BOOKS. And school librarians, in particular, share their awesomeness with young people without condescension. Thanks so much to the New Jersey Association of School Librarians for inviting me to their fall conference this past weekend. You guys are inspiring.

Housekeeping: I got a great suggestion the other day from an audiobooker who wished she could see the maps of the kingdoms while listening. Please see my new link to the left, Maps of My Book World, which shows both the maps so far, both drawn by Jeffery C. Mathison. Click on the maps to make them bigger.

In other news, in case anyone's wondering, Spike is still beating Beethoven in the highly scientific Spike Versus Beethoven: You Decide! poll -- but Beethoven is holding his own! I'm proud. I thought o…

ALA was a transformative experience.
How can I even explain it?
I went to dinner with seventeen lovely people, professionals in the children's lit field, all of whom have read my book. As we ate, all around me, people were talking about the book. They were excited about the book. They loved the book. Is there any way to explain what this was like? How much do I love Houghton Mifflin Harcourt for throwing a dinner and inviting all the people who love my book and no one who hates it? I am so lucky to have had the experience of this dinner. I will never forget it. And I hope I'll get the chance to meet everyone again and talk more -- what an awesome, funny, interesting group of people (and no, I'm not just saying that because they like my dumb book)! Thank you, everyone who was there!
And then, next morning, the signing. Oh my goodness! I kept reminding myself of the examples of the Dalai Lama and my father (who reminds me a little of the Dalai Lama, except he doesn&#…

My sister (let's give her an assumed name, Cordelia, so as not to blow her cover) is determined to go to heaven. To that effect, Cordelia only sins when she's under an umbrella (so God won't see). When she senses God is listening, she makes loud announcements about her plans to bake cookies for priests; and on Sunday mornings she hides under her covers so God won't be able to see that she's in bed instead of at Mass. (God can see through clouds and bedroom ceilings, you see, but not through umbrellas or blankets. You learn these things if you're brought up in a godly manner.)

The point is that if the Man Keeping Score doesn't know that Catherine, I mean Cordelia, has sinned, well then, she hasn't sinned.

Now, I don't believe in God, but I do believe in the authority of librarians. And I also got a big dose of the "sin" mentality growing up, and I have to say, it shows in my library behavior. I know how to break all the rules in the libr…