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

One night in Copenhagen, I was waiting for the hotel elevator, when two Danish men about my age stepped out of their room. One of them belched loudly as he stepped into the corridor -- then saw me, and was embarrassed. They both started chuckling, and speaking to me, both at once, in Danish.

"I'm sorry," I said in English, "I don't speak --." Then I stopped, because I couldn't remember what country I was in or which language it was that I couldn't speak this time. This happens when you keep crossing borders; a few hours ago, I'd been in Sweden; the next day, I was going to be in Spain.

"Oh, you don't speak that language?" one of them said, speaking English now. "It was a Danish word for --" and he went on to explain to me how his friend hadn't actually belched, he'd been saying something very intelligent in Danish. :)

The next day, when I told my cab driver in Madrid the address of my hotel, he began speaking to …

Here's a video link to the Q&A portion of my event at Casa del Libro on Madrid's Gran Via, September 11. It's about 14 minutes long; my editor, Patricia Escalona, serves as interpreter. It might be a little bit tricky for non-Spanish speakers to follow, because the English versions of the questions didn't always make it into the microphone. Though my answers did. The first audience question was, "Why do you write about girls?" ... I wonder, why is it that writing about boys requires no justification, yet I am repeatedly asked why I write about girls?

And here's an audio link to an interview with L'autre Monde in Paris, conducted by Xavier Desnos, who asked some nice, in-depth questions about Bitterblue. My wonderful interpreter was Adèle Ecochard. About 9:30 minutes.  And Some photos and other stuff are here.

Many thanks to everyone involved :)

Hello from Paris! A new day, a new language.

So, it's essentially impossible to capture Madrid on film -- the noise, the sun, the traffic, the people, the scale of the buildings -- unless maybe you have an IMAX camera, which I didn't. I stopped trying after a while, so what I'm showing here barely does this beautiful city justice.  I found I did best if I focused on little things OR if I was up really high.

Hi everyone, if you want to watch my book event this evening at Casa del Libro Gran Via at 19.30 (7:30 PM), it will be streaming live. Everything will be spoken in both English and Spanish. Go to @rocajoven on Twitter for more information: https://twitter.com/RocaJoven. Or my own Twitter, @kristincashore. (Sorry, I can't really deal with links right now!) I expect I'll be talking about the writing process, maybe reading two or three pages from Bitterblue, and answering questions from the audience. FYI to my American readers: Madrid is six hours ahead of New York.

Charlie Stross on a book tour reality TV idea.

Though just to be clear, my European tour is NOT like what he describes. See my earlier post about the difference between a domestic and an international tour for an American author, at least in my experience. The two are very different; he is describing what sounds to me like a domestic tour in the USA, a signing tour. (I understand Charlie Stross is English and lives in Scotland, so I'm not actually sure what type of tour he's talking about, or if his experiences line up with mine location-wise. Am I confusing everyone?)

Also -- just in case I created the impression with yesterday's posts that we're not doing any work here in Spain -- yesterday was unusual. We had a light day, then some cancellations. Today we're making up for it!

Thanks, JD, for the link :)

Over chocolate and churros,

I watch Patricia roll a cigarette.





Later, it is my responsibility to drink this beverage. It's a Belgian beer called Kwak, because of the sound it makes when you get down to the narrow portion of the glass.

Jorge, who was born in Mexico, now lives in Madrid, and once lived in Belgium, tells me that each Belgian beer is served in its own particular kind of glass. This tasty Tripel Karmeliet, for example, has this lovely fleur-de-lis glass.


I'm working very hard in Madrid.

This seems like an appropriate first post for Madrid: my lovely editor Patricia and I are sitting on the rooftop terrace of my hotel. Across Madrid's gorgeous Gran Via, some men are doing construction -- can you see the beam hanging from the crane and the two men under it? 

Well, I was taking pictures and they noticed our interest. A minute later, they came to the edge of the building, started shouting, and held up a sign with their phone numbers.



As Patricia called it on twitter (@vendedoradprosa), #extremeflirting. Welcome to Spain :)

The Italian cover of Fire, published by De Agostini. Click to enbiggen. The text means something along the lines of, "Her mystique is a gift as sharp as a blade." :D ------------>

My subject heading is a David Gray song (click here to listen) that popped into my head the instant I walked into my hotel room in Lisbon and saw the view of the river. (Lisbon is situated on the Atlantic, and on the Tagus River, which flows into the Atlantic, as per this map.)

I wasn't prepared for the beauty of this city. I've heard San Francisco compared to Sydney, but why have I never heard it compared to Lisbon? I can see the Sydney/San Francisco connection, which has to do both with attractiveness and with the progressive culture, but LISBON is a city of extreme hills and close knit buildings and colorful rowhouses like San Francisco's (though the buildings are older and more European in feel, naturally), not to mention a gorgeous reddish-gold bridge that made me blink when …