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

[Warning for those afraid of heights and also my mother: trapeze photos below!]

A quick note to anyone who's considering buying signed/inscribed copies of my books from Harvard Book Store as we approach the holidays: I will be out of town, hence unable to sign things, from December 11 to December 19, then again at Christmas Actual. Please time your purchases accordingly so that we can get things to you in time!  Instructions for buying signed copies are behind the link above.

Also, I recommend the article "Sex education in the US is screwing our kids," at Salon, by Alanna Schubach for Dame, which, among other things, links the failure to educate our kids about sex to the prevalence of sexual assault on our college campuses and pretty much everywhere. Excerpt: "Any given student’s experience of sexual education, then—if she receives it at all—is subject to a staggering range of forces: congressional budgeting, state policy, school compliance, community climate, …

An unexpected change in my weekend plans leaves me with some time this afternoon for blogging a bit of randutiae...
My dear friend Amanda MacGregor recently wrote a piece for Modern Loss about what happens when the experience of traumatic loss collides with the way we use social media. She writes that following the sudden death of her father, "Thanks to social media, his death was old news by the time I found out about it." This piece brings up some questions it would benefit us to think about – like, what is lost when a person who's grieving doesn't even have the privilege of telling their own bad news? Check it out.At School Library Journal, Lauren Barack has written a great piece called "LGBTQ & You: How to Support Your Students," about the importance of the school library to the young LGBTQ community. That smiling library assistant in the photo is, in fact, my dear friend Amanda MacGregor, who wrote the Modern Loss piece – she is just popping up ever…

Before I get to the questions, I love Justine Larbalestier's recent blog post, written to her friends and extended family: "You don't have to read my books." Now seems like an appropriate time for me to link to it, since I have a new book that's just come out. Friends and family who might be feeling obligated? YOU DON'T HAVE TO READ MY BOOKS! Read Justine's post -- she explains lots of great reasons why.

Now, SPOILER WARNING: These questions/answers don't contain any significant Bitterblue spoilers, but the first two questions definitely contain significant Graceling spoilers.

1. In your acknowledgments for Bitterblue, you included an interesting mention having to do with Po, disability politics, "magical cures," and your own failings as a writer. Would you talk a little bit more about what that was all about?

Here is the section of my Bitterblue acknowledgments to which this question refers:
Thanks to Rebecca Rabinowitz and Deborah Kaplan, wh…

... I guess I'll know when I get there."
(That's how it feels sometimes when you're learning to fly, you know?) (Link plays song.)
So, I haven't been blogging about trapeze class, but it's not because I haven't been taking class. It's because I start to worry that it's obnoxious and narcissistic to plaster pictures of myself all over my blog. Especially since these pictures are so flattering and show up how much more graceful I am than the rest of you people.

(Or maybe I just don't want any of you to realize how much time I spend sitting in the net, laughing hysterically at how badly that trick just went. Sigh...)

Yeah, so. There's been a LOT going on at trapeze class, and there's something I want to say about it. Bear with me while I try to figure out exactly what it is.
I've been learning some new things. I've been working on my swing, which is where you get a lot of the power for your tricks, and which is the hardest thing th…

Hello everyone. This is your friendly author Kristin here. I wanted to let you all know that I have lost my mind. Here is an emoticon of me standing next to my disembodied head. I am thinking of using it as a soccer ball.

/|\
/\ O


Here is an emoticon of me bravely using my laser vision to vanquish a flying apple while balanced on a yoga ball. When you've lost your mind, you think it's normal to do things like this.

o~-~-~-~-~-~-~ß|O


Here is an emoticon of me on the flying trapeze. This is actually a sane thing I like to do from time to time, though my mother might argue otherwise.

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|o|
8
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Ah, those were carefree days. Not like now. Here is an emoticon of me dead from too much work, in profile.

O_____,


Wait, she stirs!

O\/___,


Again, she stirs!

O__\__,


Is there hope?

O_____,


No.

O_____,


There is no hope.

O_____,


Diagnosis: DEAD.

O_____,


So, this is what we've been reduced to on the blog. Here's the deal: I am not actually dead. However, I don't have a lot of time or energy right …

I'm still having a funny stretch of dreams. The other night, after yet another trapeze class, I dreamed about a guy who was taking trapeze lessons. His name was Ted Zeppelin. The soundtrack of the dream was Pink Floyd, though, so there might be some band confusion in my brain somewhere.A quote from Mark Twain (thanks, Jen ^_^): "The difference between the right word and the nearly right word is the same as that between lightning and the lightning bug."If you love libraries, you will love the speech Philip Pullman gave recently. It might even make you cry. (Thanks, Rebecca.)If you are a smooth criminal, watch out for these guys. (Opens to a music video. There are cellos.) (Also, I hope they keep extra bows on hand. !!)
If you like cellos and Metallica and wonder where my sister, secret codename: Apocalyptica, got her codename from, watch out for these guys. (Another music video.) (Also, I'm guessing that even people who *don't* like Metallica [like my Dad] would li…

Some news deserves mention on the blog: in Germany, Fire, or DieFlammende, debuted on the Spiegel adult hardcover bestseller list. Shazam! Thanks so much to my German readers. I cannot wait to visit you in March.

Also, FYI to American and Canadian readers: Fire is just coming out in paperback (the release date is January 25). Shazam!

(I've been trying to incorporate the word "Shazam!" into my vocabulary more often. Am I overdoing it?)

I'm going through a stretch in which my dreams are directly related to exactly what I just did. The other day, I took a trapeze class, listened to the soundtrack of Les Miserables for the FIRST TIME EVER (how had I gone my whole life without doing this?), and had a dream that night that Derek Jeter (the shortstop for the New York Yankees) and I were setting off to rescue Jean Valjean (the hero of Les Miserables) together. I'm not sure what we were rescuing him from or if we succeeded; the dream seemed to be about the journey. Derek Jet…

Trapeze photos ahead!

So, this time of year, if it feels right to me, I come up with a few resolutions that make me happy, are designed to bring me peace, and sometimes even take away some of the pressure I've been feeling. They're always realistic, and they are never, ever, EVER punishing or self-loathing. (I don't believe in self-limiting New Year's resolutions. This is probably a reaction to the explosion of fat-phobic resolutions so many people make this time of year that give me the heebie-jeebies. Have you heard about the New Year's ReVolution against weight-loss resolutions?)

This year, I find myself with four.
I'm going to finalize Bitterblue this year. And I'm going to start writing something new. I think both Bitterblue and I are looking forward to this.I'm going to bake some bread this year. Do you know how long it's been since I kneaded bread? I haven't made bread once since I moved back to Massachusetts, and it's one of my most …

Warning to the acrophobic (and to my mother): This post contains trapezey photos!

So, I really do think that trapezing is the perfect extracurricular activity for the writer -- for two reasons. One: trapezing is completely different from writing, and therefore, it's the perfect break. When I'm writing, I'm sitting in a chair, I'm racking my brains, I'm ALL in my head, thinking, thinking, thinking. I've got a great connection between my brain and my left hand, but beyond that, I'm kind of physically oblivious. I'm so out of touch with my body sometimes that I get mad when I realize I'm hungry (what, I have to feed myself AGAIN?). Or, I find myself in another room, and can't remember how I got there or why. Nothing could be more different from this than jumping off a platform, swinging through the air, leaping off the trapeze and being caught. As I've mentioned before, when I'm at a trapeze class, I don't think about writing, not once.…