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

I just finished a massive revision. I am celebrating by lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, and occasionally taking bites out of a cheeseburger. It is THE BEST.

Some End of Revision Randutiae for you, dear readers:
Fancy dresses from the Met Gala. Some of these dresses are actually beyond my powers of comprehension, but Lily Collins looks great. [ETA: I've become aware that the link no longer works, but I've been unable to find one that actually does! Sorry!] French artist Thomas Lamadieu takes photos of sky spaces between buildings, then makes art.  Finally, here's today's Google Doodle, which honors the 151st birthday of journalist Nellie Bly.

In the category of It's All Relative, it's 41°F (5°C) and raining today, I was just outside, I was wearing a light long-sleeve shirt and jeans but no coat, no hat, no scarf, no longjohns, and it was GLORIOUS. It's not supposed to snow again until tomorrow. :D?It turns out I was wrong about two things about the event last night. First of all, it was totally snowing. Secondly, it was also snowing in New York, which meant that poor Marie spent an hour or so sitting on her plane on the runway before they finally canceled her flight. Marie was not able to make it to last night's event. Waaah! I did my best to read from The Winner's Crime and talk up her beautiful series. Happy book birthday, Marie. Here in Cambridge, we miss you. Thank you, everyone, for coming out on a snowy night!Via Rebecca Rabinowitz, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS/ME has a new name: SEID, systemic exertion intolerance disease. It's also the focus of some new attention. This is wonderful news fo…

If you've been watching the World Cup, then chances are, you've seen a lot of players turn to the left and cross their arms during the line-up presentations. Even if you haven't, I bet you'll enjoy this piece at Slate, Who Won the World Cup of Arm-Folding? Hilarious. Read it on a device that allows you to see the graphics, i.e., maybe not your phone. Thanks, Stephanie.

… via screencaps of all the browsers currently open on my phone. Some of these are priceless, others are slightly pointless…



1. Dance performances on the Ability Unlimited Foundation website. The Ability Unlimited Foundation is a Delhi-based non-profit social service organization for the benefit of differently-abled people irrespective of race, religion, caste, colour and creed. Thanks, Deborah :)

2. Frog Museum in Estavayer-le-Lac, Switzerland. 150-year old satirical tableaux made from stuffed frogs.  Bizarre and awesome. Thanks, Anindita :) 

3. Tiny Pantone Matching System Match. "A personal project of tiny proportion—matching small everyday objects to their Pantone® colors, by designer Inka Mathew." Oddly soothing! I couldn't stop scrolling down until I got to the end. Thanks, Jess :)

4. Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty by Christine Heppermann. This outstanding new book of poetry turned me into a puddle from the first poem. A silent, wondering puddle. Not o…

YOU GUYS. Over at Written? Kitten!, every time you write one hundred words, YOU GET A PICTURE OF A KITTEN. (Thanks, S!)

Over at Teen Librarian Toolbox, I really like the post "Dear Media, Let me help you write that article on YA literature." It begins, "Recently, there have been a voluminous number of articles written about YA literature. And they are mostly wrong. So if you are a member of the press and given this assignment, I thought I would help you out a little.  But first, let me start by telling you why I am, in fact, qualified to help you out. Credentials are important, something these articles always seem to lack..." (Thanks, R!)

As a companion to her recent blog post, "Some things to consider when writing fat characters," Rebecca Rabinowitz has written "Some things to think about when writing thin characters."

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Pardon me for a minute while I copy and paste everything I've written in this blog post so far and GO GET ME A…

Graceling now exists in Norwegian. Yay! ----->

Published by Cappelen Damm and translated by Carina Westberg, whose excellent translation questions spurred my recent post about how Seabane Isn't Real.

This is another randutiae post. Ready?
I really like Rebecca Rabinowitz's short post called Some things to consider when writing fat characters.Some recent words my Scrabble app has rejected: Bearthin. Adjective. The particular degree of thinness of a bear coming out of hibernation. Trocheey. Adjective. Adjectival form of "trochee." Meowlion. Noun. Really, isn't every lion a meowlion? Evebait. Noun. Perhaps a sexist synonym for "apple." Unshovel. Verb. Arguably if a walk is unshoveled, someone or something has unshoveled it. I would go so far as to say I've spent entire mornings unshoveling the walk. I did recently have the satisfaction of changing "otter" to "garotter," but I lament the lack of style points in Scrabble. I feel…

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…

Just taking a few minutes to say a few things on this busy Sunday…
My dear friend Amanda MacGregor has a new website called Cite Something! where she's providing research and writing advice to high school and college students. Plus, she has a sense of humor. Go check it out, look around a bit if you're interested. Amanda and I were grad students together at Simmons College's Center for the Study of Children's Literature and I am deelighted by her new project!In case you live in Cambridge and love cookies, you should know that the workers at Insomnia Cookies are currently on strike. They are fighting for a living wage, healthcare, enforced breaks, and the right to be in a union. I'm very grateful to the friend who told me this (thanks, B!), because otherwise I might have accidentally crossed the picket line for a cookie! Now I'm telling you, so you can avoid the same error. Support the strikers! Reject the cookies! The news about Jane Austen on England'…

Greetings from the back of beyond, dear readers.

I love Deborah Kaplan's recent post called "Writing Homework for You, My Loyal Readers." Last fall, Deborah and Amy Stern co-taught the fantasy course at Simmons College's Center for the Study of Children's Literature. After they'd started the semester, they realized what the opening assignment should have been. Now that they're no longer teaching the course, they're sharing that assignment with us, and it's a great one. It involves learning to better appreciate the differences between all the many ways we can write about books. From the post:

Current students are so incredibly proficient at writing about reading, because what with blogs etc., they do so much of it. And yet at the same time, they are proficient in some very specific kinds of writing about reading (primarily personal blogs and Goodreads-style reviews, with some amount of professional blogs), and the process of showing people the req…

I have a to-do list the length of, um, something long (why did I set myself up to have to take time to think up a clever metaphor?) so this will be quick, but -- I'm reading a very funny book. It's called Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School: Book the First) and is by Gail Carriger. A new character was just described thusly:

The door burst open. A young man stood before them. He was a tall, swarthy fellow of the type that Petunia would swoon over; rakishly handsome in a floppy way.
"In a floppy way" had me howling, and can't you just see him perfectly? I just started Chapter 5, which is titled, "Never Hurl Garlic Mash at a Man with a Crossbow."
Over at the CBC Diversity blog, Rebecca Rabinowitz has written a really wonderful post about the problematic depiction of fat characters in children's literature: Diversity 101: Who's That Fat Kid?
And a friend recently directed me to two wonderful TED talks in which men -- Jackson Katz and Tony P…

This No Blogging thing is intensely peaceful, but I thought I'd break in with a few things that've been piling up.

First, the Horn Book Magazine asked me what's the strangest children's book I've ever read... so I wrote them a little piece about Moomins. If you can't get your hands on the current (March/April 2013) issue but want to read my words, follow the link.

Next, the recent This American Life episode "Reruns" -- about people stuck in a particular moment -- was all-around great, but I especially adored the final act, in which Sarah Vowell discusses people who inappropriately equate themselves with Rosa Parks. Vowell is so dry and funny and CORRECT. Follow the link to listen.

Finally, underwater photojournalist Brian Skerry's TED talk contains some spectacular photos, and also some hope for our oceans.  Press play.

Happy Pan-Universal Be Who You Are Day! Someone who uses voice recognition software and draws should start a VRS comic strip. The objects that appear suddenly in my scenes because my VRS has misunderstood me are visually amusing. I just dictated the line, "'I will,' she said with a sob," and my VRS typed, "'I will,' she said with a saw." I feel like a spontaneous saw could really add something to a conversation.Gentlemen of Cambridge: to the man, when faced with a long, narrow corridor of sidewalk between snowbanks, you have waited at your end and let me pass first. This has literally happened to me twelve times since the storm (which I know because at a certain point I started counting). In this northeast USA city (meaning, a city where strangers tend not to pay much attention to each other and rudeness is not particularly unusual), I am startled and touched by this thoughtfulness, then startled that I am touched. Thank you for your gentlemanly beh…

I would like a poster of today's xkcd to hang on my wall: Diagram of the Up Goer Five.

Also, I like this (surreal!) video about Finnish ice fisherpeople.

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Okay. Here's my public events schedule for NCTE-ALAN in Vegas next weekend. Location of all events: The MGM Grand Hotel & Casino | 3799 Las Vegas Boulevard South | Las Vegas, NV 89109. Which is just WEIRD.

Sunday, November 18th

11:00 AM – 12:00 PM: Signing in the Penguin Booth, #101-105.

12:00 PM – 12:30 PM: Signing at Anderson’s Bookshop, Booth #147.

Monday, November 19th

8:40 AM – 9:15 AM: ALAN Workshop -- Fantasy Panel. With Rae Carson, Shannon Hale, and Maggie Stiefvater. MGM Grand | Level Three | Premier Ballroom | Rooms 309-311.

9:15 AM – 10:15 AM: (silent) ALAN Book Signing.

I... cannot explain why that last book signing is silent. But I will try to find out.

ETA: Ha! Okay, regarding the silent signing: ALAN takes place in one big ballroom, and the next panel will be going on during the signing. So we will ha…

As we move nervously toward election Tuesday, I've got no juice for the post I would like to write.  Chances are, a lot of you have no juice to read it, so maybe it's for the best.

Here's what I do have: a beautiful photo of the recent Hunter's Moon rising above the Alps.

And, ala author Cindy Pon (thanks, Cindy!), this article: "Skeleton of hero World War II carrier pigeon found in chimney with a secret message still attached to its leg (and now Bletchley Park are trying to crack the code)." 

Also, I'm very grateful that Bitterblue is a Publisher's Weekly Best Book of 2012 -- along with esteemed company.  Thank you, PW!

I like the funny political videos the folks at actually.org are creating. Rosie Perez sets Mitt straight on whether it's easier to get elected as a Latino; Sarah Silverman and Lizz Winstead agree with Mitt that people aren't people, corporations are people; and here's W. Kamau Bell, who hates science:



(Thanks, B.)

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Sometimes, after doing a search for a particular song in my iTunes library, I take a look at the whole range of songs the search brought up and use that as my random morning playlist. For example, this morning, I'm listening to all the songs in my library that appeared when I searched for the word "heart." This includes "Sleight of Heart" by Aaron English (you should all be listening to the songs of Aaron English); "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young; "Empty Hearts" by Alison Krauss; "Learning to Fly" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; "Love Montage: I Saw Him Once/In My Life/A Heart Full of Love" fr…

I'm proud to report that Bitterblue is a New Atlantic Independent Booksellers Association Book of the Year, along with Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (for fiction), Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity by Katherine Boo (for nonfiction), I, Too, Am America by Langston Hughes and illustrated by Bryan Collier (for picture book), and Wonder by R. J. Palacio (for middle readers). I'll be at the NAIBA Awards Banquet on September 29, as will artist Ian Schoenherr, who did the beautiful maps and illustrations.
With apologies for throwing this in with other things -- I wanted to be sure to blog the link, but am too depressed to say much -- writer David Rakoff died way too young on August 9. I'm going to miss his voice on This American Life so, so much. The show put together a beautiful episode in his honor. It aired last week. Warning: it's really sad.Laurie Halse Anderson is doing Write Five Minutes a Day this month -- with frequent (exc…

Re: Bitterblue travel: I'll be in Sweden (Stockholm and Kristianstad/Malmö), Spain (at least Madrid, not sure beyond that yet), France (Paris), and the Netherlands (at least Amsterdam) in September -- it's official, my transatlantic flights are booked -- and I'll post more details when I have them.

Re: blogginess: There are a few updates I need to post to this blog, including some sort of page of Bitterblue reviews... I'm afraid some aspects of the blog have dropped to a currently unreachable part of my priority list, so things aren't as tidy around here as I prefer them. I will get to it some day. In the meantime, what blogging time I have, I'm trying to focus on new posts. I have a couple planned. One is about Tim Riggins. :-)

Re: gorgeous clouds, check out this stupendous link to "60 insane cloud formations from around the world." Thanks B, via B! :)

And re: awesome music videos, I love this ASL interpretation of Gotye's "Somebody That I U…

I am stupendously pleased today to direct you to Amy Stern's latest post at the YA Subscription, "The Disreputable Analysis of Frankie Landau-Banks."

Back in January, some friends and I spent two happy hours analyzing E. Lockhart's The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. We filmed it. Amy has now uploaded 15 clips from our conversation, and done an awesome job introducing each clip in her blog post. Amy, you rock.

Go watch, go listen. Join the conversation. All the participants in the conversation studied at the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons College; if you're wondering what kinds of conversations can happen there, this is a good example.

The participants are:
children’s lit professor Deborah Kaplan; children’s lit critic Rebecca Rabinowitz; assistant agent at the Sheldon Fogelman Agency Amy Stern;and YA writer Kristin Cashore. (*waves*)
As a visual aid, here is my color-coded copy of Frankie. You know I got a LOT out of a…

First, it's come to my attention that Amazon has the prologue and first chapter of Bitterblue online, for anyone who wants a sneak peek.

MORE IMPORTANTLY: As you may or may not know, in conjunction with the soon-to-be-released Hunger Games movie, THERE IS NAIL POLISH. I've always been led to believe that the ultimate goal for an author is the movie deal. Now I understand that the movie deal is merely a MEANS TO A MUCH HIGHER END: NAIL POLISH. And listen, I think my books would make for some great nail polish. There are so many bright and sparkly colors! While I was trying to convince a friend of this the other day, she mentioned that Bitterblue couldn't really pull off nail polish. I must agree. (Um, if you are BONKERS about spoilers, don't read the next sentence, but really it's a joke, not a spoiler, and would be understood by anyone who'd read the first few chapters:) Helda would do Bitterblue's nails and send her off to bed, then in the morning, Bitterb…

Sometimes I wonder if Rush Limbaugh is a secret liberal whose strategy is to make the far right look JUST THAT BAD.

If only. But listening to all the conversation and outrage that's followed his most recent vile contribution to the national dialogue, I can't help but feel like he's accidentally done feminism a favor. There's a lot of stuff worth reading out there, but I'll only mention a few: Here's a Slate article by Emily Bazelon about the whole thing, plus some of the positive changes that are happening these days in rape legislation. Here's a Salon article by Maureen Andrade that injects some reality and common sense into the issue of human relationships and pregnancy prevention. Both Slate and Salon have other related articles I've enjoyed reading -- poke around. Here, Tamora Pierce calls for an end to "women slut-bashing other women. Using the words that have ripped women apart for centuries." And finally, if it's all too upsetting a…