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

At the bottom of this post is some information about a way to buy certain foreign editions of Graceling and Fire if you're stateside.

Okay, I'm in a time crunch, but I'm giving myself 20 minutes to try to share some new music with you. First, for those of you who love Irish/Celtic music, I accidentally stumbled across the most beautiful, sad, LOVELY version of "The Curragh of Kildare." It's by The Boys of the Lough, on their album Lonesome Blues and Dancing Shoes. Sadly, it's not easy to find; I can't send you to it on iTunes, or even link to an illegal YouTube video. (You know, one of the ones where the uploader writes "NO COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT INTENDED!!!!!" in the notes section. "But your honor, I didn't intend to break the law. It just kind of happened as a consequence of me illegally uploading the song!") I can tell you where I did find it, though. It was on the Thistle & Shamrock podcast, at the end of the "Dave…

Erik Johansson, photographer of the impossible, concludes his TedTalk with that statement. I love all the photographs he shows in his talk (embedded below), but the one at 4:42 is the one that MADE MY DAY.



(If you can't see the video, go to my Blog Actual.)

I, for one (taking the question of imagination in a different direction) think lack of imagination breeds small-mindedness and cruelty, and imagination breeds compassion... I think our world is suffering from a crisis of lack of imagination, and in this country, at least, it shows itself in people's quickness to pronounce moral judgment on others -- which then has hurtful political consequences. I would say more about that except that I'm busy watching Downton Abbey.  Talk amongst yourselves. Go Sybil!  Whoo-hoo!

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Also -- in other news -- easiest beef stew crockpot recipe ever:

1 can of Guinness
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 sweet potato, peeled and chopped
1 onion, chopped
4 garlic cloves, pressed (or less, if you …

Guys, look what you can get at Crate & Barrel for only $400.

*......*

NEVER SKIMP ON YOUR WHITE RECTANGLE.

So, I recently realized that a problem in my house can be solved by getting a new bookcase. I'm very excited to have an excuse to get a new bookcase. It also gives me an opportunity to mention another local indie that I adore, and that you should check out if you live in the Cambridge area: The Door Store, at 940 Massachusetts Avenue, between Central and Harvard Squares. They're a small, family-run business, and can make certain types of wooden furniture to order. (They made my TV stand and the little table inside my front door to my specifications.) They also have a lot of beautiful handmade furniture lying around ready to be bought. The staff is made up of men and women who are carpenters and who know what they're talking about. Also, they won't charge you $400 for a mass-produced white rectangle.

Next, Tui has some lovely vids up on her blog. And I also lik…

Earlier this week, an interview question got me thinking. It was a question about whether, just as I inhabit my characters' minds in order to write them, my characters return the favor and inhabit my mind.
The most straightforward answer is no. I don't think about my characters unless I'm writing, or thinking about writing. If I'm trying to make an important life decision, for example, my characters don't weigh in, nor do I ask myself "What would Katsa or Fire or Bitterblue or Po or Raffin do?" They don't insert commentary while I'm at the store or the movies or the art museum. If they're witty speakers, they (unfortunately) don't inspire me with witty things to say. Nor, except in rare occasions with one particular (pretty random) character, do I ever encounter people in my real life who look like my characters or remind me of them.
The truth, in fact, is that I tend to forget about my characters when I'm not writing them. I was having …

-- just had to come onto the blog to say that the final (3rd) episode of Series 2 of the BBC's Sherlock, "The Reichenbach Fall," is among my favorite ever 90 minutes of television. Congratulations to everyone who had anything to do with making this episode. I believe in these characters, and all of their feelings, 101%. (Also, I love Molly and I'm dying to know what she did.) Here's a teaser by the BBC which is inadequate at expressing the awesomeness, but will acquaint you with some of the main players:

<p><p><p><p><p>&am…

Me at the local yummy vegetarian foodie place (Life Alive. Stupid name, delicious food. Also, no, I am not a vegetarian): I'd like the Romantic Wrap. Please add eggs and greens.
The guy: The Romantic Wrap, add eggs and beets?
Me: Eggs and greens.
The guy: I'm afraid we don't have any beans.
Me: GREENS!  I WANT GREENS!

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My sister, codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer, on the phone in the wind: I just got to Harvard Square! I'm sorry I'm late! I'm on my way!
Me: Oh, don't worry, I'm just doing crap.
Apocalyptica: Crafts?
Me: Crap.
Apocalyptica: Crack?
Me: Crap! I'm doing crap! I'm paying bills and filing paperwork!
Apocalyptica: So you're not doing crack?

***
So, travel puts a lot into me, but it also takes a lot out of me, and lately I've been using what I've got for stuff other than blogging. My expectation is that this will result in you someday soon having more fiction by me to read. Fair deal?

On Wednesday I leave for Rome an…

Dear Gmail,

I like ya lots. HOWEVER. I switched to your "new look" about a week ago, because, as you intend to force this new look on all your users soon, I wanted to see what I was in for. Want to know how it's been for me? Well, let's see, I can no longer figure out what any of the command buttons mean, because you've turned them into obscure symbols instead of words. When I send an e-mail, the sent mail displays on my screen with its top cut off, which is sloppy, weird, and requires me to scroll with my sore arms if I want to see the whole thing. Worst of all, when I open a conversation, I can't see readily where one e-mail starts and the next begins -- a serious problem, because it means I risk missing e-mails altogether if I'm reading fast.

How can anyone possibly consider this an improvement? Please, PLEASE, don't force your new look on us, or I will be forced to leave, and then you'll no longer be able to show me hilariously irr…

If you've got 12 minutes today, consider watching Jay Smooth's TEDx Talk, called "How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love Discussing Race," presented at Hampshire College (yay Hampshire! My sister, codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer, went there). Transcript and related links coming soon to Jay Smooth's website.

(My title = words I like from singer-songwriter Gavin DeGraw. The song is called "I Don't Want to Be" [link opens to the Wikipedia page; it doesn't play the song].)

I never got around to cleaning that closet this weekend. That's all right, I'll get to it sometime this week -- and I did make the time to go to Mount Auburn Cemetery, climb the tower, and take a look at the fall leaves. I love to see the world from high up, because it alters my perspective; it gives me some distance from my own tiny life and makes me feel more connected to all my people who are far away.

It was busy at the top of the tower; a lot of people were leaf-peeping. I probably heard four or five different languages. That's pretty normal for Cambridge, what with the world-renowned universities, but I wondered if some of the people were tourists, coming to see New England's leaves. I sat up there for some time while people came and went. I wouldn't say that I reached a place of p…

So, when I posted about Winter's Bone a few weeks back, I didn't realize that the main actress, Jennifer Lawrence (whom I greatly admired), is our future Katniss Evergreen. (Edit: EverDEEN. Can I blame that on my voice recognition software? It's clearly read Harry Potter and a lot of Charles Dickens, but The Hunger Games must still be in its TBR pile.) Here's a link to portraits of the cast of The Hunger Games, which will be released... I have no idea when. But I'm sure it's easy enough to find out. *coughs lazily* I hope for your sake that when you click on the link, you're not compelled to watch a preview of the new tv show The Playboy Club like I was. Gee, that show doesn't look like it's going to be demeaning to women or anything.

But at least I can scrub my brain clean with the news that Elizabeth Warren is going to challenge Scott Brown in the next Senate race in Massachusetts. Elizabeth Warren, you have my vote.

Next, I would like to officia…

It's hot in Massachusetts! Perfect for staying inside and writing a blog post. Especially a lazy one where instead of doing my own work, I point you to the work of others. :o)

So, not having HBO, I don't watch Game of Thrones, but a friend who does shared the spectacular opening credits with me:

(Oh, BTW, this reminds me. If you get my posts as emails, sometimes the videos are attached to the emails and sometimes they aren't. If you ever get an email and I seem to be referring to something that doesn't seem to be there, try going to my Blog Actual, where videos are embedded where they're meant to be and everything is nice and organized.)

Spectacular opening credits for Game of Thrones:



And, if you like that theme music (composed by Ramin Djawadi), here's a beautiful acoustic and electric violin cover of it, arranged and performed by Jason Yang. I love it! (Thanks, JD, for both videos.)



AND, completely unrelated but also recommended to me by a friend (thanks Aim…

My title today is how choreographer and wordsmith Lil' C described an adorable lyrical hip-hop number from last week's So You Think You Can Dance, choreographed by Tabitha and Napoleon D'Umo, danced by Melanie Moore and Marko Germar, and linked to here, because you should really go watch it. It's like an entire romantic comedy plot smashed down into two minutes: the groom is stood up on his wedding day; the groom's best friend (and "best man?") tries to cheer him up; the groom gradually comes to a realization about something significant. Except that we've got two minutes, folks, so nothing is gradual, and certain points need to be demonstrated unsubtly in the most time-efficient manner possible. Truth is, I think I might have had a list of complaints if any other couple had danced this. (It's too soon! He's on the rebound! Is this the time to be making big decisions?!) But I've fallen hard for Melanie and Marko (I linked to their stat…

But I can share some awesomeness. First, want to see the views from an astronaut's camera?

<br/&…

So, years ago, when I started an email correspondence with my lovely Australian publicist, we discovered that not only had he and I both studied at Sydney Uni at the same time, in the same program, possibly even taking the same lectures -- but I'd worked at the pub where he'd gone to drink beer! Isn't it funny that I had to come back home, finish college, go to grad school, write a book, and get an Australian deal for us to get to know each other?

I got to meet Brendan in person during the Sydney leg of my trip. We went back to our old stomping grounds for dinner -- the Nag's Head, in Glebe. It was so surreal. Every time I rounded a corner, memories came rushing back.

I can't remember if I made a point, before this Australia trip, of explaining here on the blog that when I was in college, I spent a year in Sydney. I think I may have failed to do that! I studied English at Sydney Uni, lived in Darlington, screwed up people's orders at the Nag's Head, got …

On the one hand, I have at least two posts I want to write about writing.

On the other hand, I only have five minutes.

Here's what five minutes gets you:

You might find this fun. Thanks to many people for the link.
You also might find this (below) fun! Thanks, Tui!

If you have 4 and a half minutes today, this is worth it. Written and performed by poet/singer/songwriter Tanya Davis. Directed, shot, animated by hand, and edited by filmmaker Andrea Dorfman. Thanks, Jess, for sharing this with me.

Cover of Fire, U.K. large print edition, published by Clipper Large Print --->

So. Randomness today. Read what interests you, skip what doesn't.
Book Boyfriend Names. I got a kick out of Marie Rutkoski's short post about literary boyfriends and their names. Do you even have to read the L'Engle books to know that Adam Eddington is solid and reliable, while Zachary Gray is a bad boy? I have a lot of fun choosing names for my male leads. Poor Po is the butt of Germany, but I hope I've done well by my other boys :)
Airbrushing is Creepy. The other day, after I posted the poor rhino who's trying to slim down to a unicorn, my sister, secret codename: Apocalyptica, sent me the homepage of a famous airbrushing company. I took a look and was subsequently creeped out. First, click on any of the bottom four categories: Beauty/Hair, Correction, Shaping, or Manipulation. Then, watch original images morph into the final cuts by clicking on an image, then dragging the litt…

Hi everyone! I'm tripping over un-unpacked luggage and drowning in unanswered mail, but it was a super trip. And now I'm happy to be back to -- and overwhelmed by -- my normal writing schedule.

First, click on the photo to the right to see the large print U.K. cover of Graceling, just out from Clipper Large Print. Like it? I do.

Second, click on "play" below to watch Diana Comet present a periodic table of 75 Years of Fabulous Writers -- women who wrote and write in the fantasy/SF genre. It's really cute. And informative. Sandra McDonald's latest blog post for Diana Comet Presents sent me to my library catalog to put Carol Emschwiller's Report to the Men's Club on hold.



Third... if you're a baseball fan, then you probably know about the bad call that robbed Tigers pitcher Armando Galarraga of a perfect game on Wednesday night, with two outs in the ninth inning. (Here's the video.) My heart broke a little when I read about it; I expect th…

As you can see, I am very good at taking an enforced blogging break. Like last week's post, however, today's is mostly full of worthy links to other people's websites. Plus, orchid nonsense that has no relevance to anything.

Three things.

1. I'm a little behind the curve on this, but May 1 was BADD, or Blogging Against Disablism Day. What is disablism? It's discrimination against people based on a disability. That's an inadequate definition for something complex, really, so here's a short BADD post full of a whole bunch of powerful definitions for disablism. (Also, here's the wikipedia definition.) On BADD, people with and without disabilities blog about their experiences, observations, and thoughts about disablism. Here, at Diary of a Goldfish, you'll find an archive of posts from this year's BADD. To give you an example, here's a post on Rebecca Rabinowitz's fine blog. Also, here's Sarah Miller's reaction, which spoke to m…

Before I get to the FAQ, I like my friend Sam's short Tuesday post about climate change, blame, and responsibility. I also like this xkcd (though this one is still my favorite). AND I like watching those ladies luge. Have you been watching the ladies luge? The speed they achieve defies belief! And how about those snowboarders? Plus, figure skating! Tune in tonight to watch Stéphane Lambiel spin. ♥

I like this short opinion piece about gender politics and the Olympics: After Atalanta on alterations to the men's and women's luge tracks following the death of Georgian luger, Nodar Kumaritashvili. (H/t, J.)

This is a Visa commercial and it makes me cry and I'm not ashamed of that. BTW, the person at Visa who decided to hire Morgan Freeman to narrate the ads? I hope you got a raise. (Watch the Derek Redmond one, too, and click on some of the others! Love the Kerri Strug one, too.)

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You post about music a lot, so I know it's important to you. Do you listen …