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

This December, I discovered the Etsy shop Ever After Miniatures, which offers DIY printable miniature books. You buy the templates, print them out, then cut, fold, and paste the sweetest little openable books, which have readable pages inside.


This sort of project is made for me.

Most evenings, I would work on a few. I made them as gifts, mostly.

We have a small secret drawer at the end of our dining room table. I kept my project in there when I wasn't working on it.

At a certain point, Kevin pointed out that they would make good tree ornaments. So I started adding strings and ribbons to a few of the covers. :o)

I got a little obsessed with this idea.



Here's one of my favorite pages of Pride and Prejudice.

After they were dry, up they went!

Lovely.
I have loads more Arctic pictures to share, and will do so as time permits. Hope you're all having a nice January! As I type this, it's sleeting in the Boston area, and our temperatures are expected to be close to 0°F tonig…

Today Kevin’s game, Starcom: Nexus, releases in Early Access on Steam. It’s a thing of beauty, and also a lot of fun. If you like games that take you into outer space where you get to explore mysterious worlds, build a powerful ship, and explode bad guys, you should buy it, and play it, and let your gamer friends know about it. Yes, I’m biased, but reviewers and streamers  - who are not his spouse  - also love it :o). (FYI those last two links go to youtube streaming vids.)



***

Conversation at the dinner table:

Kevin: How was your day?

Me: Okay, I guess. I still can’t figure out how to get this girl to accidentally set her house on fire, then cause an explosion and get stuck in a window grille.

Kevin: I believe in you.

Me: Thank you. How was your day?

Kevin: Okay. When my enemy ships get within a certain distance of each other, they spontaneously explode.

Me: Oh!

Kevin: It’s not supposed to happen. It’s a bug.

Me: Oh.

Kevin: I can’t figure it out.

Me: I believe in you!

***


There are …

I have another post of Arctic pics lined up, but I wanted to change to the subject for a moment to something closer to home. Here's something we received from some of my dear people at Penguin after we got married.




 Umbrellas, magical worlds, and joint adventures! My editor, Kathy Dawson, found the card, and my artist and mapmaker for Bitterblue and Jane, Unlimited, Ian Schoenherr, revised it :o). Jane, Unlimited readers will hopefully understand why.

My mouth fell open when I saw it, and I promptly burst into tears. Thank you to those involved -- you know who you are :o).

More soon!

I walked home through a lovely, gentle rain, then propped my umbrella up in front of the couch to dry. Seeing a package waiting, I opened it eagerly, suspecting it was the paperback of Jane, Unlimited. Then I noticed something matchy!


Some things, at least, are aligned in this universe.

These times make me inarticulate.

I've felt for a while that I want to blog more. I miss my blog! But regularly blogging about the current political / social / international / environmental / [insert crisis here] situation is a fast route to a mental health meltdown for me, in addition to which, I don’t see that I have anything useful to add. I’m working with these topics in my writing and in my daily life. This blog has always been my respite.

Yet I'm also somewhat uncomfortable with saying anything online that isn't an acknowledgment of the state of our world today. It's a dilemma.

I’ve decided to give myself permission to return to blogging and blog about relatively inconsequential things. Little things are important too, you know? Which is why today I’m going to share pictures from a recent day off :o).

I knew on Wednesday, when my book-in-progress seemed not just currently awful but certain to be permanently awful (in addition to never being completed, which wo…

Before I start, a couple of important things:

There's a documentary airing on Monday on PBS called Unrest, about MECFS (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome). I hope you'll watch it and pass the word on. Official blurb: "Jennifer Brea is working on her PhD at Harvard and about to marry the love of her life when she’s struck down by a mysterious fever that leaves her bedridden. When doctors tell her 'it’s all in her head,' she turns her camera on herself to document her devastating symptoms. Searching for answers, Jennifer discovers a hidden world of millions confined to their homes and bedrooms by ME, commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome. Together, Jen and her new husband, Omar, must find a way to build a life and fight for a cure."

MECFS is a devastating illness that has not received the attention it needs from the medical community, for all sorts of f***ed-up reasons. Many of the people with this disease can't be their own activists…

I found a pattern for a 20-sided star online (called a Moravian star). 
While I printed it out, Kevin went through my wrapping paper collection and chose a really lovely one made of an old German map of Europe.
I cut out twenty of these....

...to turn into twenty of these.

At a certain point, it occurred to me that wrapping paper isn't the strongest stuff in the world. I wanted this to be a star for us to use every year, a hearty star with a long life... so I decided I needed to make understar parts out of cardstock, then attach the wrapping paper parts to the cardstock parts. I began to cut out and create twenty of these.

I also made the icosahedron (20-sided polyhedron) above out of cardstock, using the pattern below. (Here's another link to this great pattern, by Charlotte@Living Well on the Cheap!)

Of course I didn't think about the fact that I might want to blog this later, so my pictures are random and disorganized... sorry about that.
Next, I glued the twenty po…

'Tis the season et cetera, so here's a reminder about how to order signed/personalized copies of my books from my local indie, Harvard Book Store. If you click on this link, it'll take you to the store's inventory of my books. There you can place your order. Just be sure to note in the comments field whether you'd like it signed and personalized, and, if personalized, to whom. I also tend to write a brief inscription of my choice, and am happy to add birthday or holiday greetings, encouragement to writers, etc., if requested. If you're tempted to ask me to inscribe something beyond that, please note that I'll only do so if it's something I feel comfortable signing my name to.

One last note: Though I do still live nearby, I no longer live right around the corner from the bookstore. I can't always get into the store right away, so if you're buying holiday presents, don't delay!

Thanks everyone :o). More soon – I'm planning another blog pos…

One of my sisters is currently camping by herself in the Mojave Desert for a month, as part of her doctoral dissertation. Another is evacuating to avoid Hurricane Irma. And I'm about to leave on a book tour...

So my parents and I grabbed a quiet moment and did something close to (my) home: we visited the deCordova Sculpture Park in the rain.








It was lovely to enter other people's ideas for an afternoon. I hope you can find some silliness, imagination, and/or wonder in your day, dear reader :). Here's moonrise over the Mojave Desert to send you on your way: