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

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…

Last week, I was by myself in Vermont, trying to make progress on the new book I'm writing. I had no cell or Internet access, except when I drove into town, which I didn't do very often. Here's a view of the meadow I could see as I wrote.


One day, I drove into town and called Kevin, just to check in. I had a long list of questions for him, and things to report to him. He waited patiently. Then, when I finally stopped for a breath, he said, "So, they announced that Peter Capaldi is leaving Doctor Who."

"Oh?" I said, wondering who they'd chosen to replace him this time. A young white man? An old white man? If they were really feeling like stretching themselves, maybe a Scottish white man? (For those of you who don't watch Doctor Who, it's a sci-fi show with a famously gendered power dynamic that has always bothered me. The doctor regenerates into a new body every few years, twelve Doctors so far, and he is always a white man; he's old, he…

A couple years ago, we had one of those winters that never really got started... hardly any snow, and the temperatures weirdly high. Spring came and I felt like I'd been cheated. That's certainly not happening this year. And here in Cambridge, our frequent temps of 10 and 20°F (-12 and -7°C, approximately) are downright balmy compared to the -20 and -30°F temps (-29 and -34°C) a friend in Minnesota is having on a regular basis. For me, it's something to laugh and occasionally whine about, because I'm damn lucky, but for a lot of people, it's creating a lot of suffering and is downright dangerous… I wish everyone could be okay.

A heartfelt thank you for everyone who clicked on my Seabane Isn't Real post! I just took a look at the hit count and was touched that my readers are taking my request seriously.

Work has been enjoyable lately but also intense and energy-sapping. Hence, no blogging. But I've been keeping a little list of randutiae that bears mention…

I'll just mention that Amy Nicholson's essay in LA Weekly beautifully encapsulates why all the ads for the movie Saving Mr. Banks (which is about the making of the movie Mary Poppins) have been giving me the heebie-jeebies. Having read Nicholson's essay, I now have even less interest in seeing the movie than I did before. The title of the essay: "Saving Mr. Banks Is a Corporate, Borderline-Sexist Spoonful of Lies." Thanks, B.

Yesterday was one of those perfect winter days wherein the snow begins early in the day, but lightly – the five-flakes-per-minute variety – then slowly builds, and your own schedule brings you out into it while it's beautiful but not yet gusty and difficult. I had a magical snow walk, then got home to a cozy evening of watching it get wild out there.

I love this time of year, even though it brings its challenges. Actually, the challenges are partly what I love… the darkness, in particular, brings a kind of raw feeling that I can't access as easily the rest of the year. It can be uncomfortable, but it's also a richly contemplative time for me. And I LOVE the New Year.

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I've been wanting to say a few things about books and TV. I'm only giving myself a few minutes to write this post, so forgive me for the lack of linkage and description; I'm trusting in your ability to google. Warning: it's a bit scattered.

I read a YA mystery called The Killing Woods b…

I like the movie of Catching Fire SO much more than I liked the movie of The Hunger Games. (No spoilers here.) I'm happy about the directorial change to Francis Lawrence, who doesn't rely on way too much shaky cam to create tension (which I blogged about when the first movie came out). I have to say, though, that I think I'm going to need a sedative or something for watching Mockingjay Parts 1 and 2. If they stick to the plots and characterizations depicted in the books, parts of it are going to be so hard to watch.

The word of the day today at dictionary.com is "pilcrow", which is the punctuation symbol for "paragraph": ¶. I'm rather fond of this symbol, because I use it frequently in my work, when I've got sentences crammed together and realize there should be a paragraph break between them, or worry that my own formatting is so messy that I'll forget to put in the paragraph break when I transcribe from my handwriting to the typed documen…

I have many deep and meaningful thoughts to blog, but I've been too busy doing important things like eating a double-decker peanut butter, banana, and honey sandwich while sitting in a kayak in the middle of a lake next to some loons. So this will have to do for now: have you seen/heard the a cappella version of the trailer to the (wonderful) movie Inception? On a recent road trip, my companion played the audio for me. I have never laughed so hard while driving through New Hampshire. Here it is:



(And here's the actual trailer for comparison.)

I adore Bots High, which is a documentary about high school students in Miami building combat robots and competing in a national robotics competition. Incidentally, many, many of the robot engineers are girls. That's only one of the reasons to watch -- I love these kids, love their smarts, creativity, procrastination, anxiety, heart, the ways they take care of each other.
Wanting to read a novel that takes in Paris while I'm in Paris, I settled on Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames ("The Ladies' Delight"), translated by Robin Buss. First published in 1883, it's about a fictional department store in the era when department stores were new to Paris; the store's brilliant, attractive, and dissolute owner, Octave Mouret; his staff, and in particular a strong young women of dignified purity named Denise Baudu; and all the small merchants in the neighborhood whose lives and livings are destroyed by the capitalist behemoth in their midst. It's repetitive…

If it's so easy for Gandalf to call on the aid of the eagles at any moment and in any location, why doesn't he just do so right smack at the beginning of each of these difficult commutes and save everybody a lot of time, discomfort, injury and strife?

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was too long and, worst of all, with the exception of a few moments involving Gandalf, young Bilbo, or Gollum, I didn't believe in any of it. Sadness.

So. I've been observing a relevant difference between mornings when I wake up to my alarm (which is on my phone) and mornings when I have the freedom to wake up naturally. When I wake up to my alarm, this means that my phone is the first thing my hand touches. This further means that unthinkingly, in that blurry moment before I'm even truly conscious of being awake, the first thing I do is check my e-mail, and all those various other forms of input my wonderful, but dangerous, phone provides.

Since when is checking one's e-mail …

I've been playing chess on my phone during work hours. Initially, I started to do this because the writing I'm doing is kicking my heart around the room and I can only bear to work on it in small doses; a game of chess every 90 minutes or so stabilizes me and brings me back to base one, so that I can work on another small section of the book. But now I'm also playing chess because it's become fun. I've named my computer opponent HAL, of course, and set him to his easiest setting. By now I've practiced enough that I beat him pretty quickly every time, but I'm not content to increase his difficulty until I get to the point where I can understand every move he's making, and see the game unfolding a few more steps ahead of what I'm currently seeing.

It's weirdly like writing a book. Even when things are going okay, I feel like I'm trying to catch up, straining to understand, trying to contain something that's out of my control.

I've rea…

This post contains spoilers for the Bourne movies, including the most recent.

So. I don't know what they're lacing these Bourne movies with, but (with the exception of that godawful, boring, too-long car chase in the second movie) I never want these movies to end. It turns out that the drug is not in fact Matt Damon, because The Bourne Legacy (out now), which doesn't even have Matt Damon in it, has the same effect on me. Aaron Cross, you are the genetically-modified assassin OF MY HEART. But why, why? WHY do I love these movies? They are chock-full of ideological problems. (In TBL, we get to see some kickass operatives who are people of color and even one who's a woman, and then, three minutes later, they're all dead. Producers, you have a captive audience. Make your main star in one of these movies someone who is not a white man.) Also, the plots are absurd. (Aaron Cross is a genetically modified/enhanced black-ops assassin for the US government, but he's run…

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…

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…

That's what Scully says to Mulder when Mulder hands her a flask of yellow liquid that came from a laboratory full of caged monkeys, gives her one of his significant "no-doubt-it's-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-life" looks, and asks her if she can figure out what it is. And in this case, it does turn out to be evidence of extraterrestrial life. This is the X-Files first season finale ("The Erlenmeyer Flask"), and one of the earliest examples of Scully, the skeptic, having no choice but to believe, because the evidence comes to her in the lab, through the practice of her own religion, namely, science.

I ♥ Scully.

So, I just noticed the weird, highly specific, wordy recommendation categories Netflix has created for me, based on my viewing and rating preferences. "Foreign Thrillers Featuring a Strong Female Lead." "Critically Acclaimed Visually-Striking Dark Movies." "Inspiring Fight-the-System Movies Based on Real Life." "Mind-…

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…

In case you've not heard about the libraries devastated by Hurricane Irene, here's a post from Kate Messner with info about how to help. (Update: this blog post has more, and possibly more complete, information!)

Also, do you have a teeny tiny library in your town? (Thanks, R, for the link.)

In other news, I recommend the Bollywood movie Band Baaja Baaraat, and think it's a good movie for anyone who's never seen a Bollywood movie, wants to try, but doesn't know what to watch first (along with Main Hoon Na and Dil Bole Hadippa, to name two others). What I particularly like about this one is that not only do I like the female lead (Shruti, played by Anushka Sharma), but I like what the movie does with her. Often I admire the woman's character but have some lingering annoyance about the role she's required to play... but this one balanced out for me. It was a fun watch! Now, will someone explain to me why newcomer Ranveer Singh was credited first w…

A few things today.

First, I and mine got through the hurricane unscathed, but the news reports make it clear that we were lucky. My heart goes out to everyone devastated by this storm. Especially our neighbors to the north in Vermont! The Big Picture at The Boston Globe put together a great slideshow of photos from Hurricane Irene -- check it out.

Second, a FAQ: Are you on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.? No. This blog is my only online presence; I am not on any other social media sites.

Third, my title today is a favorite line from An Episode of Sparrows, by Rumer Godden, which I just read. I've talked about Godden before on the blog and want to recommend a few of her books again, in addition to AEoS: A Candle for St. Jude; China Court; Greengage Summer; and In This House of Brede. (If you're planning to read your first Godden, maybe don't choose that last one first -- it's very long, takes place in an abbey, and practically nothing happens. I wouldn't want yo…

If you've never seen a movie by Terrence Malick, The Tree of Life (out in theaters now) might not be the best one to start with; I worry that this tale of family relationships in the 1950s and today, starring Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken, and Sean Penn, might lose you 'round about the time it flashes back to the era of the dinosaurs. :o) Then again, maybe not; my first Malick movie was Days of Heaven (1978), which is also pretty abstract and plot-free, and I loved it from the first frame. Malick's movies are abstract, poetic, musical, beautiful, and always deep character studies. I love them and I loved The Tree of Life, including the dinosaur part; do try watching one at some point, if you never have. It might not be your thing (a guy stormed out of the theater in a huff partway through), but it also might be your favorite thing ever (there was one woman who stayed to watch all the credits, just like me). The other three Malick movies I have…

As often happens, I've got tons I'd like to blog about and no time. Ack! So, quickly, I've got two recommendations to offer:
A book called The Brothers Story, by Katharine Sturtevant. Loved the characterizations, loved being inside Kit's head while he works through a whole lot of things.If you like BBC productions of old books, you have GOT to watch the BBC's 2005 production of Charles Dickens' Bleak House. Gorgeous. Heartbreaking. Perfect cast for the job. (My subject heading is a line from the book.)
Re: the recent news from New York, I also have a photo to share:


Have a good week, everyone. Wish me luck, for I'm burning the midnight oil.