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

I have a new book coming out in Fall 2017, and I'm finally allowed to talk about it. :o)

It's called Jane, Unlimited. I won't say a lot for now—more will be forthcoming—but for today... Jane has led a small and mostly ordinary life, raised by her aunt Magnolia—an adjunct professor at a small college and a world-traveling deep sea photographer. But when Aunt Magnolia dies unexpectedly on one of her expeditions, Jane finds herself adrift, and when an invitation comes from an old acquaintance to accompany her to a gala at her family's island mansion called Tu Reviens, Jane leaps at the chance. There, her story takes a turn, or rather, five turns. What Jane doesn't know is that Tu Reviens will offer her choices that can ultimately determine the course of her untethered life. But at Tu Reviens, every choice comes with a reward, or a price.

This book has been years in the making, and has gone through more revisions than any of my previous books, probably because its str…

So, the movers are coming tomorrow, and though I'm surrounded by exquisite disarray, I feel this is the moment to blog pictures (taken by Kevin) of a very special (perhaps even magical) hat. Because now is the time to celebrate beautiful things. :o)

My regular readers know that I knit. Well, my mother knits on the superwoman level.

She made me this hat.


Look at the hearts, the intricate designs that went into the making of this hat…

The adorable tassel.

Furthermore, it's some sort of special Scandinavian double hat, basically knitted as two continuous hats that you shove one inside the other, and actually quadrupled around the ears, not to mention that it is made of Icelandic wool, all of which means that I will never be cold again. But also, the first time I sat with the hat (which my mother had given me without comment), examining and appreciating it, I found myself wondering whether she had knitted any fancy designs into the inside hat.

So I pulled the inside part out…

…

Here's a brief conversation between Katsa and Po in Graceling:
Po looked puzzled. “What’s seabane?”

“I don’t know if you have another name for it in Lienid.  It’s a small purple flower. A woman who eats its leaves will not bear a child.”
And here's a line from Bitterblue:
Bitterblue examined the item in her hand. It was a medicinal envelope with a label written clear across the front: “Seabane, for the prevention of pregnancy.”
Seabane is a fictional herb. I made it up, not unlike the way fantasy writer Tamora Pierce made up a pregnancy charm for Alanna and her other fictional women.

Way back when I was an unpublished writer writing Graceling, choosing the name of this magical contraceptive herb was fun. I knew I wanted a plant name that, to the best of my ability to ensure such a thing, was not a known plant name in the real world in any language, because I didn't want to confuse my fantasy world with the real world and I didn't want to muddle readers ("What? Orega…

"If there's a book you really want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it."

-Toni Morrison



Jane, Unlimited is my fourth release, a kaleidoscopic novel about grief, adventure, storytelling, and finding yourself in a world of seemingly infinite choices. It's also about umbrellas and umbrella-making :o). It comes out on September 19, 2017. I hope to have more stuff up about it soon, including reviews and foreign release info! For now --
Jane has lived an ordinary life, raised by her aunt Magnolia—an adjunct professor and deep sea photographer. Jane counted on Magnolia to make the world feel expansive and to turn life into an adventure. But Aunt Magnolia was lost a few months ago in Antarctica on one of her expeditions. Now, with no direction, a year out of high school, and obsessed with making umbrellas that look like her own dreams (but mostly just mourning her aunt), she is easily swept away by Kiran Thrash—a glamorous, capricious acquaintan…