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

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:

It's hard to focus on a hard revision when my new home remains chaotic and I could be organizing, cleaning, and hanging up pictures, rather than fixing this book. The news, which is heartbreaking everywhere, every single day, also makes it difficult. But I am focusing and fixing the book, because it feels even more awful not to.


In the meantime, it isn't all chaos.






Further afield, yesterday in New Jersey, we got together with this distinguished gentleman…


...and totally learned to GOLF.

Sort of.

It was our first time. We started at the driving range, where my dad taught us the basics, demonstrated a few things, then made extremely kind and encouraging comments as it became clear that I CAN'T HIT GOLF BALLS. Oh my goodness. They're so small and far away!




Oh my goodness. When I actually managed to hit the ball, it would usually go in the right direction, and sometimes it would even have some lift and go a little bit far. But probably 75% of the time, I didn't eve…

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…

…

I also found a new home. I'm moving! (To the next town over.) Cambridge, I love you and I'll miss you. But you're too expensive, and also, you're LOUD.

May all the goodness continue... though I wouldn't complain of a slower pace.

And that's the news from here.

As I'd hoped, a number of friends emailed me with suggestions of superhero role models for girls. So many, in fact, that I'm going to have to set aside some time to organize it all before I post it – but it will be forthcoming. Unfortunately, most of the suggestions were for teen readers and older, which leaves the youngest girls waiting, but it was encouraging. Many, many thanks to those of you who reached out :o)I'm listening to Peter Gabriel's more recent album Up – one of his darker albums. I love these lyrics, from "Darkness," which is a song that reminds me of early Peter Gabriel (the self-titled albums), mainly in the way he balances silence and sweetness with crashing noise – this sentence has gotten ridiculous, but here are the lyrics I love: "I have my fears / but they do not have me."I've gotten a few of my friends to start using Siri to dictate on their iPhones. (If you have an iPhone and there is a little microphone symbol on your k…

One of the things I appreciate most about my parents is that they've let me make my own decisions, even if it means they've had to stand back and watch me make mistakes. Being allowed to mess up is fundamentally freeing. Knowing that failure is always an option -- being suspicious about the assumed definitions of words like "success" and "failure" -- is, too. I suspect that this kind of parental noninterference is very difficult :). But the consequence is that I'm left understanding that my life is mine.

I've been thinking about this tonight as I listen to Icelandic music. This is Svavar Knútur, from Iceland's western fjords, singing a song called "Humble Hymn."

This week, I feel bloggy! So here's an extra post.

Thank you, Will Ludwigsen, for your beautiful post, Aid and Comfort. Readers, check it out -- this is a great little post with some spot-on thoughts about the kind of love and support a writer needs. It's also one of the nicest acknowledgement posts I've ever read.

Not unrelatedly: thank you, Publishers Weekly, for including this teeny picture of my mother, father, and sister (secret codename: Cordelia) in your article about ALAN. It meant so much to me that they were at the Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award reception, and I'm so happy to see them recognized.  I only wish secret codename: Apocalyptica could have been there, too.  I would not be able to do what I do without my family.  (In other news -- that big check in the picture?  It didn't fit in my suitcase, and carrying it through the airport was kind of hilarious.)

Next up: do you know the podcast Coverville?  I've recently started listening. The most …

Just for the record, if I were standing on a mountain counting my money and some guy came along, first produced a pistol, then produced a rapier, and said, "Stand and deliver, for you are a bold deceiver! Musha ring dum-a do dum-a da, whack fol the daddy-o, whack fol the daddy-o, there's whiskey in the jar!".... I really would have no idea what he wanted.

So, in case you didn't believe me on Monday when I said I'd been to Prince Edward Island, well, that would be weird of you, but anyway, I just got the pictures from my Mom, and you'll find you can't argue with this photograph.


Now do you believe me?

(It's my toes in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.)

(Click any of the pictures to enbiggen.)

At the dunes in Greenwich, no dogs were allowed.


Thank goodness, polar bears were. (Presumably. There were no signs indicating otherwise.)


I crossed the walkway over the dunes.


Then I gestured to the right.


Then my Dad and I took off our shoes.


Isn't this the best photo journa…