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

One of the secret delights of being the author of three standalone fantasy novels that differ in their protagonist, their emotional tenor, and their pacing is that a lot of readers will tell me which one they prefer. And (astonishingly), readers' preferences seem to be pretty evenly divided among the three books. It makes me SO happy that each of my books is finding its right readers. But it also teaches me something about how writing relates to reading – something about how little control I have over my readers' experience of reading. Every time a book is read by someone new, it becomes a different and unique book. One of the awesome things about being an author is watching my books become things I never expected or intended! That's the power of a book. Books are more powerful than writers or readers. Maybe books are as powerful as writers and readers combined?

I bring this up because Jane, Unlimited is a book that contains five different stories in five different genres…

If you want to follow along with my Q&A this week at David Estes's Goodreads group, or even join in, here's where you need to go. Some explanations of the setup: at the top of that page is the questions people have been asking me, listed in bold. The wonderful Jenny, who is keeping things organized for me, continues to add new questions to that list as people ask them, and she also crosses out questions as I answer them. If you want to add a question, you need to join the group, then add a comment that includes your question. (Click on "post a comment.") Jenny asks that you put your question in bold so that it's easier for her and me to find it, and that you use spoiler tags if there's a spoiler in your question. I answer the questions by adding my own comments, which means that you need to scroll through the comments to find my answers. Yesterday, I answered eleven or twelve questions, which start around message 45. I'm about to head over there now …

So, as many of you have doubtless observed, I keep a fairly quiet online profile… And lately, I've been even quieter than usual, because I'm trapped under a mountain of revision pages. However, next week, I'm bursting out! The lovely folks over at David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite! have invited me to their Goodreads group, where I will be answering your questions about my books, my life as a writer, how many umbrellas I own, what the decor theme in my bathroom is (someone please ask me this question), why it's taking me so long to release my next book, what my new year's resolutions are, what kind of bread I'm making, or whatever else you want to know. Within reason. :o)

I believe you need to join the group in order to participate, though anyone can read along. You can join here. And here's where the Q&A will take place. Please join us! I'll stop in at least once a day next Monday through Thursday and answer as many of your questions as I c…

Today I received a pile of fan letters in the mail, forwarded from my publisher, and I've just spent some time reading a few of them. This batch came from all over the United States; it came from Canada, Sweden, Germany, the Czech Republic, Australia, New Zealand… To answer a few questions that come up a lot: Yes, I do receive these letters. Sometimes it takes a while, but they always get to me eventually. No, I do not throw them away. I don't even throw them away after I've read them. I still have every single fan letter I've ever received.

It's impossible to express the amazement with which I read these letters. How touched I am by the sensitivity of my readers, by the things they notice and appreciate. By the clever and succinct questions they ask that make me laugh, and sometimes suddenly see the flaws in my own books (which is a good thing!). By the respect they have for the work I've done, and the courage they have as they write or parent or go to school…

… when you find yourself fascinated by random shapes in your hotel room. Lamps. Mirrors. The corner.


My editor encouraged me to take lots of pictures while I'm on tour, and post them on my blog. This may not be what she meant. Oh well. She knows I'm a little bit weird :-)

The tour is going really well. I don't say this enough: I've got the most wonderful readers. The people at my events in Cambridge, Rhinebeck, Villanova, Haverford, Bethesda, Naperville, and now here in the Minneapolis area have been so generous to me, and the questions have been SO SMART. I'm trying to keep track of some of my favorite questions, and I'll blog them, with answers, at some point.

At events, I'm too hectic to be taking pictures, plus, while on the road, I'm blogging from my phone, so I'm limited when it comes to what pictures I can easily blog/label/format. So I don't have event pictures to share (though I do have a few I'm working on setting up, and hope to …

A book release can be overwhelming. A lot of factors converge at once. Reviews, to be honest, don't really faze me, but they do create a lot of swirling noise. There's a lot of noise in general during a book release, and when you're trying to ground yourself in what matters, noise can be decentering. Also, during a book release, a writer is transitioning from working alone in a room on an intensely private project to being the star of public speaking events :). Am I nervous about that? Sure. Nerves contribute to the release being overwhelming.

But this morning, I managed to isolate, at least for a few moments, the reason why this release is extra hard. Unlike Katsa and Fire, Bitterblue is just a regular person. She doesn't have any superpowers; she's only got her own courage, smarts, determination, her heart. She feels vulnerable to me, more than Katsa and Fire ever did. And now she's grown up, and it's time for me to fling her out into the scary world …

So, after a lot of thought and some consultation with the wise, I've come to realize that I need to make a change on the blog. I'm so grateful to all of my readers for the enthusiasm you have for my books and my blog -- but the downside to all the wonderful discussion that happens here is that moderation of comments has becoming a consuming activity that cuts into my writing time. It's better for everyone if I spend most of my energy right now on Bitterblue -- so, NO, I'm not going to stop blogging -- but I am going to turn off comments. This is not necessarily a permanent change, it's just what I need right now to focus on my writing. I make this change with sadness!

This will be a shift for me, because I end so many of my posts with questions for you! I guess they'll tend to be hypothetical questions from now on. One nice thing about Blogger is that you can change settings on a post-by-post basis, so maybe now and then I'll have the time to open a po…

Here's a moment from the first time Buffy's mother, Joyce, officially meets Buffy's vampire nemesis, Spike:

Joyce [pleasantly]: Have we met?
Spike: Um, you hit me with an axe one time.
[Joyce looks confused]
Spike: Remember? [helpfully brandishes imaginary axe] "Get the hell away from my daughter! Rawr!!!"

So, now and then I like to ask my readers to take a minute to introduce themselves. I expect I have a lot of regular readers who don't comment; I'm sure I have readers who're just passing through for the day; doubtless I have readers who got here by accident, having misspelled "Kristin Chenowith," and wish they'd never ended up here at all. :o)

Anyway, no pressure. But today I extend an invitation to all of you -- even the lurkers and the shy -- to tell me a little bit about yourself in a comment. You don't have to tell me your real name. But maybe you'd like to tell me where you are? What you do? What you feel like eating tod…

"I'll tell you my name," replied the first little spider, "if you'll tell me why you are trembling."

"I'm trembling with joy," said Wilbur.

"Then my name is Joy," said the first spider.

-from Charlotte's Web, by E.B. White


Today's post is about my readers. That means you! I would love to know who you are, where you are, where you'd rather be, what you like, what you don't like, or anything else you want to tell me -- especially if you've never commented before! No worries if you've never read my books. Use your real name or a secret code name, whatever you like. No pressure, of course -- no one has to respond. But please do feel free to say hi today. (Even if you've done so before!)

A friendly reminder to anyone reading this post on LiveJournal, Amazon, or anywhere other than my blogspot that I won't see your comments unless you come to my Blog Actual to post them.

And a reminder that the Summer B…

(...said Westley to Inigo Montoya at a critical moment in The Princess Bride...)
Today's post is all about you. I would love to know who's out there on the other side of this screen, and that's why today, I'm extending a special invitation to any and all of my readers to comment -- especially if you've never commented before! Who are you? No pressure, of course, but really, I'd love to know. You don't need to tell me your real name, or whether you've read my book, or any of that garbage, unless you care to. Just tell me whatever you want -- maybe who you are, where you are, and, if you feel like it, an extra tidbit about you. Perhaps you, too, have a favorite favorite you'd like to share. Perhaps you have a question about cupcakes to pose to the world, or a suggestion for dinner. Hm. I'm hungry.
I'll go first. I'm Kristin. I'm a writer. I live in North Florida. I love brass quintets. And Johnny Depp notwithstanding, my fa…