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

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David Levithan and Billy Merrell are putting together an expanded edition of The Full Spectrum and are looking for essays about lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning and other queer identities by writers under 21.  If you have a story you want to tell, go to www.queerthology.com for details on submitting.  Deadline is August 1st! I loved this: photos of the onscreen and real-life wedding dresses of 13 movie stars, in Vogue. Emma Thompson, Grace Kelly, Julie Andrews, Keira Knightley, etc.  If you have 15 minutes to watch a video: Sydney Opera House / Living Mural. "A global animation project by Universal Everything, collaborating with over 20 different animation studios worldwide to create a living mural on one of the world’s most iconic buildings." In other words: lights and pictures specially designed to be projected onto the Sydney Opera House. Pretty cool.From the Huffington Post: "Laverne Cox's Reaction To Caitlyn Jenner Reveals The I…

This was pretty challenging, especially because in order for everything to line up correctly, the more complicated planets had to end up on my dominant hand. Turns out it is really hard to paint a tiny Saturn with a nail polish brush and toothpicks, right-handed!

I tried to represent their relative sizes correctly, more or less. Well anyway, I did my best, given my limitations of tools and skill. :o) And yes, Pluto gets to be part of my solar system!

Click to embiggen.






Thanks, Kevin, for the pictures. Somehow we failed to take a close-up of my right hand, so here's a bad iPhone selfie, just to share details:

The book I'm revising right now has an unusual structure and an unusual narrative voice. For the reader who isn't looking for a puzzle or a job, it has the potential to be a bit offputting. My job is to help that reader wherever I can. I want that reader to feel grounded, pulled in, and welcome in this book; I don't want any reader to feel frustrated and confused!

The unusual structure and the unusual narrative voice are integral to the book, so neither is something I'm willing to abandon. But I find myself doing a lot of other, little things throughout – things that happen on the sentence and word level – to help the reader wherever I can. I'm not sure if these things are working as well as I hope they're working, but I thought I'd share them, just in case any other writers out there are in a similar situation of trying to help the reader get a hold on a weird and complicated book.
When faced with the option of using either a pronoun (he, she, it, etc.) or…

It's becoming difficult to take pictures that convey the absurdity of the situation here in the Boston area. The pictures just don't do it justice (and it's hard to get a full view of anything, because backing up quickly puts you against a snowbank). It's not unusual to walk down a badly-shoveled sidewalk with walls of snow to either side that are taller than you are. I would say that on any given street where parking is allowed (which isn't many streets), 60% of the cars are mostly covered with deep snow and 20% of the cars are so deeply buried that they're invisible. The icicles are, um, LARGE.

First email today from Becca:
This poor dude is standing on top of a snowbank right outside my window and trying to scoop/shovel down into it. His face looks very perplexed. I can only assume that he knows that somewhere inside that snowbank is his car. The snowbank is way too big to show any hint of it though. I wonder if he’s positive this is where his car is or if he…

As usual, I'm a little behind the curve about blogging things, but this week, to celebrate the release of the Bitterblue paperback, I've been the author on Penguin's Teen Author Spotlight. Check it out if you want to see a short interview. Then scroll down and read about the other featured authors!

Also, I painted my nails. I hope Piet Mondrian and Frank Lloyd Wright would like them. Y'all know I like to subject you to my nail polish, right?




As long as I'm identifying the beer in the picture, I may as well identify my nail polish painting materials, for the nail painters among you: The gold is Orly "Luxe," the silver is Orly "Shine," and the teal is Diamond "Don't Teal My Heart Away." I'll try to remember to do that in future; I don't think I've been consistent about it in the past. The Orly metallics are extremely malleable and orderly and easy to paint with. The Diamond colors I have are plasticky and gloppy and soft…

An alternative title to this post is "France is Yummy: Miscellany."

These are not all my meals. My companions -- fellow authors, publishing folk and interpreters -- became accustomed to me leaning over their shoulders with my iPhone.

Please forgive me for the fact that in some cases, I can't remember what these dishes were, and also for the fact that I don't have time tonight to identify the ones I do remember!  In some cases, it should be obvious what they are – tea, pizza, salad, souffle, fish and chips, cheese. I discovered one day that my belly has a cheese limit; beyond this limit, cheesebellyachus sets in. This is a nonfatal condition that leaves one with the genuine quandary of whether it is worth it to continue eating cheese. There are things you might never discover about yourself unless you visit France.

Click on them to make them big and beautiful. A few notes: No, the raw stuff was not mine – it was Gail Carriger's — she's a much more adventurous …