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

I actually think the puppy is doing a remarkable job restraining his excitement and yearning. Considering he's a puppy :o)

This is political and election-related, so I debated whether I was breaking my "Safe Zone" promise by posting it here. It's a speech First Lady Michelle Obama gave yesterday in Manchester, New Hampshire, so of course it refers to that horrible man. But: it also brings rightness back; it's uplifting and hopeful; it made me feel seen, heard, cared about, and understood as a woman and as a decent human being during this horrific election season. And -- she never says his name, for which I am grateful.

Here's a link to video and transcript of Michelle Obama's speech yesterday in Manchester, NH.

(The speech is actually only 21 minutes long. The first ten minutes is the stuff that is SO GOOD TO HEAR, the next ten minutes is stuff about Hillary, and the last ten minutes is FLOTUS shaking hands while her Secret Service detail anxiously hovers.)

From October 2007 to June 2009, a Japanese spacecraft called Kaguya orbited the moon. Kaguya had cameras, and the cameras recorded, among other things, views of the Earth rising and setting over the moon.

Here's Earth setting over (or under?) the south pole of the moon! (BTW, if you get my posts as emails and the videos don't work, just click through to my Blog Actual.)



For more photos and videos (all breath-taking), check out "New Gems from the Moon" at the blog of the Planetary Society.

I promise, for the next month, to keep this blog a safe and comforting place. I don't know how often I'll be able to post, but when I do, I'll post fun and comforting things. If you want a place on the internets where you won't have to read about that person or be touched by his destructive toxicity, you can come here.

I probably won't post much political stuff at all, but just to start things off, here's a pantsuit flashmob in support of Hillary. Why? In the words of its creators,

WE DANCE Because Love is Love Because Black Lives Matter Because climate change is real Because women's rights are human rights Because immigrants make America great Because every vote matters We dance for Hillary Because she fights for us 

OFFICIAL "PANTSUIT POWER" FLASH MOB FOR HILLARY from Celia & Mia for HRC on Vimeo.

Tomorrow I will come back and blog about the best umbrellas on the internets.

I've been a very poor blogger lately. I have a list as long as my arm of things I've been wanting to blog about, but the spirit has not been moving me. In particular, I've been going through a period of grievously fractured focus with my writing, and have been wanting to blog something about that. I actually sat down yesterday, expecting to write a blog post about it – even contacted a few friends to ask permission to share some of the wise things they've been saying – but then, to my delight, my focus came back, and instead, I worked. I'm hoping the same thing is about to happen as I sit down this very moment. So, instead of one of those blog posts I've been meaning to write, I offer a few random pictures and one wise quote from a friend, presented with no context whatsoever :o). Maybe they will mean something to you.

I'm almost always in the process of reading a book; often I'm reading two. It's not unusual for me to be reading three. (There's also a scattering of a half-dozen books that I read at the pace of a snail across years, but I'm not counting those here – I'm talking about books I'm actively reading now with the intention of finishing them soonish.) That's usually my limit, and when I'm reading three books, two of them will almost certainly be either nonfiction or short stories; I rarely read more than one novel at the same time.

Right now, however, I'm in a few days of taking a break from all writing, which means I have more time to read. I am also preparing, in invisible ways, for the next bunch of writing – which means I'm finding myself drawn to more nonfiction than is usual for me. Putting together the pleasure reading, the reading that is obligated for various reasons, and the reading specifically directed toward informing my writing, I&#…

Revising, as I've mentioned, is really intense right now, so I'm making sure I take breaks whenever I need them. Today at midday, I decided I needed a walk to clear my head. However, it's 41°F (5°C) outside today, a heat wave the likes of which I've apparently forgotten how to cope with; I put on my longjohns, my wool socks, my arm warmers, my scarf, my hat liner, and spent the first few minutes dying of heat and pulling off layers. It's amazing outside! The river has been iced over for weeks, but today there's a sheen of melted water on top. The geese are walking around on the ice in the usual manner, except that it's more slippery today, so each step includes a little unsteady slide which doesn't seem to cause them the panic that sort of thing causes me. I suppose if my center of gravity were six inches off the ground and I had webbed feet bigger than my head and could fly, I wouldn't panic either.

Because of the sheen of water, each goose had a …

As I've mentioned recently, I'm revising a manuscript. Here's a breakdown of what this revision tends to look like on a daily basis:
For one hour or so, I reread and ponder the responses of my early readers and my own notes (as I blogged about recently).For maybe two or three hours, I look back over the revising I did yesterday and all the days before, getting a second look at my revisions and changing things here and there.For maybe an hour or an hour and a half, I push forward in the book, maybe revising one more chapter. I find I'm working anywhere from two to seven hours in a session (with a lot of breaks), depending on what else I'm doing that day and how quickly I get mentally drained. I never sit down intending to work seven hours – generally that's too much, too draining – but occasionally I'll look up and be startled to see how much time has passed. (This happens more often in summer than winter – the sun sets so late!)

Sometimes I only skim the re…

I wish people talked more about the body-heart-mind dynamic going on within each of us. For me, learning to understand the workings of my own body-heart-mind dynamic has been an enormous help in being safe, being brave, understanding what I want and what I'm capable of, and making decisions. Body, Heart, and Mind: each part has its own particular kind of certainty/knowledge — knowledge that sometimes contradicts the knowledge of one of the other parts, which can make things interesting. If you can become conscious of them, they can be the most wonderful guides (yes, while possibly driving you crazy with their arguing). Today I'm thinking of how this relates to the stage I'm in with the thing I'm writing.

Whenever I get near the end of whatever thing I'm writing — be it a first draft, a revision, or just the resolution of a particular plot point — whenever I start to see the light at the end of whatever tunnel I'm in, I'm generally visited by a stunning sur…

Here are a few questions I ask myself before I hit "publish" on any blog post:
Is it too personal? Will it make me feel exposed in some way? Why?Does it compromise my self-respect? How? To the best of my ability to judge, does it respect others?How recently have I blogged and how much have I been blogging recently? Why?Why do I want to blog this thing?  -----> No self-deception or delusion allowed here. Whatever the real reason is, am I okay with it?What if I didn't blog this thing? What if I kept it to myself, or emailed a friend about it instead? Would that feel more peaceful and centering? Why? For every blog post I hit "publish" on, there are probably two I delete. For every two paragraphs I leave in a blog post, there's probably one I delete. It doesn't feel like a waste of time to me, because in the writing and questioning, I organize my thoughts and learn about myself, which I dearly hope helps me move respectfully and responsibly through the …

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 …

For those mornings when you wake up and find yourself wondering, Hmm, what strange thing happened to me overnight? Weirdness and worry, you are welcome in my day: come on in.

The Guest House

This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door, laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

- Rumi

In lieu of a post today, I'll link you to Cindy Pon's interview with me about Bitterblue, over at The Enchanted Inkpot. Cindy is running a Bitterblue ARC giveaway, so head over there if you're interested! Many thanks to Cindy, who asks really good questions :).

My 30-second Hunger Games movie review: I had to leave the theater around minute 90 because the camerawork was making me sick. If you're prone to motion sickness, consider taking your meds or whatever, and DO NOT sit close. The frustrating thing was that at the moment I left, they'd just entered the arena, and FINALLY there was some point to all the shaky cam, zooming, fast panning, quick cutting, deliberate unfocusedness, etc. Finally it was effective. But my body couldn't deal with it anymore at that point. Very disappointing. The one judgment I was able to form before succumbing to the horror of "Is the whole movie going to be shot like this? Oh NO," was that District 12 didn't seem all …

I try to avoid turning my blog into a publicity machine, but this has been the kind of week that leaves a gal uninspired, in addition to which, I have two nice pieces of news. So brace yourselves.

The first comes with a thank you -- to Kirkus Reviews, for their review of Bitterblue, which is beautiful (the review, I mean!) not just in content, but in form. At the moment, the full review is only available online to subscribers.  I'm sorry about that, because it's a really lovely review. The most spoiler-conscious among you should probably avoid it (YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED), though all things considered, it manages to be nice and vague about plot. Here's a (spoiler-free) excerpt for those of you who aren't subscribers, but would like a taste: "Gorgeous, textured prose is filled with images of strange beauty and restrained horror. It propels an intricate narrative dense with subplots and rich in characters familiar and new."

The second news is a mention of Gracel…