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

In the category of It's All Relative, it's 41°F (5°C) and raining today, I was just outside, I was wearing a light long-sleeve shirt and jeans but no coat, no hat, no scarf, no longjohns, and it was GLORIOUS. It's not supposed to snow again until tomorrow. :D?It turns out I was wrong about two things about the event last night. First of all, it was totally snowing. Secondly, it was also snowing in New York, which meant that poor Marie spent an hour or so sitting on her plane on the runway before they finally canceled her flight. Marie was not able to make it to last night's event. Waaah! I did my best to read from The Winner's Crime and talk up her beautiful series. Happy book birthday, Marie. Here in Cambridge, we miss you. Thank you, everyone, for coming out on a snowy night!Via Rebecca Rabinowitz, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome/CFIDS/ME has a new name: SEID, systemic exertion intolerance disease. It's also the focus of some new attention. This is wonderful news fo…

Go listen to my friend Amanda MacGregor and her eight-year-old son Callum talk about sex on the podcast The Longest Shortest Time. It's twenty-two minutes long and wonderful. Amanda and Callum, I salute you.

In case you were wondering, at this exact moment, it's not snowing, but it was snowing earlier and I have no doubt it will snow again momentarily. It's difficult to get around as a pedestrian – there is no footing or visibility, often you need to wade through a small, slushy river, and, because of the snow mountains, you basically have to walk into the street in order to figure out if there are any cars coming – and the drivers are MAD. They are mad all the time, at everyone. I'm thinking perhaps the city should set up seated massage stations at every street corner to help with the frayed nerves. Parking is impossible and everything is getting cancelled. Jamie told me this morning that the Boston Globe recently tweeted something along the lines of, For the foresee…

[Warning for those afraid of heights and also my mother: trapeze photos below!]

A quick note to anyone who's considering buying signed/inscribed copies of my books from Harvard Book Store as we approach the holidays: I will be out of town, hence unable to sign things, from December 11 to December 19, then again at Christmas Actual. Please time your purchases accordingly so that we can get things to you in time!  Instructions for buying signed copies are behind the link above.

Also, I recommend the article "Sex education in the US is screwing our kids," at Salon, by Alanna Schubach for Dame, which, among other things, links the failure to educate our kids about sex to the prevalence of sexual assault on our college campuses and pretty much everywhere. Excerpt: "Any given student’s experience of sexual education, then—if she receives it at all—is subject to a staggering range of forces: congressional budgeting, state policy, school compliance, community climate, …