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

Kristin bumps her head and says Ow.
Codename: Phoenix: Kristin, did you break your crown while you were fetching a pail of water?

Codename: Joe is driving the car, at a reasonable pace. Codenames: Phoenix and Isis are in the back seat.
Phoenix (screaming): GO FAST! GO FAST!
Isis (screaming): SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN!

I am reading Death Comes for the Archbishop on my e-book reader. Phoenix, awake from her nap, wanders in. I put the device to sleep immediately and close it inside its case, but not before she sees.
Phoenix: What you doing, Kristin? Are you reading your book?
Me: Yes, Phoenix, I am reading my book.
Phoenix: Can I see it?
Me (holding it so she can see): Yes, you can see it.
Phoenix: Can I just hold it?
Me: You can hold it for a minute, but then you have to give it back to Kristin.
Phoenix (holding the reader in delight): Can I just open it?
Me: The book is sleeping now, Phoenix. We need to let it sleep.
Phoenix: Can I just see it sleeping?
Me (opening the case): We can look at it once, but …

Just popping in to report that after a day of drippy cold rain, it is now snowing.

New England, I ♥ you.

The mailman left me a package slip, and in the space where he was supposed to write down the name of the sender, he wrote "Poland." ...? Poland sent me a package? I'm guessing it's copies of Fire (see snazzy cover ---->) from my Polish publisher, Wydawnictwo Nasza Ksiegarnia. Can't think why he didn't just say so. :P

Philip Pullman is still fighting hard for libraries in England. "Philip Pullman has lambasted Brent council for its comment that closing half of its libraries would help it fulfil 'exciting plans to improve libraries', describing the statement as a 'masterpiece' which 'ought to be quoted in every anthology of political bullshit from here to eternity'." HA HA HA (Thanks, R)

As a freelance writer, I found this article about how to budget for an irregular income helpful... with the exception of the suggestion that one project one's cash flow based on one's minimum monthly income from the last 12 months. T…

I promise I won't use my Bitterblue cover as my post picture for the rest of all time, but for now, I just can't help myself. I've been working on Bitterblue for almost four years, and haven't really been able to express how it's made me feel. Now that I finally have a cover to express things for me, I find I keep reaching for it. :o)

So, there's this piece of music by the Hungarian composer Bartók called Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin. If you're curious, you can listen to part of it here. I theorize that there's a relatively high potential for disaster when an orchestra attempts to perform this piece, seeing as even when it's played well, it sounds kind of shrieky and discordant. Imagine how it would sound played badly!

Yesterday, I listened to the Boston Youth Symphony play it magnificently. The whole concert was beautiful and I was SO IMPRESSED with these fine young musicians. It was kind of a delightful crowd, too, younger than the average sym…

Hi everyone. I still exist. Apparently I am taking a small blog break! I didn't see it coming or I would've announced it. But I've been doing some more travel, I've been having work meetings, I've been recuperating, I've been working on various categories of things, and somehow haven't been feeling bloggy.

I think a lot of people's hearts have been bleeding a little bit on account of the National Book Award/Lauren Myracle kerfuffle. I very much enjoyed/appreciated/admired Myracle's own explanation of what happened, and agree with everyone else that she's a class act. Good on you, Lauren.

Here's a post I read recently and liked: "A 'Cowboy and Indians' party is just as bad as a blackface party," at Adrienne K.'s blog Native Appropriations. I also appreciated her more recent post, "Representing the Native Presence in the 'Occupy Wall Street' Narrative". There's always something interesting goin…

In case you missed it, I made an announcement about Bitterblue on Thursday.

You know, I wanted to come here and try to express some of my thoughts and feelings about what it was like to write this book, tell some stories, and describe how it feels to be done writing it. But I don't think I can yet. It was the hardest work I've ever done, and now that my part of the process is mostly over, I'm grieving. It's a comfort to me that if I have to give her up, at least I can give her to all of you.

Randomly, my subject line is from a Neil Young song I can't stop listening to. (The link is to youtube.) If you've never listened to much Neil Young and are curious, I highly recommend the album Neil Young Unplugged as your introduction.

My recent trip took me to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City, Zion National Park, and Bryce Canyon. Wisely, I chose an excellent photographer as my traveling companion :o). I'll be posting some pictures here soon. I don…

(Click to embiggen)

Bitterblue will be released on May 1, 2012 in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It will be released on the same day in a few other countries/languages as well; I'll supply that information when I have it.

A few reasons I love the (USA/Canada) cover above: It feels like Bitterblue (the character) to me. The colors have special significance. The keys are a highly appropriate icon (like Katsa's dagger on the Graceling cover). And, the keys look like weapons. :o)

Here's a link to today's press release in Publisher's Weekly, which includes a little bit of teaser information about the book. Thanks to Sue Corbett for the interview.

Here's where you can preorder on bn.com. Here's where you can preorder on Amazon. Ask your local indie bookseller about preordering, too, if preordering is what you want to do.

A lot of people have asked me why it took so long for me to finish this book. The answer is simple. It's not because I was…

Last Christmas, at my parents' house, my nieces (who were about 16 months old at the time) kept telling us that they wanted to be read to, but every time their mother, codename: Cordelia, began a new book, they would get distracted, wander around, then come back a few minutes later with another book, asking to be read to. They didn't seem to know what they were looking for.

Then Cordelia picked up Where the Wild Things Are. It was their first time ever seeing this book. Both girls went still; both girls watched and listened, entranced, to the entire story.

I felt that something I knew in my heart about books -- especially our very best books -- had just been proven true.

Here's a recent Fresh Air interview with Maurice Sendak. It's about 20 minutes long. As my sister codename: Apocalyptica told me when she sent me the link, it will make you happy and it will make you cry.

That's what Scully says to Mulder when Mulder hands her a flask of yellow liquid that came from a laboratory full of caged monkeys, gives her one of his significant "no-doubt-it's-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-life" looks, and asks her if she can figure out what it is. And in this case, it does turn out to be evidence of extraterrestrial life. This is the X-Files first season finale ("The Erlenmeyer Flask"), and one of the earliest examples of Scully, the skeptic, having no choice but to believe, because the evidence comes to her in the lab, through the practice of her own religion, namely, science.

I ♥ Scully.

So, I just noticed the weird, highly specific, wordy recommendation categories Netflix has created for me, based on my viewing and rating preferences. "Foreign Thrillers Featuring a Strong Female Lead." "Critically Acclaimed Visually-Striking Dark Movies." "Inspiring Fight-the-System Movies Based on Real Life." "Mind-…

This week, my happiness about Elizabeth Warren running for Senate in Massachusetts...


(transcript here)

...combined with this (funny? offensive? certainly clever, certainly reductive) t-shirt for sale at Threadless Tees...
















(click on it to enbiggen; you can buy it here)

...combined with my recent perusal of maps because I'm going on vacation next week to a part of the country I barely know at all...

(no picture for that one, sorry -- though maybe there will be once I get back!)

... all got me searching the internets for something I'd remembered seeing once before. I found it. It was created by Mark Newman in the Department of Physics and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. Here it is:
















What is that purple monstrosity?

Well, many of you will recognize this:















It's the results of a USA presidential election (in this case, 2008). Blue is for Democrat, red is for Republican; each state is colored either red or blue to represent which party the majorit…