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

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 …

Every New Year, I try to post something about my resolutions. Realistic resolutions designed to bring me peace and keep me centered; never resolutions that are self-limiting or self-punishing. This year, I resolve to continue on my current path of trying to walk through life with my eyes, mind, heart, and arms open.Or, as Maurice Sendak said to Terry Gross, "Live your life, live your life, live your life."

I'll add one more resolution to that: I would like to blog a bit more than I've managed to in the past few months.

By the way, The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books has named Bitterblue one of their 2012 Blue Ribbons. One of these days I'm going to take the time to make a page of review excerpts and awards for Bitterblue. I am overwhelmed with the reception my girl has received. It humbles me. How frightened I was this time last year, frightened of letting Bitterblue go. I wrote an e-mail to my sister, codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer, tell…

... I am reading, and loving, Shannon Hale's Book of a Thousand Days.

Happy new year from Florida.

What the Body Knows
All night he waits for us and the drawing back of the black-out curtains to fill him with sunlight and hope.
Daily, we bear a copper bowl brimful with hot water, finest triple-milled soap, sponge and a thick white towel.
Hands heavy with oils we massage his back in a rhythm constant as tides, count the abacus beads of his spine
and circle his calves with wobbly O's, then pull his perfect toes until his breath matches the hushed escalation of eucalyptus leaves outside.
The night he dies, we lay hands on his body, such a small boat, clasping it firmly to the shore of the living so that his spirit can rise freely, even now loved.
- Madelyn Garner

(From my 2012 datebook.)

Bitterblue is one of Kirkus Reviews' Best Books of 2012. I am overwhelmed with blessings.

So, yesterday, while I was doing some financial organizing, I stumbled across two poems by Edna St. Vincent Millay. Possibly this highlights the key problem I have with my financial organizing, but anyway :). I just had to share them. The first is about death. The second is about love.

Dirge Without Music

I am not resigned to the shutting away of loving hearts in the hard ground.
So it is, and so it will be, for so it has been, time out of mind:
Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely. Crowned
With lilies and with laurel they go; but I am not resigned.
Lovers and thinkers, into the earth with you.
Be one with the dull, the indiscriminate dust.
A fragment of what you felt, of what you knew,
A formula, a phrase remains, --- but the best is lost.
The answers quick & keen, the honest look, the laughter, the love,
They are gone. They have gone to feed the roses. Elegant and curle…

...and after that, Brattle Square Florist in Harvard Square glows with color.



In another part of Harvard Square... I see that Bitterblue is among the Holiday Hundred at Harvard Book Store, which means it's 20% off.


I mention this because this is my local indie and the way to get books signed/personalized by me (before you finish your online order, a comments box will appear; please specify in the comments box that you'd like the book signed, and to whom you'd like it personalized, if anyone) -- BUT, fair warning: if you are thinking of my signed books as Christmas presents, please order before December 17, because I won't be around after that to sign them. I can't sign books from out of state. I tried once. My arm wasn't long enough.

Happy light and dark, everyone.

To make up for my recent lack of posting -- and to celebrate Bitterblue being named a New York Times Book Review Notable Children's Book of 2012 -- this post will be about something :).

Disclaimer: All the photos in this post are of my own work and are owned by me. If you use them for any purpose, please identify them and attribute them to me. Do not change them in any way or use them commercially.

What follows is essentially my tour presentation for Bitterblue... it is the story of how the book was written. Here goes.

As you probably know if you've spent much time on my blog, I write by hand.


Above is the first page of the first draft of Bitterblue. Note that the date is October 25, 2007. Also note -- if you've read Bitterblue -- that this is not how the final book begins. And also that not a whole lot from this page made it into the final draft. What you see above is fairly typical: I write, I scratch out a word here and there, I scratch out a line, I change things; th…

Hi guys. Sorry for the recent radio silence on the blog; I'm traveling. But I wanted to pop in about something that might intrigue those of you with an interest in indie music and how it's made.

Sometime ago, I blogged about a stupendous cover of "Norwegian Wood" and "Kashmir" performed by the Aaron English Band. I've kept track of Aaron English's musical doings since then, and now he and the talented, ukulele-playing, singing, songwriting Victoria Vox have a new side collaboration called Boombox Séance. It's "uketronica": indie-folk and dance-floor electronica. From their own site: "Their sound features a baritone ukulele played through a loop pedal, driving kick drum, keyboards and the acrobatic vocal harmonies" of Victoria and Aaron.AND, they're recording their debut album -- with your participation, if you're interested -- check out their pledge drive at Pledge Music. They're offering some pretty fun stuff to …

At 32,000 feet, there are ice crystals on my window and we're flying above snow-covered peaks. Yet the sun through my window is so relentlessly hot and strong that I have to keep the shade down, and when I touch it, it burns me.

I usually take the position of the sun into consideration when choosing my plane seat, but this time, common sense eluded me! I feel like a rotisserie chicken.