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

Life has been full and blogging has fallen through the cracks. I've been writing a lot of blog posts in my head – I don't suppose any of you have been getting them? :) I hope to post another "Guess Where I Am" post soon, plus say something about all the audiobooks I've been listening to, plus, commend Amtrak for their wonderful new "writers in residence" program… In lieu of a more thoughtful post, here's an extremely entertaining five-minute break with 2Cellos, performing AC/DC's "Thunderstruck." I've seen these two gentlemen in concert twice, and for the record, they are just as good live as they are in their videos. Though sadly they weren't wearing guyliner or 18th century dress when I saw them live.

Hope to see some of you Tuesday evening at the Harvard Book Store with Marie Rutkoski.

There's a new book coming out on March 4 that I'm wildly excited about, because it is just so wonderfully excellently super-good… It's called The Winner's Curse and Marie Rutkoski wrote it. Those of you who read my blog carefully know that Marie is a dear friend of mine, so I wouldn't blame you if now you're thinking, Oh, sure, she's going to say it's wonderful, because her friend wrote it – or even, Oh, sure, she's going to think it's wonderful, because her friend wrote it. This sort of dilemma arises when one's friend writes an amazing book: How to convince others that the book itself is amazing and I'm not just speaking out of love for my friend? Well, how about I bring in Kirkus Reviews to help me. From their starred review of The Winner's Curse:

"Rich characterization, exquisite worldbuilding and rock-solid storytelling make this a fantasy of unusual intelligence and depth.... Precise details and elegant prose make this wo…

(Those of you who can't see the video (of Benedict Counterbatch, Murray-arty, and Count von Count), go to my Blog Actual.)

Thanks to the ever reliable codename: Apocalyptica the Flimflammer.

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 …

A couple years ago, we had one of those winters that never really got started... hardly any snow, and the temperatures weirdly high. Spring came and I felt like I'd been cheated. That's certainly not happening this year. And here in Cambridge, our frequent temps of 10 and 20°F (-12 and -7°C, approximately) are downright balmy compared to the -20 and -30°F temps (-29 and -34°C) a friend in Minnesota is having on a regular basis. For me, it's something to laugh and occasionally whine about, because I'm damn lucky, but for a lot of people, it's creating a lot of suffering and is downright dangerous… I wish everyone could be okay.

A heartfelt thank you for everyone who clicked on my Seabane Isn't Real post! I just took a look at the hit count and was touched that my readers are taking my request seriously.

Work has been enjoyable lately but also intense and energy-sapping. Hence, no blogging. But I've been keeping a little list of randutiae that bears mention…

Here's a brief conversation between Katsa and Po in Graceling:
Po looked puzzled. “What’s seabane?”

“I don’t know if you have another name for it in Lienid.  It’s a small purple flower. A woman who eats its leaves will not bear a child.”
And here's a line from Bitterblue:
Bitterblue examined the item in her hand. It was a medicinal envelope with a label written clear across the front: “Seabane, for the prevention of pregnancy.”
Seabane is a fictional herb. I made it up, not unlike the way fantasy writer Tamora Pierce made up a pregnancy charm for Alanna and her other fictional women.

Way back when I was an unpublished writer writing Graceling, choosing the name of this magical contraceptive herb was fun. I knew I wanted a plant name that, to the best of my ability to ensure such a thing, was not a known plant name in the real world in any language, because I didn't want to confuse my fantasy world with the real world and I didn't want to muddle readers ("What? Orega…

Bulgarian cover for Fire! Published by Emas, designed by Zlatina Zareva. Click to enbiggen! ------>

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My dear nieces (accidentally and with great affection) gave me a Christmas present of a terrible cold in which my head was like a TARDIS of snot, so I've fallen behind in some things, including blogging. (The TARDIS, for those of you who aren't Doctor Who fans, is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside, such that it's capable of containing unimaginably huge quantities of stuff you would never think possible if you're standing outside it. And by the way, I'm not as obsessed with Doctor Who as it might seem given recent mentions on my blog (though I do rather love it). It's more that a character I'm writing about is often wearing Doctor Who pajamas, so it's always on my mind.)

As colds go, this one was massive, but also dreamy and contemplative, possibly because it coincided with the New Year. I should have some resolution thoughts to b…