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

It snowed again yesterday, heavy, wet flakes this time. I walked home from a friend's house late last night and the falling snow was sparkling; the mountains of snow lining the streets and consuming people's yards were sparkling. This winter is like being trapped inside a snow globe. It is a little bit claustrophobic, but it's also kind of magical. Many, many cars are still completely encased in mounds of snow. We're expecting a blizzard this weekend. Tonight it will be 0°F (-18°C) and I have bedazzled my fingernails for a party.

On Tuesday, March 3,Marie Rutkoski is coming to town and she and I will be doing an event together at 7 PM at the Harvard Book Store. Yay! Do come! The event is to celebrate the release of Marie's book The Winner's Crime, sequel to The Winner's Curse, both of which are SO WONDERFUL, and I'm so excited to talk about it with her. The event is also to celebrate the release of ABSOLUTELY NOTHING I HAVE WRITTEN, because I am SO SLO…

It started snowing Saturday morning, then snowed steadily until very early this morning (Tuesday). Add an additional two feet or so to the pictures I posted last week and you'll get the idea. At some point, I started taking little videos of the scene on my street and sending them to my nieces in Florida. Their mother, codename: Cordelia, texted me today that the moment one of them got a look at it, she started laughing and laughing. It's snowing so much in eastern Massachusetts that five-year-olds in Florida are having hysterics.

Snow is expected on Thursday. I've been making bread and dreaming of warmer climes.

It is, of course, all relative. A friend who used to live in central Maine just told me that by the end of the winter, there would be so much accumulated snow that it was like walking around on the moon. Another friend told me that it's so unseasonably warm in Minnesota that yesterday, she read outside. In case you don't have a good sense of the constitutio…

If you want to follow along with my Q&A this week at David Estes's Goodreads group, or even join in, here's where you need to go. Some explanations of the setup: at the top of that page is the questions people have been asking me, listed in bold. The wonderful Jenny, who is keeping things organized for me, continues to add new questions to that list as people ask them, and she also crosses out questions as I answer them. If you want to add a question, you need to join the group, then add a comment that includes your question. (Click on "post a comment.") Jenny asks that you put your question in bold so that it's easier for her and me to find it, and that you use spoiler tags if there's a spoiler in your question. I answer the questions by adding my own comments, which means that you need to scroll through the comments to find my answers. Yesterday, I answered eleven or twelve questions, which start around message 45. I'm about to head over there now …

So, as many of you have doubtless observed, I keep a fairly quiet online profile… And lately, I've been even quieter than usual, because I'm trapped under a mountain of revision pages. However, next week, I'm bursting out! The lovely folks over at David Estes Fans and YA Book Lovers Unite! have invited me to their Goodreads group, where I will be answering your questions about my books, my life as a writer, how many umbrellas I own, what the decor theme in my bathroom is (someone please ask me this question), why it's taking me so long to release my next book, what my new year's resolutions are, what kind of bread I'm making, or whatever else you want to know. Within reason. :o)

I believe you need to join the group in order to participate, though anyone can read along. You can join here. And here's where the Q&A will take place. Please join us! I'll stop in at least once a day next Monday through Thursday and answer as many of your questions as I c…