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

 Hi all, Today I finished a draft of a brand-new writing project. I started it on December 14, which means that I wrote it faster than I've ever written anything. And though I already know a lot of its revision needs, and though the draft isn't really done (because I still have to transcribe an entire notebook of handwritten scribbles), and though I'm feeling that unsettled sense of not being sure yet where I'm going with it… And though I expect it to be a while before I can focus on it again… I feel hopeful about its potential.  I've recently (maybe in the past year or so) entered a writing pocket that I call Less Angst. I don't think my writing is any better or worse than it ever was, but I'm enjoying the work more, and worrying about it less. I can probably list a lot of reasons for this, but I suspect the biggest factor is experience. The feelings of doubt and worry, anxiety because the book isn't right yet, uncertainty about how many attempts it wi

There's still time to register for my virtual book events happening today and tomorrow. For those of you who receive my blog post as emails, your email got weirdly cut off yesterday right before all the event information. You also missed some photos of my notebooks while I was writing Winterkeep . Sorry about that. For event details and to catch up on what you missed, please visit yesterday's post on my Blog Actual! http://kristincashore.blogspot.com/2021/01/winterkeep-ish-stuff-for-release-week.html

Winterkeep is now out in the world, and can be purchased at your favorite book retailer. I am happy for you to buy the book wherever you prefer, but do keep indie retailers bookshop.org , Libro.fm , and Kobo in mind! This week, I'm on the podcast First Draft with Sarah Enni ... Sarah is so skilled at insightful conversation, and so warm, too. We had a lovely chat. Check it out ! I have two more virtual events to round off book release week, and you're invited. The first is Sunday at 5PM ET (2PM PT), with Malinda Lo , moderated by Tui Sutherland , and presented by Mysterious Galaxy Books in San Diego. The nice thing about this event is that Malinda, Tui, and I are all in the same book group. So we're used to getting together to talk about books. Just not usually our own books! Of course, our last eleven meetings have been virtual, but normally, the group meets in one of the homes of our lovely members. If I were hosting book group in January, I would have a fire roaring in

  Hi, everyone. In the midst of all this difficult news, Winterkeep is about to be released. So it's time to share the dates and details of my virtual tour events. If you're looking for a happy escape from all that's going on — and let's face it, probably some conversation about how books help us absorb/understand/frame current events — please join us! I'm going to be talking to a lot of super interesting people: Author and podcaster Sarah Enni . Authors Malinda Lo and Tui Sutherland . Agent Faye Bender and editor Andrew Karre . Here's a link to my tour page: http://www.penguinteen.com/ event/kristin-cashore-on-tour/   And I'll also spell everything out here: First up, on Tuesday, January 19 at 7PM ET, I’ll be in conversation with Sarah Enni, hosted by the Brookline Booksmith. Sarah’s an author and journalist who’s the host of the wonderful First Draft podcast. More details and registration here: https://www.brooklinebooksmith.com/event/kristin-cashore-sa

I took a break from my craft series for a couple months. And then I handed in the first draft of a new book this week! Which means that this weekend I can finally turn my attention to writing about craft in The Housekeeper and the Professor , by Yoko Ogawa. Yoko Ogawa's slender, stunning book, translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, is a challenging one to use as a writing lesson, because while I can describe a hundred smart and wonderful things about it, that doesn’t mean I know how to translate its beauty into advice to other writers. It’s not helpful for me to say, “See how perfect this is? Now go do that."  And it is that kind of book, the kind that pulls you into a narrative dream and holds you there so gently, with such soft hands, that it's hard to figure out how you got where you are. When did it happen, and how? For me, it had already happened by the time I'd gotten to the end of page 3. And I think that the "how" has something to do with a

U.S. District Judge Matthew W. Brann speaking to the only lawyer still willing to argue Trump's case in Pennsylvania, Rudolph Giuliani, on Tuesday: “You’re alleging that the two individual plaintiffs were denied the right to vote. But at bottom, you’re asking this court to invalidate more than 6.8 million votes, thereby disenfranchising every single voter in the commonwealth. Can you tell me how this result can possibly be justified?” Hello everyone. You might expect that while we are having to endure this comical yet terrifying attempted coup, my subconscious mind would be having a field day, giving me creative dreams as usual . But here's the dream I had Tuesday night, after that disgraceful show in Michigan : A Republican demagogue, anticipating his loss in the next election and wanting to prime public opinion, begins shouting as loud as he can about how the Democrats are going to steal the election. He loses the election. Then he tries to steal the election, again by accus

A couple time-sensitive pieces of book news for those of you not on Twitter , where, among other things, I've been posting my sister's careful scrawled calculations of the vote count in Pennsylvania :o) . One, Flatiron Books invite me to chat with Melissa Albert, author of the gorgeous and chilling Tales from the Hinterland , tonight (Friday) at 8:30pm ET as part of  #yallwrite .   Info at @YALLFest and https://www.yallwrite.org/schedule#specialevents .  Come join us! I for one will be exhausted yet (I suspect) calm, and Mimi and I will have plenty of bookish stuff to talk about! Two, Penguin Teen has organized an exclusive map giveaway for anyone who preorders Winterkeep . Here's the entry form: http://bit.ly/ WinterkeepPreOrder Tag @PenguinTeen with any questions. And enjoy! :o)

Hi, all. Waiting is hard. So here are some pretty pics to distract you.  Friday was the day I'd scheduled to take some time off, go for nice walk, and get some pictures of the fall foliage. In typical 2020 fashion, it didn't go quite as planned…  So I went with it. Everything is great. Here are some scenes... ...of October... ... in Massachusetts... ...just for you. Now for some pictures of inside things. I don't know about you, but this is a pretty stressful time for me, and I'm using every tool in my toolbox to stay healthy and well. One of those is — always — writing, and hardly anything gives me greater comfort than having fun with my writing tools. I've explained before that I write by hand. Then, when I've written a sufficient amount that I start to worry about the house burning down, I transcribe my writing into a Word document, using voice recognition software. If you're curious about the kind of notebooks I've written in previously and what my

Hello, lovely people. I have another craft post planned for sometime soon… I'm hoping to write about The Housekeeper and the Professor , by Yoko Ogawa, if I can just figure out how to articulate what I want to say. It's such a beautiful book! One of those rare books I got out of the library, read, then decided I needed to own. Until then, I wanted to share a little bit of blather about Winterkeep (January 19, 2021), plus display all eight new covers — the new USA and UK covers for Graceling , Fire , Bitterblue , and Winterkeep — altogether in one place. If you don't care about the blather and just want to see pretty pictures, scroll down. So. The first few drafts of Winterkeep were written in many, many points of view. It was early days, and I was trying to figure out how to tell the story I wanted to tell. I pretty much allowed anyone a point of view, sort of as an experiment, to see how each character felt, and figure out whose feelings were most important. Then gradual