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

It's September… So we learned how to cut things with lasers! That magnificent creature was cut by me using Asylasaur, the 100W CO2 laser cutter at Artisan's Asylum in Somerville, MA. Before you get too impressed, it it was NOT designed by me. The human designer and the carbon dioxide laser did a lot more work than I did; I basically pushed a piece of acrylic around, clicked on a few settings, and pressed a button. Here's Asylasaur, the laser – or, the left side of it, anyway. The reasons you should never operate a laser unattended include freak things like something going wrong with the laser so that it aims in the wrong direction, but really, much MUCH more likely, fire. A laser cuts through flammable things, like paper and wood, by vaporizing them. If you thought your dryer was a fire hazard, consider that at least you're not vaporizing your laundry. Unfortunately, I was so focused on learning how to use the laser that I didn't get a lot of pictur

I finished my revision! My next responsibility is to start the next revision (draft 7) as soon as possible. But before I do that, I'm taking just a few days off... from revising. Not from creating things. Those of you who were around the blog in January might remember Basil, the common house zebra . Well, after I created Basil, a request came in for Sock Sunny and Sock Tanker. This is real-life Sunny. This is real-life Tanker. Sunny the dog and Tanker the cat live in Florida with two seven-year-olds. Sunny LOVES Tanker. Tanker's feelings for Sunny are more complicated, but that's neither here nor there. The point is that months and months after acquiring the appropriate socks, I FINALLY got to work. I started with Sock Sunny, because a sock dog requires less altering of a sock zebra pattern than a sock cat does. Socks animals made from this pattern generally turn into long-faced, thin animals, not wonderfully roly-poly cats with round heads. I really