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

Serbian cover of Graceling, published by Carobna knjiga. I didn't even know this book was out until Carobna knjiga's Fire landed in my mailbox. Click to enbiggen, this is a cool one! I love the blood in the font. ----->

For those who've been wondering, my ankle is feeling better every day. I'll just be careful to leave extra time for getting places on the tour, and I'll resist the urge to rush to catch planes. I intend to set new records for packing light. Inspired by Laurie Halse-Anderson, I'll take a picture of my tiny luggage and post it here if I get the chance. Of course, Laurie was packing for a five-week tour. Mine is only a week and a half (because I am a WIMP). So make sure you're duly impressed by Laurie's feats of packing!

For anyone who wants to know a little more about what my events will be like: I'll start by reading from Bitterblue for maybe 10-15 minutes; then I'll talk for a few more minutes about the process of writing the …

I signed lots of books for lots of people in a very short time on Thursday, and a number of souls, probably noticing the mania in my eyes, kindly expressed concern for my health. On the off chance that any of those same people later saw me being wheeled through the Houston airport, please allow me to reassure you that I did not fall into a faint from too much signing or anything like that. No, what I did was, I stepped creatively off of a curb. In the horrible moment after it happened, a moment during which I replayed the dreadful snapping noise over and over in my mind and discovered that I truly could not stand, I feared that I'd broken my ankle (which it turns out I hadn't), and all I could think was that my book tour started in 12 days. My book tour started in 12 days, and I had to go and miss the curb and do something SO FREAKING STUPID. It's not like I was rushing headlong down a hill while attached to a spastic dog. It's not like I was jumping off a boat onto a …

For any readers with ebook devices, there's currently a free sampler of my work available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Apple's iTunes Store. The sampler contains excerpts from Graceling, Fire, and Bitterblue, plus an extra thingamajig: some (silly!) letters that Bitterblue, Katsa, Raffin, Bann, and Po wrote to each other during the spring before Bitterblue's 18th birthday (in other words, in the spring before the events of Bitterblue take place). Just search for my name and it should come up.

For any readers who don't have ebook devices but want to read these letters, do not despair. I solemnly swear that they will be available for reading here on my blog as of Sunday, May 6. (And I promise that in the meantime, they aren't important plot-wise or anything!)

French cover of BB ---->

Someday, I will have a plane to catch and not feel like I'm on the wrong side of an insurmountable To Do list. I'm sorry guys, I have lots of good books I want to talk about, but I just can't get it together right now. I also want to talk about So You Think You Can Dance Australia (that link will open one of my favorite group routines from season one), which is different from the American show in a number of refreshing ways (less homophobia!). But there's no time! ACK! I fear it's going to be this way until the Bitterblue release. There is so much to do.

I should have tour details soon. In the meantime: local people! My first tour event is at the Main Branch of the Cambridge Public Library at 6 PM on May 1. Porter Square Books will be there, selling books.

Nonlocal people, here is a VERY ROUGH schedule with no details, subject to change and also to additions: May 2 Rhinebeck NY; May 3 Philadelphia PA; May 4 Washington DC/Bethesda MD; Ma…

A book release can be overwhelming. A lot of factors converge at once. Reviews, to be honest, don't really faze me, but they do create a lot of swirling noise. There's a lot of noise in general during a book release, and when you're trying to ground yourself in what matters, noise can be decentering. Also, during a book release, a writer is transitioning from working alone in a room on an intensely private project to being the star of public speaking events :). Am I nervous about that? Sure. Nerves contribute to the release being overwhelming.

But this morning, I managed to isolate, at least for a few moments, the reason why this release is extra hard. Unlike Katsa and Fire, Bitterblue is just a regular person. She doesn't have any superpowers; she's only got her own courage, smarts, determination, her heart. She feels vulnerable to me, more than Katsa and Fire ever did. And now she's grown up, and it's time for me to fling her out into the scary world …

The response of my two-year-old niece, codename: Isis, when she saw the ARC of Bitterblue: "It no have pictures in it."

Well, guess what, Isis? You're going to like the final version of the book better, because it does have pictures in it. The lovely Ian Schoenherr, who most recently did the art for The Apothecary, has created maps, castle diagrams, various Appendix illustrations, endpapers, the cover page, ornamental chapter openers, and, probably my favorite illustrations of all, double-spread part openers (the book is in five parts) for Bitterblue, and the final result makes me SO HAPPY.

If you "like" the Graceling Realm page on Facebook, you'll have access to some of the art, which is slowly being revealed there.

The process of working with my publisher and Ian on the art was fascinating. It was surprising -- and delightful -- to realize how involved I needed to be, and lots of fun, too -- I enjoyed every minute of it. Often, it wasn't until I saw a…

Hey everybody, sorry for the radio silence this past week. I've been on the road. I plan to be back next week, hopefully with some info about the Bitterblue release. Until then, I thought I'd share this beautiful little video of a book being born. Make it big on your screen; it looks great. Thanks, Jess.