Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 22

Two Songs

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 constitutions of native Minnesotans, while she was reading outside yesterday, it was 35°F (1.6°C). And Cordelia, in Florida, tells me she feels my pain. A couple weeks ago, it was cloudy for five days in a row. Imagine.

I'm pretty sure we're also having a colder winter here than usual. I'm lucky; I am, at the most, inconvenienced. A lot of people are suffering from severely reduced mobility, reduced business, stressful/dangerous drives, and the cold…

******

For the past couple of days, I've been listening to Hozier. I love musicians who tell stories with their songs. Hozier has two songs that I've noticed work delightfully together to tell a story. The first is called "In a Week." The second is called "Like Real People Do," and, if you feel like applying some imagination to it, you might see it as a sequel to the first. :o) I just found two videos in which Hozier talks a little about each of these songs (and also performs)… watch if you're interested, check out the songs themselves if you're further interested. They're not for everyone – they are grim, arguably icky, but also somehow magical, and lyrically and melodically beautiful. I think you'll get a sense pretty quickly, from what he's saying, about whether they might be for you.

The Report from Eastern Massachusetts

Dear readers,
Here in Cambridge,
we're having some problems.
I'm sorry about this person's bike.
I'm sorry about this person's... car? (Though at least they have a parking spot.)
It says "MOST BURRIED." Too much snow affects people's spelling.
The mailman looks like the Grim Reaper.
The fire hydrants are shivering.
Some person has lost their shoes.
Some dog is walking around with one cold foot.
The fences are enjoying making shadows, though.

Pretty. But also... ick?
The forecast is not inspiring. But don't worry about me.
I've turned my fingernails into claws,
and I've got the appropriate hats.

Some Q&A Info and a Farmer Calls the Cows In

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 and answer a bunch more, which, by the looks of things, will probably start around message 69 or 70, unless you all go posting questions right away before I get started (which you should feel free to do!). :o)

I think that's everything about that.

[ETA: today's answers do indeed start at message 69.]

Also, I like the way this farmer calls in his cows. (If you can't see the video, go to my Blog Actual.) (Thanks, Jess!)

Next week, I'll be answering questions at David Estes's Goodreads group!

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 can.

Thank you to David, and a special thanks to Jenny for organizing everything brilliantly!

An Intellectual Feline

This is Lickety. (Some of you have met her before.) Lickety is a most precocious cat.
But does she really read Herodotus, who wrote about the Greco-Persian wars? Lickety,
can you tell us who won?

Does she really read David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas (upside-down, no less)?
Lickety,  what's a genre?
I would say that Lickety loves her people, her people love books, and therefore, she snuggles
up to her people, then wakes, innocent and ignorant, to the books they've left behind...
except that those are the eyes of a cat who has learned compassion.
Lickety, what's life like in a Siberian prison camp?
(Sunny, on the other hand, makes no pretense of being an intellectual.)

Stuff and Things, Including Holiday Gifts and Sex Ed in Our Schools (Unrelated ^_^)

[Warning for those afraid of heights and also my mother: trapeze photos below!]

A quick note to anyone who's considering buying signed/inscribed copies of my books from Harvard Book Store as we approach the holidays: I will be out of town, hence unable to sign things, from December 11 to December 19, then again at Christmas Actual. Please time your purchases accordingly so that we can get things to you in time!  Instructions for buying signed copies are behind the link above.

Also, I recommend the article "Sex education in the US is screwing our kids," at Salon, by Alanna Schubach for Dame, which, among other things, links the failure to educate our kids about sex to the prevalence of sexual assault on our college campuses and pretty much everywhere. Excerpt: "Any given student’s experience of sexual education, then—if she receives it at all—is subject to a staggering range of forces: congressional budgeting, state policy, school compliance, community climate, instructor competence. Often forgotten amid the clamor is an adolescent’s right to an understanding of, and ability to make decisions about, his own health. Advocates for comprehensive sex ed see a clear line between curricula riddled with misinformation, and early pregnancy, STI rates, sexual assault, and substance abuse and depression among LGBTQ youth."

Finally, I have been remiss in reporting that TSNY Beantown, the marvelous flying trapeze school, has a new location in the heart of Boston, right next door to North Station and the TD Garden, at 35 Lomasney Way.  If you go there, you, you yourself, may learn to do this:


Or experience this:

 Or, alternately, spend a lot of time falling into the net, which is also fun.

It's great. And it gives you an excuse to walk around town wearing strange socks with chalk all over your pants. TSNY Beantown, folks. They also have classes in silks, static trapeze, trampoline, lyra (aerial hoop), and Spanish web.  Their classes are suitable for all levels of ability; I had certainly never been on a trapeze when I went the first time.

Jacqueline Woodson's Response

Jacqueline Woodson, divinely wonderful writer and winner of the National Book Award for Young People's Literature for Brown Girl Dreaming, has responded to Daniel Handler's watermelon joke in the New York Times. Here's a link to her piece, called "The Pain of the Watermelon Joke." It's in the printed paper today, too. (Thanks, Sarah, for all these links!)

All My "All" Songs

Occasionally, when I'm not feeling picky about what I want to listen to, I'll open up my songlist, choose a place to start, and listen alphabetically. It can create some interesting sorting results, especially when you get to a word that frequently starts song titles (like "Close/r," "Don't," "Long," "Love," and "You," for example...). Just now, I've somehow ended up in the middle of all the "All" songs. The links below take you to the songs on youtube (though I haven't watched all the videos). Happy Thanksgiving and enjoy the music :o). (And by the way, this is an open invitation for any friends who read my blog to tell me about any "All" songs they're appalled not to find in my library.)

All About That Bass -- Meghan Trainor
All Along the Watchtower (by Bob Dylan, but this is the Bear McCreary Battlestar Galactica version)
All Four Seasons -- Sting
All I Need -- Radiohead
All I Really Want -- Alanis Morissette
All I Want -- Joni Mitchell
All Imperfect Things -- Michael Nyman (from The Piano soundtrack)
All Messed Up -- Pierce Turner
All That Heaven Will Allow -- Bruce Springsteen
All the Pigs, All Lined Up -- Nine Inch Nails (It's kind of incomprehensible, so it's hard to tell, but, being NIN, there's a good chance it's not safe for work.)
All The Time -- We're About 9 (You need to click on the correct track -- it's worth the trouble, such a pretty song!)
All the Trees of the Field Will Clap Their Hands -- Sufjan Stevens
All These Things That I've Done -- The Killers
All You Need Is Love -- The Beatles
Alles Neu -- Peter Fox

In the Wake of the National Book Award Ceremony...

I'm getting a lot out of the discussion in the comments of Roger Sutton's blog post in response to Daniel Handler's racist watermelon joke at the National Book Award ceremony last week.  I haven't read every comment yet, but there's a lot here, a lot of people making astute observations and criticisms and explaining muddy things with great clarity. For example, I like the way some commenters are eviscerating Roger's criticisms of poet Nikky Finney's response to Handler's comments. (That link is to only one of the comments on this topic -- keep reading.)

Also, this seems like a good segue to reminding people that the We Need Diverse Books campaign is still going strong. Help the organization reach its stretch goals!

Thursday Randutiae

Okay, I should never have said that thing about how the next thing I blog is going to be the girl superhero post. All it's doing is preventing me from blogging anything at all. When in fact, I have some mighty complaints, like, for example, why in the name of all that is reasonable is the fabulous Jeremy Jordan not going to be starring in Finding Neverland now that it's moving to Broadway? Jeremy Jordan was SO SO SO SO wonderful as J.M. Barrie in that show. He has so much talent and charisma, his voice is beautiful, he is beautiful. AARGHHH! Thank goodness I had the chance to see him originating the role at the A.R.T. this summer/fall.
 

Also, big cats like boxes, too; baby elephants have, like, no control over their legs whatsoever; and there are some really great moments in this video of (domestic) cats freaking out. Oh my goodness, the kitten and the lizard.

Also, a conversation with a writer friend recently about the distinction between young adult and middle grade books led me to a conversation with children's lit colleagues about how difficult these categorizations can be sometimes, and how problematic. One of my colleagues linked me to an interesting mention of the lawsuit currently arising around the question of Maurice Sendak's will, all related to the category problem. "The suit argues that the [Sendak] estate doesn't intend to transfer to the [Beatrix] Potter books because 'they are children's books, not rare books,' the Inquirer writes. 'The Rosenbach [Museum and Library, to which Sendak left his rare book collection] calls that reasoning not only faulty but rife with irony: Sendak argued that divisions between adult and children's literature were invalid — in his work as well as that of others.'"

If it's any comfort to those of you who are wondering when on earth I'm ever going to publish another book, the reason I'm not getting to the girl superheroes post is because it's a big project, and the only big project I have the mental space for right now is this revision that I'm working really, really hard on. I hope that before too long, I will have some news about my next book. Thank you so, so much for being patient, everyone. Godspeed to all writers, especially during NaNoWriMo! And by the way, if the idea behind NaNoWriMo (write 50,000 words during the month of November) paralyzes and depresses you, remember that it's not actually about word count; the fastest I've ever written 50,000 words is probably eight months and I do this full time. Just be writing. That's all that matters if you are a writer: that you are writing.