Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 31

Five Pictures of the Same Thing

Forgive me for this – but it's different and beautiful from every angle. This is Sólfar, or "Sun Voyager," by Reykjavík artist and welder Jón Gunnar Árnason.

Today I Ate Honey-Mustard Skyr

(Instead of tartar sauce with my fish and chips.)

Here's just a tiny fraction of the pictures I want to show you (because otherwise, I'll spend the whole night blogging):

 A view of downtown Reykjavík from the tower of Hallgrímskirkja, Iceland's tallest building.
Another.
 With houses that look like these...
 and these...
 and these...
 and these... I don't understand why so many of the houses in my country are so colorless!
 Here are a few scenes of things I liked around town…
 ...places that are lived in.

 A window at street level.
 If you've been around my blog for a while, you know
how much I love buildings that show signs of past lives...
Hallgrímskirkja is visible from lots of spots all over town.
Swans!
 This is why I didn't go into business.
 In the Reykjavík Kirkjugarður (graveyard), I made a friend. By the time we parted,
I was covered with cat fur. That's okay – maybe it provided an extra layer of warmth.
(By New England standards, it's proper winter here!)

 I saw these BONKERS rings in a shop window.
 Can you imagine wearing
this on your finger?
And thus, my dear readers, my location is revealed: I'm in Iceland. I'm writing, sightseeing, exploring… and eventually, weather permitting, driving counterclockwise along the coast to Akureyri. I hope I'll have time to share pictures all along the way!

Where am I now?

I got in very late last night and couldn't see much, other than a gorgeous half-moon. Here were the views from my room when I woke up:


Ha!  Just kidding. Rebecca Stead texted me that picture from BBC Birmingham because she knew how much I would love it. (It's a dalek -- a Doctor Who villain.)

Some actual views:






For the language aficionados among you, maybe this view from inside a bookstore – and then inside a grocery store – will help?



Another hint: the temperature is hovering around freezing yet it is a problem that I forgot to pack my bathing suit.

In my next post I'll be less mysterious and reveal where I am :)

In London

Rebecca and I in Green Park shortly after (accidentally) becoming engulfed
in the madhouse that is the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.
Rebecca Stead and I both have terrible senses of direction (as I wrote about once in a previous post – one of my favorite posts, actually). And when we get together, our terrible senses of direction collide and explode into an utter inability to get anywhere at all. In a place like London, maps are comical rather than helpful (just look at one and maybe you'll understand why)… Last night we were finding one of our maps particularly incomprehensible and Rebecca told me I should hurl it into the nearest pit. Ha!

Here are a few London scenes in no particular order.

Near Covent Garden.
Vera Wang wedding dresses.
Lamps in a shop window.
Perhaps a bar inside this stained-glass window?
In Neal's Yard.
Ditto.
Ditto.


At Fortnum & Mason on Piccadilly, the shrubbery is shaped like a teacup :-)
Inside, I fell in love with these mugs, but knew better than to try to travel with them.
The London skyline has got SO MANY cranes right now!
There's so much construction going on.

Tu Books Is Having a Sale

Hi everyone! Check out the big sale going on until the end of the week at Tu Books, the imprint of Lee & Low committed to publishing and selling multicultural books. 35% off all titles, and sales on many e-books as well. Here's the Facebook link and the Twitter link, too.

Can You Guess Where I Am?

Here are some clues.

It's a place with the right priorities.
One of my personal priorities is not getting run over.
It's got this goose. (I don't actually expect this to help you, I just think it's cute.)
This will be conclusive for some of you
(though still unspecific).
Maybe the symbol on the white chocolate helps?
Or this mood piece?
Enormous blue rooster?
Would it help if I told you that this guy
is called the South Bank Lion?
Look closely... and don't worry if you're still lost. Things are about to become clear.
After all, how many cities would put the word "whilst" on a big red bus?
Or provide something so picturesquely red for photo-takers?
Or think this makes sense?
Or give a tugboat and its charge such a pretty path...
or provide this timepiece?
Hello from beautiful London, blog readers. :)

Stay tuned for another guessing game on the weekend, when my location changes!

Fall Along the Northeast Corridor

Fall in Boston (Cambridge in the foreground)...
fall in New York (Washington Square Park)...
and fall at a train station in between.
(Whereas once I would've said that these photos were taken thanks to my iPhone 4s, since the most recent iOS update, the best I can say is that they were taken despite my iPhone 4s.)

A Blog Post about Mastering Details in Bitterblue

Hi all! As promised, here's a link to the blog post I wrote for the Fall Into Fantasy blog tour. I wrote about some of the funny questions I find myself needing answers to while writing fantasy. Like, what do you call a lord who's been stripped of his title and property? And, can you camouflage a boat with mirrors? It's also about my helpful friends. :o) Thank you to The YA Sisterhood for hosting me, and to the people behind the scenes at Penguin for making it happen.

Here's Alison Goodman's post for the tour.
Here's Morgan Rhodes'.
Here's Melissa de la Cruz's.
And here's Michael Johnston's.

"I have a friend I've never seen. He hides his head inside a dream"

Cover love: this is the Indonesian cover of Fire, published by Gramedia Pustaka Utama. This one is a great example of how a cover doesn't have to be particularly accurate to feel right. I'm pretty sure Fire never wears skintight sleeveless footie pajamas, but I LOVE this cover – I love the simplicity of lines and color; I love that her hair has a range of colors and tones, creating depth; I love that there's a bit of her hair from the picture on the back cover sneaking across the top left, looking just like fire; I love that the image on the cover is raised (you can't tell this from the picture); and I love that she looks like she's about to shoot you! (I also love that each book comes with a matching bookmark tucked inside.) Thank you to my Indonesian designers.

About my subject line – I'm listening to an album of Neil Young covers by women artists, called Cinnamon Girl - Women Artists Cover Neil Young for Charity.  (The charity, called Casting for Recovery, supports people with breast cancer and breast cancer survivors.) My subject line is from "Only Love Can Break Your Heart," covered by Amilia K. Spicer. Love this album. It's a great way to revisit Neil Young's melodies and poetry, and it's always interesting to hear a woman sing a man's lyrics (and vice versa). Some become infantilizing and positively creepy (like "I Am a Child," which contains the lyrics, "I am a child.… You are a man... You make the rules. You say what's fair. It's lots of fun to have you there....") (otherwise a beautiful cover, by Britta Phillips). Others are just interesting. In Dala's cover of "A Man Needs a Maid," they change the pronouns, so that the song becomes about a man again, which kind of disappointed me, though the cover is beautiful. I'll have to look for a female cover that owns the action. A favorite on the album: Jill Sobule's "Down by the River." Also: Lori McKenna's "The Needle and the Damage Done."

Press Play if You Need a Smile

Thanks Lora :o)