Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 47

Visiting Oscar Wilde's Grave

Oscar Wilde is buried in the Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, around the corner from where I'm staying.



To protect the monument from enthusiastic visitors who show their love for Oscar Wilde through defacement and vandalism :), a glass partition has been placed around his grave. People use pen, crayon, lipstick, chalk, whatever, to honor him with messages, many of which are Wilde's own words, or close to them.







("An idea that is not dangerous is not an idea at all.")
("I never travel without my diary. One should always have
something sensational to read on the train.")

("I can resist everything but temptation.")


("I have nothing to declare except my genius.")

Madrid

Hello from Paris! A new day, a new language.

So, it's essentially impossible to capture Madrid on film -- the noise, the sun, the traffic, the people, the scale of the buildings -- unless maybe you have an IMAX camera, which I didn't. I stopped trying after a while, so what I'm showing here barely does this beautiful city justice.  I found I did best if I focused on little things OR if I was up really high.

The screens are to create shade. The sun is strong!
Book market
Madrid rooftops
There is a room reflected in this lightbulb;
Patricia and I spent a lot of time in it, because
this is where my interviews took place.
Eventually I could no longer resist the urge to
take a photo of us in the reflected light bulbs.
(Click to enbiggen.)
Pretty graffiti 

In the Mercado de San Miguel
The most organized cherries in the world


The Gran Via from above
As the sun sets, the mountains are visible in the distance. 
Many, many Madrid buildings are ornately decorated
like this one. 
Patricia and I at our Casa del Libro event. (Thanks, Jorge)
Signing books

My Spanish event will be streaming live at 19.30 local time

Hi everyone, if you want to watch my book event this evening at Casa del Libro Gran Via at 19.30 (7:30 PM), it will be streaming live. Everything will be spoken in both English and Spanish. Go to @rocajoven on Twitter for more information: https://twitter.com/RocaJoven. Or my own Twitter, @kristincashore. (Sorry, I can't really deal with links right now!) I expect I'll be talking about the writing process, maybe reading two or three pages from Bitterblue, and answering questions from the audience. FYI to my American readers: Madrid is six hours ahead of New York.

An Introvert Forced to Emulate an Extrovert

Charlie Stross on a book tour reality TV idea.

Though just to be clear, my European tour is NOT like what he describes. See my earlier post about the difference between a domestic and an international tour for an American author, at least in my experience. The two are very different; he is describing what sounds to me like a domestic tour in the USA, a signing tour. (I understand Charlie Stross is English and lives in Scotland, so I'm not actually sure what type of tour he's talking about, or if his experiences line up with mine location-wise. Am I confusing everyone?)

Also -- just in case I created the impression with yesterday's posts that we're not doing any work here in Spain -- yesterday was unusual. We had a light day, then some cancellations. Today we're making up for it!

Thanks, JD, for the link :)

Madrid Moments

Over chocolate and churros,

I watch Patricia roll a cigarette.





Later, it is my responsibility to drink this beverage. It's a Belgian beer called Kwak, because of the sound it makes when you get down to the narrow portion of the glass.

Jorge, who was born in Mexico, now lives in Madrid, and once lived in Belgium, tells me that each Belgian beer is served in its own particular kind of glass. This tasty Tripel Karmeliet, for example, has this lovely fleur-de-lis glass.


I'm working very hard in Madrid.

Extreme Flirting Across the Gran Via

This seems like an appropriate first post for Madrid: my lovely editor Patricia and I are sitting on the rooftop terrace of my hotel. Across Madrid's gorgeous Gran Via, some men are doing construction -- can you see the beam hanging from the crane and the two men under it? 

Well, I was taking pictures and they noticed our interest. A minute later, they came to the edge of the building, started shouting, and held up a sign with their phone numbers.



As Patricia called it on twitter (@vendedoradprosa), #extremeflirting. Welcome to Spain :)

Copenhagen

This morning, they're playing the music from Brokeback Mountain (by divine Argentine composer Gustavo Santaolalla) in my hotel breakfast room. Spain, why are you trying to make me cry?

So,I had no book business in Copenhagen. I was there because it's the closest big airport to Kristianstad, Sweden, and the most sensible place from which to fly to Madrid. Thanks to the luck of timing, I arrived Saturday early afternoon and left Sunday noon, and I'm SO GLAD. It's a stunning, colorful, lived-in city and it was love at first sight for me. I'll make a point of going back.

I don't have loads of time, so I don't provide a lot of explanation here -- sorry. I just wandered and took pictures until late, mainly, then got up really early and wandered again.

 Lots here, so I'm putting most behind a cut, which will hopefully work from my phone. 

Crossing the sea by train between Denmark and Sweden
Copenhagen street

I'll place my cut here; hopefully this will work on my phone; click the link to see the rest of the pictures: Read more »

Denmark

My friend Rebecca Rabinowitz reminded me in an email yesterday about what Denmark did during World War II. During the Holocaust, when Hitler became interested in Denmark's Jews, the Danes, at enormous risk to themselves, snuck their Jews into Sweden. Of 7500 Jews, over 7000 were smuggled out of the country. Amazing, the courage, and the determination to save people they considered their own – it gives me hope. Here's some more information about what Denmark did. Thanks, RR, for the reminder and link.

I have lots of pictures of Copenhagen, and hopefully that will be the next post. (I'm in Madrid now and for the next few days – with Wi-Fi – so that bodes well.) For now, here's Denmark from the air.

Kristianstad, Sweden

A friend expressed curiosity about what my responsibilities are on this sort of trip, so I thought I'd explain a bit more. The work thing I do most on a trip like this is press interviews. This can range from my press conference in Bologna a few years ago (to which a knight in shining armor accompanied me, then stood guard; Italy, I love you) to, more often, me in a room with a journalist (and possibly someone from my publisher, who may be serving as translator). The day might involve quite a few such interviews, with newspapers, magazines, online journals. There might be a picture portion, too, where, for example, I stand on the streets of Barcelona reading my own book in Catalan while someone takes pictures (which is of course very realistic, because I do that sort of thing a lot ^_^).
I also have some appearance events that aren't public. Yesterday I spoke to about 400 youth in Kristianstad, for example.
Here are photos from Kristianstad! I'm posting this on an infuriating iPad (not mine), so here's hoping this isn't a mess.  The first few are from the beautiful church, where it was very hard to capture the scale...
a candle with the altar in the background




Can you see the little face on the organ pipe?

In the streets, people were selling used books in association with the book festival.



 
The Kristianstad Library has a book bus!



Now I'm in Copenhagen, wondering why no one's ever told me how stunning and fun Copenhagen is. More soon on that.

Flying

Sleep-deprived, I got to the tiny Bromma airport at 7 this morning (a little Stockholm airport for short-distance flights), then learned my flight was delayed 2 hours. Two hours I could have been sleeping, if only there were prescient people who could warn us when a plane is about to go on the fritz. Such is life. I played some chess, read a little, and tried to knock things over in the terminal with my mind.

Finally we were allowed to board the plane. I fastened my seatbelt, closed my eyes, and sat there, tired and grouchy. Then I heard the sound of the propellers revving up. From that point on, I was completely happy.

I love airplanes.

I never tire of this view. (I'm referring to the clouds,
But isn't it weird that my phone
could see the propeller's blades spinning?)