Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 53

Free Ebook Sampler + Some Silly Letters

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!)

It's Crazy Season on the Blog

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; May 5 Naperville IL; May 6 Minneapolis MN; May 7 Minnetonka MN; May 9 Seattle WA; May 10 Sebastopol CA. Stay tuned for more information.

I leave for Houston and TLA Tuesday. Sorry about the crazy, nonbloggy state of the blog.  Things will calm down eventually!

A Thank You

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 on her own. It's time for me to let her go. Maybe most painful, it's time for me to accept that she doesn't need me anymore.

I am a little bit heartbroken; I am grieving. Yes, this is over an imaginary person. Mock me at will. I know that what I'm feeling is real.

Thank you, dear readers who take my characters into your hearts. Whether you love her or not, whether you fight with her, feel indifferent to her, or become her best friend, I know Bitterblue will be okay, because she'll be with you. That's where she was always meant to be.

Everyone's a Critic

[image error] 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 sketch that I realized there was some physical aspect of a space I hadn't bothered to explain to Ian, because I'd internalized it so much that I'd forgotten that other people wouldn't necessarily be imagining it the way I did. I had to re-learn that we all see different things when we read words. And it's really helpful to have a visual artist picking your book apart and trying to interpret it. Ian found some inconsistencies no one else had caught -- like a clock tower I'd slapped onto the wrong bridge -- just in time for me to change them in the text. And every time one of his sketches came in, I sat there speechless, overwhelmed by how lucky I was to have an artist who was making my world so beautiful. Feeling, deeply, that Ian was making my world more beautiful than I had ever managed to make it.

Thank you, thank you, Ian, for what you've done for Bitterblue. I'm certain Bitterblue herself would love the art too.

By the way, as long as I'm talking about the physical book, I'd like to share something about it, a little book secret that makes this author very, very happy. Look what's under the dust jacket:

[image error]  Nothing could be more appropriate for Bitterblue
than a secret key hidden under the dust jacket


The next part of this post is rawther promotion-y. I apologize for that. I'm trying to put everything all together in one post, so that I can get back to my usual blogging style next time and forget about the release for a while!
Some housekeeping: There's now a new way to follow my blog. I've joined Twitter, @kristincashore. I intend to use it only as an amalgamation feed for my blog -- whenever I blog, it will automatically tweet a link to the blog post. I will not be reading @-replies. Please pass my Twitter name on to anyone you think might want to follow my blog now that they can do so on Twitter! 
A frequently asked question: Will I be traveling for Bitterblue's release? Yes, I will, domestically and probably also internationally. Domestically, I'll be at TLA in Houston in April, and then I'll be doing a book tour starting release day, May 1. I don't have my times or locations yet for the tour, but I'll pass them on as soon as I do. I'll also be at BEA in New York in June, though I don't know my schedule yet. If there is an international tour, it'll probably be in the fall. I'll keep you all posted on that possibility.
Finally, if you've visited the Graceling Realm on Facebook, you may already have seen this trailer... but for those of you not on Facebook (like me! I'm not on Facebook), here it is. Thank you to everyone at Penguin who worked so hard to put this together!
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Birth of a Book

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.

   

I Agree That You Don't Know

Joel Stein thinks that adults shouldn't be reading books published for young adults and children.

"I'm sure all those books are well written," he writes. "So is 'Horton Hatches the Egg.' But Horton doesn't have the depth of language and character as literature written for people who have stopped physically growing." Then he goes on to explain that he doesn't actually know what any kids' books are like, because he doesn't read them, because he's a grown up. "I have no idea what The Hunger Games is like.... I don't know because it's a book for kids."

The condescension isn't particularly shocking -- it's commonplace. (Even the "I'm sure all those books are well written" part is condescending. Why should they all be well-written? Find me one genre of books in the publishing industry where every single book is well-written. Children's literature has the same range of quality as every other genre.) What's more surprising is that the New York Times considered this printworthy.

Hey New York Times, I don't watch HBO, because it's not for people with basic cable. Would you mind setting aside about 300 words somewhere for me to opine about their spring lineup and who should be watching it?

I can never get particularly worked up about people who critique art they've never experienced.  I can't get myself worked up about this article. Why? Because he's wrong. And he's the one who loses out. I'm happily here with a lot of good books he'll never read.

Spring Comes (Early) to the City

 



 

Interviews, ARC Giveaways, Reviews, Perspective

In lieu of a post today, I'll link you to Cindy Pon's interview with me about Bitterblue, over at The Enchanted Inkpot. Cindy is running a Bitterblue ARC giveaway, so head over there if you're interested! Many thanks to Cindy, who asks really good questions :).

My 30-second Hunger Games movie review: I had to leave the theater around minute 90 because the camerawork was making me sick. If you're prone to motion sickness, consider taking your meds or whatever, and DO NOT sit close. The frustrating thing was that at the moment I left, they'd just entered the arena, and FINALLY there was some point to all the shaky cam, zooming, fast panning, quick cutting, deliberate unfocusedness, etc. Finally it was effective. But my body couldn't deal with it anymore at that point. Very disappointing. The one judgment I was able to form before succumbing to the horror of "Is the whole movie going to be shot like this? Oh NO," was that District 12 didn't seem all that hungry.

By the way, I don't just dislike that type of camerawork and editing because it makes me sick (it actually never has before, this was the first time I've ever had to leave a movie for that reason). I dislike it because I don't think it achieves what the filmmaker thinks it achieves. Edgar Allan Poe, writing about the mistake of confusing luminousness of form with luminousness of content, once said, "The error is one exactly analogous with that which leads the immature poet to think himself sublime wherever he is obscure, because obscurity is a source of the sublime -- thus confounding obscurity of expression with the expression of obscurity." What does that mean if we extend it to books and movies? Well, for example: If I'm trying to express that one of my characters is confused, it doesn't follow that I should do so by miring my readers in confusion. My job is to make it clear to the reader that my character is confused, not to confuse my reader! And if a filmmaker is trying to express that one of his characters has a sort of urgent, serpentine, destabilizing tunnel vision (whatever that means), it doesn't follow that he needs to provide the viewer with some sort of urgent, serpentine, destabilizing tunnel vision. What he needs to do is provide the viewer with the sense that the character has the urgent, serpentine, destabilizing tunnel vision. Certainly a more difficult task. But if he accomplishes that, then we as the viewers will be right there with the character, because humans have empathy and imagination.  You don't need to create our emotions for us, thank you very much! You just need to use your craft to call on them.

Enough ranting.

I'm happy to report that in contrast, the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras' concert at Symphony Hall on Sunday (Brahms Requiem and other things) was beautiful. BYSO, you were the stars of my weekend.

And now here's astrophysicist Dr. Neil DeGrasse Tyson sharing what he believes to be the most astounding fact about the universe. (Thanks B!)

Some Musings on Three Books I Love

I recently reread the Hunger Games books, in anticipation of the first movie. I don't have time to write the post I'd like to write, but I'm going to give myself an hour or so to work through some of my broadest thoughts here on the blog. My reread was different from my initial readings. Nothing and no one in the books can feel the same when you know what's coming, know their fates. To be frank, my reread was devastating.

When it comes down to it, these books are about war, evil, totalitarianism, trauma and its aftermath, madness, desperation, loss. They're about how the most seemingly incorruptible good can be shattered into awfulness given the right (wrong) circumstances. They're about being broken so often that you can never fully heal, and about the enormous resilience and courage it takes to keep clinging to hope.

A disclaimer that should be obvious: there will be plenty of Hunger Games/Catching Fire/Mockingjay spoilers in this post. To those readers unfamiliar with the books, I apologize for the lack of plot summary. To everyone, I apologize if this seems rushed!

***

"I really can't think about kissing when I've got a rebellion to incite."

That's Katniss's thought on page 126 of Catching Fire :).  I'd forgotten how much time Katniss spends comparing/contrasting Peeta and Gale as love interests. Yet for all the Team Peeta/Team Gale enthusiasm on the interwebs, this just doesn't seem like an interesting question to me. "Which boy?" is not what these books are about. I love that when Katniss says things like the quote above, she actually means it. It's not a Mary Sue act on her part, "Oh, SIGH, I wish all these boys weren't so in love with me, I wish I could focus more on the THINGS THAT MATTER, why must I be so DESIRED? POOR ME!" Katniss actually cannot be bothered. Sure, she's working through some of the confusions; she's aware of what Peeta and Gale both want; she's even aware that if the circumstances were different, she might be thinking about it more, might even come to some sort of conclusion, even find herself wanting something or someone. But the circumstances aren't different, and Katniss's big life questions are so much more interesting than that. She's asking herself questions like, do I want any boy at all? Could I ever? Is it ever safe to love another person, or to have children? How can a person ever feel anything for real, when at every moment, she's being compelled to pretend her feelings? How can I get all the people I love out of this trap? Forget about being in love -- how can I keep all of us alive?

The answer, of course, is that she can't.

***

I want to talk about Cinna for a moment. Cinna uses art as a tool for rebellion. His art is everything to him; what he says with his art is so important to him that he's willing to risk his life (and Katniss's), for a dress, for what he brilliantly causes the dress to mean.

Have you noticed there's no overriding religion in this world, no religious figures? There's more to be said about that; I wish I had more time. People in these books die for other people, they die for ideas, they die for goodness, all rooted in the realities of the lives they're living on earth, rather than in some higher scheme. But there is a higher truth; there doesn't need to be God for there to be a higher truth; and I feel like Cinna is one of the people who touches it, with his art. I have a weakness for the rebellious artist.

It's why I gradually came to love -- deeply -- Peeta. Peeta was bland and boring to me -- until I saw his brutal paintings of the arena, and understood how much he could say with his plodding gentleness.

***

I've been trying to get a handle on Peeta as a character, and mostly failing. I feel compelled to, because rereading what happened to him in Mockingjay was so overwhelming to me that I wandered around weepily for a day or two. There's so little comfort in these books, so little comfort for the reader or for Katniss. I found Peeta to be just about the only source of comfort in Catching Fire. Then, in Mockingjay, Collins takes that comfort and smashes it into bits, first by showing us Peeta being tortured, showing us his blood and telling us about his screams, then by turning Peeta into a monster. I couldn't deal with it this time around. It was as if Charlotte the spider suddenly started writing "BAD WORTHLESS PIG" into her web, told Wilbur he was destined for the bacon factory, then crawled down from her corner and started biting him and stuffing sticky threads into his airways. Okay, maybe it wasn't exactly like that :), but what I'm trying to get across is that Peeta's strength, his goodness, is the one thing I can be sure of in this terrible world -- and brilliantly, heartlessly, Suzanne Collins takes that away from us. I'm glad she does that (while acknowledging that some of my friends aren't ^_^), because these books work wonderfully as brutal metaphors for real evil that exists in the real world. How long would it take any of us to pull up a headline about war taking away the goodness of people, making them monsters unrecognizable to those who love them? What happens to Peeta is horrible, but familiar. So I accept it.  But it's so hard to read.

I talked to a lot of friends about Peeta this week. Specifically, I asked, "What are Peeta's character flaws?" The list I came up with is kind of hilarious. Here are Peeta's flaws: (1) He's incapable of walking through the woods in perfect silence. This makes him an annoying hunting partner. (2) He doesn't have enough character flaws.

Normally, it raises warning bells for me when a character is too unflawed. A perfect character is not a believable character. Except that now I need to say something about the power of a beautifully written sentence, because I, for one, believe in Peeta -- because Suzanne Collins writes beautifully, and her words make me believe. Her words make me frightened for Peeta, too, because Katniss is frightened for Peeta, and I can't bear Katniss to feel any more pain. Besides, Peeta's almost-too-good-ness, in a series that contains people like Haymitch, Octavia & Venia & Flavius, Katniss's mother, President Coin, Plutarch Heavensbee, Johanna, Thresh, Beetee, Gale, Katniss herself -- all flawed people -- serves a really important purpose. I think the books need a Peeta, first because Katniss (and the reader) needs some steadiness/comfort; second, because in a book that's trying to say something about evil, Peeta's infallible goodness is a large part of the reason the hijacking of his mind is so unbearable to read about. For the greatest emotional impact, destroy the most indestructable goodness.

All the children who die in the books are dying in this vein too. There's no question that children in these books symbolize innocence, goodness, and purity: the children around President Snow's mansion, Prim, Rue, all the tributes across time. Even Finnick is an odd boy/man mix, the child who was soiled by the hungers of adults, but somehow remained pure in his soul.

By the way, I make no assumptions about Suzanne Collins's intentions. I don't know why she chose to make Peeta the way he is, or why she chose to break him. And I'm not going to try to figure it out, either, because frankly, I've watched too many people make incorrect assumptions about my own writing intentions for me ever to imagine it as a productive endeavor. Everything I'm saying here is my own (incomplete) interpretation of the text, and no more than my opinion.

***

Speaking of flawed characters, maybe I'll go ahead and say something about Gale :).

Gale: a passionate, smart, loyal, handsome, stealthy, fiery guy who has worked his fingers to the bone, suffered a great deal, and defied the law in order to provide for his mother and three little siblings and ensure their safety (to whatever extent one can in this world). He's angry, quick to violence, crabby, sometimes bratty, arrogant, and really quite frightening as a war strategist. He's interesting -- he lets his flaws all hang out. I'm pretty sure he's the person in the books who annoys me most frequently. Grr, he says some annoying things to Katniss. My personal favorite is the way, every time Katniss kisses him, he tells her why her approach is wrong. An example from page 130 in Mockingjay:

He pulls away first and gives me a wry smile. "I knew you'd kiss me."

"How?" I say. Because I didn't know myself.

"Because I'm in pain," he says. "That's the only way I get your attention." He picks up the box. "Don't worry, Katniss. It'll pass."

Um, Gale? You're not really helping your cause here. I'd love to see how Katniss would react to those words on a day when she wasn't so distracted by being traumatized, injured, out of her mind with worry for her loved ones, and also the involuntary public face of a rebellion against a totalitarian state. Oh wait, her days are always like that.

Poor Gale. He's right to think that the day he lost Katniss was the day Peeta's name was called as tribute and he didn't volunteer. But he couldn't have volunteered. His family, and Katniss's, desperately needed him at home. He did the right thing, then and so many other times.  I hope he finds happiness in District 2. And is never called upon to be a war strategist again. 

***

I like that there's never a moment where Katniss actually makes a decision between Peeta and Gale. I like that she lets circumstances decide. Katniss does that sometimes, she lets circumstances (and expectations) sweep her along -- certainly not always, but sometimes, especially when she sees there's no point in fighting. It's true to her character. And this seems like an appropriate matter for her to be that way about, because the way I see it, both Peeta and Gale could have been right for her, depending entirely on circumstance. I believe it would also have been right had she ended up with neither of them. Though I'm happy for her that it worked out how it did, because she benefits from comfort, friendship, and hope, in one form or another. They all take fine form in Peeta.

***

I wonder if the Hollywood treatment of Mockingjay will let us linger just a little bit more on Peeta's healing than the book does. I would be okay with that.

***

There are other things to be said. I'd love to say something about Katniss's supposed purity, how often she feels physical hunger but how rarely she has room for sexual hunger. I'd love to talk about her personality, her fierce instinct toward self-defense (even at Peeta's expense sometimes), her lack of kindness toward Peeta when he's suffering so much in Mockingjay. I'd love to talk about the humor of the books -- how much easier it is, for example, to absorb a new horrible turn in the plot if Haymitch and Katniss are being sarcastic at each other, or how, in the moments when Katniss is truly flipping out, screaming and banging her fists on the window as she watches a friend die, a Capitol servant will inevitably come along and blandly offer her a beverage.  About themes of debt, owing other people for things you can never pay them back for. About the epilogue, which I know bothers some readers, but doesn't bother me -- I think it fits. About the moments when the books themselves -- or maybe it's just the lovesick boys -- try to turn Katniss into a Mary Sue, and, in my opinion at least, fail. (Definition of a Mary Sue.) About how brilliant I find some of the emotional traps Collins ties Katniss up in.

But this has taken way more than an hour, and my time is up.

Thanks to Suzanne Collins for creating this extraordinary tale. These characters are real to me, and they touch me deeply.

Working Conditions, Part Two

Sometime in January, This American Life broadcast a show called "Mr Daisey and the Apple Factory," about what Mike Daisey, creator of the theatrical piece "The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs," claimed to have seen while visiting a factory in China that made iPhones and iPads. It was a hugely popular show, and Daisey's work has led to a closer examination of Apple's practices -- which is a good thing. Then, this past weekend, This American Life put together a fascinating show called "Retraction," in which they retracted the previous show -- because it turns out that Mike Daisey lied to This American Life about a lot of the things he said he saw.

In the original show, Mike Daisey talked about meeting underage workers who were 12, 13, 14; a man whose hands shook from the toxins Apple compelled him to work with in the factory; factory guards armed with guns; etc. It turns out that many of the things Daisey talked about seeing first-hand, he never actually saw -- and "Retraction" turned out to be one of the most fascinating shows I've ever heard TAL do. It brought up questions about the differences between truth and fiction, theater and journalism, and how best to get people to listen when you have important things to say. The TAL producers took Mike Daisey's original story apart piece by piece, explaining to us how they managed, or didn't manage, to verify or refute each thing Mike Daisey claimed. Host Ira Glass cross-examined Daisey himself, calmly asking him question after question, with sympathy but without mercy. Remind me never to piss off Ira Glass.  Several times, Ira said flatly to Daisey, "I don't believe you."

Ira, I don't believe him either.

Here's the thing: as evidenced by the last part of "Retraction," in which Ira does try to get to the bottom of what actually is going on in the factories that make Apple products, the truth is bad enough. We have decided in the United States that harmful, dangerous working conditions aren't acceptable in our factories -- and then, to protect ourselves, we've exported those conditions elsewhere. (Not that I'm suggesting American factories are a dream to work in, mind you.) All of us who shop are complicit. I stream This American Life on my iPod; I'm dictating this blog post to my iPhone. Later, I'll ramp-up either my iMac or my MacBook to make it pretty before pushing "publish." I'm not happy when I hear the truth about how these products that I depend on every hour are made. I'm not happy about people being compelled to work overtime, or avoidable explosions in factories. I want to know the truth before I make my purchasing decisions, and I want the truth to become commonly known, so that Apple can be held accountable. If the story I'm being told is partly fictionalized in order to increase its dramatic impact, as seems to have been Mike Daisey's approach -- fine, but TELL ME. Don't present lies as truth in order to manipulate me into a particular emotional reaction that you think contains a deeper truth than the actual truth could. The actual truth contains plenty of emotional impact. Presenting lies as truth, you're not showing your listeners respect, and much worse, you're not showing respect to the people whose difficulties you're misrepresenting either.

Thanks to TAL for such a great show. Readers, follow any of the links above to listen to the latest show or to read transcripts.