Kristin Cashore's Blog, page 58

In Which Some of Us Are 27 Months Old

Kristin bumps her head and says Ow.
Codename: Phoenix: Kristin, did you break your crown while you were fetching a pail of water?

Codename: Joe is driving the car, at a reasonable pace. Codenames: Phoenix and Isis are in the back seat.
Phoenix (screaming): GO FAST! GO FAST!
Isis (screaming): SLOW DOWN! SLOW DOWN!

I am reading Death Comes for the Archbishop on my e-book reader. Phoenix, awake from her nap, wanders in. I put the device to sleep immediately and close it inside its case, but not before she sees.
Phoenix: What you doing, Kristin? Are you reading your book?
Me: Yes, Phoenix, I am reading my book.
Phoenix: Can I see it?
Me (holding it so she can see): Yes, you can see it.
Phoenix: Can I just hold it?
Me: You can hold it for a minute, but then you have to give it back to Kristin.
Phoenix (holding the reader in delight): Can I just open it?
Me: The book is sleeping now, Phoenix. We need to let it sleep.
Phoenix: Can I just see it sleeping?
Me (opening the case): We can look at it once, but then we need to close it and let it sleep.
Phoenix (in delight): Can I press the buttons?
Me (beginning to whisper): No, we can't press any buttons. We have to close it now and let it sleep and be very quiet so it doesn't wake up.
Phoenix (whispering): Can I just press two buttons?
Me (whispering): Okay, you can press two buttons, but then we have to close it and let it sleep.
(Phoenix presses ALL the buttons while singing the alphabet song under her breath.)
Me: "...won't you come and sing with me." (Taking the reader) Okay, we need to let it sleep now.
Phoenix: Can I see it later?
Me: Maybe later.
(I stand up and place the reader out of sight on a high shelf. Isis wanders in and spots it before I'm able to conceal it.)
Isis: What you doing, Kristin? Can I see your BOOK?

First of the Season

Just popping in to report that after a day of drippy cold rain, it is now snowing.

New England, I ♥ you.

Stuff and Things

The mailman left me a package slip, and in the space where he was supposed to write down the name of the sender, he wrote "Poland." ...? Poland sent me a package? I'm guessing it's copies of Fire (see snazzy cover ---->) from my Polish publisher, Wydawnictwo Nasza Ksiegarnia. Can't think why he didn't just say so. :P

Philip Pullman is still fighting hard for libraries in England. "Philip Pullman has lambasted Brent council for its comment that closing half of its libraries would help it fulfil 'exciting plans to improve libraries', describing the statement as a 'masterpiece' which 'ought to be quoted in every anthology of political bullshit from here to eternity'." HA HA HA (Thanks, R)

As a freelance writer, I found this article about how to budget for an irregular income helpful... with the exception of the suggestion that one project one's cash flow based on one's minimum monthly income from the last 12 months. That one isn't going to work for a lot of writers, who may have many months in the year where they make $0. Maybe what we need is for someone to write an article about how to budget for an EXTREMELY irregular income. :-) (Thanks, J)

Here's an important post as we approach Halloween. It brought me close to tears and also made me think: "Open Letter to the PocaHotties and Indian Warriors This Halloween." Read it and pass it on.

Preparing for another trip, so that's all for now...

Boats and Bartók

[image error] I promise I won't use my Bitterblue cover as my post picture for the rest of all time, but for now, I just can't help myself. I've been working on Bitterblue for almost four years, and haven't really been able to express how it's made me feel. Now that I finally have a cover to express things for me, I find I keep reaching for it. :o)

So, there's this piece of music by the Hungarian composer Bartók called Suite from The Miraculous Mandarin. If you're curious, you can listen to part of it here. I theorize that there's a relatively high potential for disaster when an orchestra attempts to perform this piece, seeing as even when it's played well, it sounds kind of shrieky and discordant. Imagine how it would sound played badly!

Yesterday, I listened to the Boston Youth Symphony play it magnificently. The whole concert was beautiful and I was SO IMPRESSED with these fine young musicians. It was kind of a delightful crowd, too, younger than the average symphony audience... I've never been in Boston's Symphony Hall before, but I've been to other snooty symphonies, and I'm guessing that generally speaking, people in symphony audiences don't scream and hoot out the names of performers who've merely come on stage between sets to organize their music. No doubt there are some highbrow symphony-goers who would frown on that kind of behavior. People like that need to get over themselves. I speak as someone whose family brought pots to my college graduation and banged them together when my name was called, even though the crowd had been instructed to save their applause until the end, which technically my family did, because banging pots together is a completely different activity from applauding.

Where was I?

The concert yesterday was fantastic; the memory of my graduation got me sidetracked. Although COINCIDENTALLY perhaps I should mention that my graduation also included a fantastic concert, because our commencement speaker was Yo-Yo Ma, who brought his cello.

OKAY SO now I'm going to pull some information straight out of the program to tell you about the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras: "Founded in 1958, the BYSO is an independent organization in residence at the Boston University College of Fine Arts. BYSO's mission is to encourage musical excellence in a professional and supportive environment by providing the highest-quality orchestra training and performance opportunities to qualified musicians, grades K-12, while making its programs accessible to underserved communities through financial assistance and outreach. ...BYSO has the largest operating budget of any youth orchestra in the United States today," and it shows. (That last part is me, not the program.) Most exciting of all, in March, they're going to perform one of my most favoritest pieces of music ever, Brahms's Requiem. I love it so much that I've mentioned it several times on this blog before, like here. I hope I'll be in town!

Here's the link to learn more about the BYSO, including their performance schedule.

Another nice thing that was happening in my neighborhood this weekend was this regatta called the Head of the Charles, which involves crew teams from all across the land swooping in with their beautiful long graceful boats and rowing them up and down the Charles River. In case you don't know, here in Massachusetts, the Charles River separates Boston from Cambridge. Today, I took the bus from Cambridge into Boston to get to Symphony Hall, and when we crossed the river, it was JAM PACKED with boats and people. Really very pretty. I love autumn in New England.

Have a good week, everyone!

O HAI

Hi everyone. I still exist. Apparently I am taking a small blog break! I didn't see it coming or I would've announced it. But I've been doing some more travel, I've been having work meetings, I've been recuperating, I've been working on various categories of things, and somehow haven't been feeling bloggy.

I think a lot of people's hearts have been bleeding a little bit on account of the National Book Award/Lauren Myracle kerfuffle. I very much enjoyed/appreciated/admired Myracle's own explanation of what happened, and agree with everyone else that she's a class act. Good on you, Lauren.

Here's a post I read recently and liked: "A 'Cowboy and Indians' party is just as bad as a blackface party," at Adrienne K.'s blog Native Appropriations. I also appreciated her more recent post, "Representing the Native Presence in the 'Occupy Wall Street' Narrative". There's always something interesting going on on Adrienne K.'s blog!

Okay, that's all I've got for now... but those photos of my trip out west are in the future. Also: If you ever have the opportunity, see the show War Horse. Here's a single moment that expresses only a tiny part of why this show is amazing: during a battle scene, one of the horses dies on stage (not a real horse -- a life-sized puppet operated by three AMAZING human artists whose work you also get to watch, in addition to watching the horse itself in action). When the horse's body finally goes still -- and I really can't express how dramatic and beautiful these horse scenes are -- the three humans roll out together, stand up, and back away, backing offstage. In other words, you watch the horse's spirit leave its body, in the form of the puppeteers. If I could re-see only one of the many Broadway shows I've seen, this would be the one.

Bye for now :o)

Just Be Sure That Yours Is Not the One

In case you missed it, I made an announcement about Bitterblue on Thursday.

You know, I wanted to come here and try to express some of my thoughts and feelings about what it was like to write this book, tell some stories, and describe how it feels to be done writing it. But I don't think I can yet. It was the hardest work I've ever done, and now that my part of the process is mostly over, I'm grieving. It's a comfort to me that if I have to give her up, at least I can give her to all of you.

Randomly, my subject line is from a Neil Young song I can't stop listening to. (The link is to youtube.) If you've never listened to much Neil Young and are curious, I highly recommend the album Neil Young Unplugged as your introduction.

My recent trip took me to Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone, Salt Lake City, Zion National Park, and Bryce Canyon. Wisely, I chose an excellent photographer as my traveling companion :o). I'll be posting some pictures here soon. I don't think I've ever seen so much, and such diverse, natural beauty in such a short period of time. Plus, we saw elk, bison, a cantaloupe --

*blinks*

... okay, in the wilds of Yellowstone National Park, grazing by the river, we did not see a cantaloupe. We saw ANTELOPE. But since that was one of the funnier dictation mistakes I've seen in a while, I thought I'd leave it there for you.

Where was I? We saw elk, bison, antelope, and a wolf. A wolf!

Scattered today, but I'll gather myself together and post more soon.

The Bitterblue News I've Been Promising

(Click to embiggen)

Bitterblue will be released on May 1, 2012 in the USA, Canada, UK, Australia, and New Zealand. It will be released on the same day in a few other countries/languages as well; I'll supply that information when I have it.

A few reasons I love the (USA/Canada) cover above: It feels like Bitterblue (the character) to me. The colors have special significance. The keys are a highly appropriate icon (like Katsa's dagger on the Graceling cover). And, the keys look like weapons. :o)

Here's a link to today's press release in Publisher's Weekly, which includes a little bit of teaser information about the book. Thanks to Sue Corbett for the interview.

Here's where you can preorder on bn.com. Here's where you can preorder on Amazon. Ask your local indie bookseller about preordering, too, if preordering is what you want to do.

A lot of people have asked me why it took so long for me to finish this book. The answer is simple. It's not because I was distracted; it's not because I wasn't working my ass off; it's simply because Bitterblue is longer and more complicated than the other books I've written, and some books require more time than others. The book decides.

There's so much more to say, but for now, I'm just going to breathe a sigh of relief that I'm finally able to share the news and the cover. Enjoy, everyone!

"I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again"

Last Christmas, at my parents' house, my nieces (who were about 16 months old at the time) kept telling us that they wanted to be read to, but every time their mother, codename: Cordelia, began a new book, they would get distracted, wander around, then come back a few minutes later with another book, asking to be read to. They didn't seem to know what they were looking for.

Then Cordelia picked up Where the Wild Things Are. It was their first time ever seeing this book. Both girls went still; both girls watched and listened, entranced, to the entire story.

I felt that something I knew in my heart about books -- especially our very best books -- had just been proven true.

Here's a recent Fresh Air interview with Maurice Sendak. It's about 20 minutes long. As my sister codename: Apocalyptica told me when she sent me the link, it will make you happy and it will make you cry.

"Okay, Mulder, but I'm warning you: if this is monkey pee, you're on your own."

That's what Scully says to Mulder when Mulder hands her a flask of yellow liquid that came from a laboratory full of caged monkeys, gives her one of his significant "no-doubt-it's-evidence-of-extraterrestrial-life" looks, and asks her if she can figure out what it is. And in this case, it does turn out to be evidence of extraterrestrial life. This is the X-Files first season finale ("The Erlenmeyer Flask"), and one of the earliest examples of Scully, the skeptic, having no choice but to believe, because the evidence comes to her in the lab, through the practice of her own religion, namely, science.

I ♥ Scully.

So, I just noticed the weird, highly specific, wordy recommendation categories Netflix has created for me, based on my viewing and rating preferences. "Foreign Thrillers Featuring a Strong Female Lead." "Critically Acclaimed Visually-Striking Dark Movies." "Inspiring Fight-the-System Movies Based on Real Life." "Mind-Bending Sci-Fi and Fantasy Based on a Book." "Family-Friendly Talking Animal Animation." (??) "Heartfelt Period Movies Based on Classic Literature." "Classic Crime Movies from the 1970s." This is all very helpful. The next time someone asks me what kind of movies I like, I intend to reel off this list. Except, I'm actually rather confused about a number of those categories, plus, why hasn't Netflix figured out yet that I love a category that can be named with a single word: "Bollywood"? Or, where's "TV Mystery Based on Close and Complicated Partner Relationships, Not Necessarily Romantic," like Bones, the X-Files, Inspector Lewis? Etc.? That's what I want recommendations for, please.

I'm pretty unimpressed that the cost of my Netflix service has risen sharply while the value remains the same, but I haven't had time to figure out if there's anything to be done about it. I think corporations must make a lot of money off of people who don't have time to react to their crap. I know Bank of America is still making a lot of money off of me for that reason. (Here's a link to my previous post about how much I hate Bank of America.) I'm moving forward with closing my account there, but it's taking ages, simply because it requires time. I'm determined to be done with it by the end of the year. And then I will raise a glass in celebration, and never do business with them again.

Have I been a bit ranty on the blog lately? Hopefully not. I've been a bit ranty in real life. Ah well. I'm taking a brief vacation which will involve watching 8,000 gallons of boiling water shoot 150 feet into the air on a regular basis, and when I get back, either the cathartic experience of this sight will have helped me reach a place of peace within myself or I will predictably rant on at regular intervals, not unlike Old Faithful. Both options seem fine to me. :o)

I've set something nice up to post on Thursday, while I'm away. Also, I've been assured by The Powers That Be that I'll be allowed to gives some news about Bitterblue very, very soon. (To be clear: that's not what's posting on Thursday.) I'm really sorry that it's taking so long. I like to create momentum and tension in my books by revealing things slowly, but I don't actually like to do that on my blog. It's out of my control, but I expect to have the go-ahead soon.

Pretty Maps

This week, my happiness about Elizabeth Warren running for Senate in Massachusetts...


(transcript here)

...combined with this (funny? offensive? certainly clever, certainly reductive) t-shirt for sale at Threadless Tees...
















(click on it to enbiggen; you can buy it here)

...combined with my recent perusal of maps because I'm going on vacation next week to a part of the country I barely know at all...

(no picture for that one, sorry -- though maybe there will be once I get back!)

... all got me searching the internets for something I'd remembered seeing once before. I found it. It was created by Mark Newman in the Department of Physics and the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan. Here it is:
















What is that purple monstrosity?

Well, many of you will recognize this:















It's the results of a USA presidential election (in this case, 2008). Blue is for Democrat, red is for Republican; each state is colored either red or blue to represent which party the majority of voters in that state voted for. The winner on a state-by-state basis matters, completely, because of our weird electoral college system.

And perhaps some of you will recognize this:
















Two new things are going on in this map. First, the map is divided into counties, rather than states, to better show variations within any given state. Second, rather than straight red (Republican) or straight blue (Democratic), most areas on the map are a shade of purple, representing percentages of voters in any given county voting for either party.

Doesn't this feel like a more accurate representation of voter behavior than the straight red state/blue state map? There is a LOT of purple on this map. Of course, we elect the president via state results, not county results, and populations vary from county to county, so it has no direct relevance to the results. But if you've been a blue voter in a red state or a red voter in a blue state, this map definitely represents you better than the straight red and blue map.

But there is still one enormously relevant thing it fails to represent! Returning to the purple monstrosity:
















This map is called a cartogram. It's a map which shows the relative size of counties by population, rather than by area. That's why everything seems distorted. On this map, Rhode Island takes up twice as much space as Wyoming, even though in area, Wyoming is sixty times bigger than Rhode Island -- because Rhode Island has more than twice as many people than Wyoming.

There are hardly any plain red (Republican) spots on this map at all. There are some places that look plain blue (Democratic) -- mostly the big cities.

See how mixed-up and evenly divided we, and our opinions, are? See the political diversity of our neighbors? I'd like to get that on a t-shirt!

Here's where I found all these maps, plus more maps I didn't show, and all the explanations. All maps are © 2008 M. E. J. Newman. Thanks to Professor Newman for allowing the free distribution of his text and images. Go check out the webpage, it's interesting stuff.

And thanks to JL for links.