A few quick things! I have two speaking announcements:
My appearance at Georgetown University is in the process of being rescheduled and it probably will be the end of April. Details as soon as they're confirmed! Yeeeee! (Yeeeee, noun. An exclamation one makes when one is equal parts nervous, excited, nauseated, thrilled, overwhelmed, and just unbelievably honored to be speaking at one's alma mater.)
I am super excited to be keynoting Expeditious 2010, a Harry Potter conference in Michigan. I know the people running this conference, which is what makes me excited about it: if it's half as awesome as they are, it's going to be my favorite weekend of 2010. Not to mention this is the same weekend, in the same town, that StarKidPotter is unveiling A Very Potter Sequel, the followup to the smash YouTube hit A Very Potter Musical. If you at all can be in Ann Arbor, MI, that weekend, trust me, you will not regret it! Tickets are very limited to Expeditious - 250 only, and the price is only $50, a ridiculous steal if you know how conferences work. The keynote is $5 additional but anyone who got an early bird registration will be given a free ticket. Registration is here.
I've been answering a lot of questions on Formspring, because it's fun, an easy break in my day, and not too time consuming. I get these two questions A LOT, so I thought I would address them here:
What are you writing now / what is your next book about / when is your next book due to your publisher? I can't answer any of these three questions. The first one I hope to be able to answer soon. The second one, as well. The third one I would have an answer about at the same time that I had an answer to the others. So I guess once I have an answer to any of these I'll have an answer to all. The reason I don't have an answer is that I'm a superstitious freak, and I don't like talking about this stuff publicly until I'm 100% sure it's going to happen - that is, the book is sold. And I had a few months of absolute crazy between August (when I settled down to start working on this) and now, in which Murphy's Law might have easily been mistaken for a twee country day trip. We're talking, mandatory cleaning out of my entire apartment, family medical scares, random surprise business trips, etc. Everything worked out fine in the end but a funny thing happens when you have a couple of months of crazy - it's really, really hard to settle into a good research/writing space. This is no one's fault but mine: I should know by now how to bust through that wall, and to a certain extent I do. Lately I have been. Whenever I feel guilty about how long it has taken me to get to this point I try and remember it's all about the process. This helps me from picking the process up and chucking it out a window and possibly killing a helpless old lady who was just trying to get to the store to buy baklava. <-- that is an example of a crappy sentence, fellow writers. Take note. I'm leaving it there because I am feeling brave today.
Are you going to put more Vault entries on HarryAHistory.com? Yes! Yes, yes, yes. I've got a ton. I mean a ton. I may not put them up as fast as you or I would like but you should never consider a period of relative inactivity on this site as an indication it's dead. This site is a document that will continue to change throughout time, because the Harry Potter phenomenon is as well. (Me and my crappy sentences today...) All inactivity means is that I've become too busy on some other things, and that's good, because that relates to answering the question up there ^^.
If you are interested in more of my hysterical ramblings hit me up on Formspring.
I'm a jerk, I said there'd be a vault entry here about... oh, six years ago. Sorry! It's been an absolutely mad fall, and is settling into an even crazier winter, if only because I am trying to finally break through to book number two's first steps in the real world, and having all the normal spasms and seizures that come with that.
Second, as of right now I am speaking at Georgetown University, my beloved alma mater, tomorrow night (and having a lot of nausea-related symptoms because of it) - however, there are more snowstorms threatening the area and the campus is pretty well snowed under as it is, so I'll have an update soon about whether we're still scheduled. (Update: it has been rescheduled, I will post new dates soon!) (Follow me on Twitter for updates.) I have a real talent for having events in snowstorms; my first Boston area signing was in a blizzard as well and those 35 people who came will live forever in my heart.
It's important to note that Georgetown students and faculty will be allowed in the event FIRST, with seating to the general public opening at 6:45. The Facebook info about the event is here.
And now as promised... a vault entry! I quite like this one. It's another with Jo (as an apology for waiting so long on it), and example of what I wrote about in the book, how we kept talking about canon and not the phenomenon, because we were, let's face it, like two junkies with a fix just out of reach. Had I been in Scotland for two days just to talk about the books we would have spent the entire two days talking about the plot and the themes and the characters and what happened to what character when and why and what would happen in the future. No one was happier than me to research this phenomenon and do the kind of legwork I did leading up, and no one was more thrilled than me to be getting the interview I was getting on that subject - but there were moments, many of them, like this one, that my fannish side just won and I indulged curiosity (then promptly felt guilty and went back to the real work at hand).
Which is how we got to Dumbledore, and his relationship with Grindelwald.
JKR: [re: Grindelwald] I think he was a user and a narcissist and I think someone like that would use it, would use the infatuation. I don't think that he would reciprocate in that way, although he would be as dazzled by Dumbledore as Dumbledore was by him, because he would see in Dumbledore, 'My God, I never knew there was someone as brilliant as me, as talented as me, as powerful as me. Together, we are unstoppable!' So I think he would take anything from Dumbledore to have him on his side.
MA: It reminds me of WICKED, did you ever read WICKED?
JKR: No.
MA: Maguire does retellings of old fairytales and he made a very cerebral book about the Wicked Witch of the West, and Glinda, and how they used to be best friends.
JKR: Oh really...
MA: It's very similar; she went one way to fight injustice and fight the wizard, and Glinda went the other, to be the political figure and play into the system. Really interesting.
JKR: Well, it's the old fallen angel idea in some ways, isn't it? It's God and Lucifer.
MA: I wanted to ask you about that, because Grindelwald resembles - the golden curls, the first person I thought of was Lucifer.
JKR: Mm-hm. So you can call it a fraternal bond, but I think it makes it more tragic for Dumbledore. I also think it makes Dumbledore a little less culpable. I see him as fundamentally a very intellectual, brilliant and precocious person whose emotional life was absolutely subjugated to the life of the mind - by his choice - and then his first foray into the world of emotion is catastrophic and I think that would forevermore stun that part of his life and leave it stultified and he would be, what he becomes. That's what I saw as Dumbledore's past. That's always what I saw was in his past. And he keeps a distance between himself and others through humour, a certain detachment and a frivolity of manner.
But he's also isolated by his brain. He's isolated by the fact he knows so much, guesses so much, guesses correctly. He has to play his cards close to his chest because he doesn't want Voldemort to know what he suspects. Terrible to be Dumbledore, really, by the end he must have thought it would be quite nice to check out and just hope that everything works out well. [Laughter.]
MA: Because he's set up this massive chess game -
JKR: Mm, this massive chess game. But I said to Arthur, my American editor - we had an interesting conversation during the editing of seven - the moment when Harry takes Draco's wand, Arthur said, God, that's the moment when the ownership of the Elder wand is actually transferred? And I said, that's right. He said, shouldn't that be a bit more dramatic? And I said, no, not at all, the reverse. I said to Arthur, I think it really puts the elaborate, grandiose plans of Dumbledore and Voldemort in their place. That actually the history of the wizarding world hinged on two teenage boys wrestling with each other. They weren't even using magic. It became an ugly little corner tussle for the possession of wands. And I really liked that - that very human moment, as opposed to these two wizards who were twitching strings and manipulating and implanting information and husbanding information and guarding information, you know?
Ultimately it just came down to that, a little scuffle and fistfight in the corner and pulling a wand away.
MA: It says a lot about the world at large, I think, about conflict in the world, it's these little things -
JKR: And the difference one individual can make. Always, the difference one individual can make.
It has been a crazy summer and I am back at home, but not without stories and pics. Soon there will also be another Vault update here.
Part of what was so gratifying about traveling the country with PotterCast was that even if I wasn't doing a dedicated book event, I met a ton of you who had read Harry, A History and either wanted to talk to me about it or have me sign the book. From my desk in New York it's really hard to appreciate how many of you out there have interacted with this book and helped fill out the other half of its story - that is, yours. As I said at LeakyCon, this book does not exist without the reader, and I don't mean that in terms of sales: I mean part of the point of this book was for it to tie into your own history, to make the book and the person reading the book part of one shared reading experience. It's my sincerest wish - and I've been told it occurs - that anyone even slightly open to that kind of experience gets it with this book. Thank you for sharing those stories with me.
And now...pictures!
I really only took iPhone pics this summer so I hope you'll deal with some less-than-stellar quality.
This is half of the room at the Potter panel at Comic-Con international. About 500 people were in line. It was insane.
Right after the panel was my signing. This is the line. I actually had to barrel my way down from the panel to the convention floor for this and was late to my own signing; when I got there I was panting and sweating. I was shocked to discover this many people had made it down there faster. I absolutely booked it down there, knocking over a few Storm Troopers and possibly one pint-sized Avatar, and they beat me. Curse you giant conference hall!
In Texas I ran into not ONE -
But TWO -
loud-and-proud nerds carrying Harry, A Historys.
He really might be the youngest Harry, A History fan.
Onstage with Harry and the Potters!
A Harry display in Los Angeles!
And finally the Paramus mall where I got to play host to a Tom Felton event.
Thank you all for a great summer! Hang on for a Vault entry!
Wow, it's been awhile! Apologies: updates about summer and related events are coming soon. Meanwhile...vault entry! This is another piece from the Jo interview, although I did, and still do, promise I will publish bits of other ones as well. I just thought we needed a nice kickstart here.
The part of this quote that ended up in the book (about the little men in balaclavas) did so because it made me laugh so hard I couldn't help it. It also happened to perfectly sum up Jo's feeling of paranoia about her own Internet usage. This little gem includes her admission that despite security warnings she used her internet on the same laptop as writing the book, another statement that made me laugh, this time because the level of secrecy was so ludicrous. Enjoy:
JKR: "Have they got it from my hard drive?" I'm so ignorant about PC's - I would think, "Can they? Can they crawl through the wires and get it? Physically? In little balaclavas?"
Every time my computer did anything that computers do, freeze or something, it would always cross my mind and I'd think, 'what have I let happen?'
At the very final stages of seven, I did take everything off my PC completely and it was just on the laptop, and I even resented having to think like that, but this was the last book, and I so wanted people to get it in paper form to read, and not from a scam or a spoiler. So i did get a little bit more security conscious right at the end.
MA: So it was never connected to the internet?
JKR: Yeah. Actually, no, that's not true. I did connect it to the Internet - what am I saying? [laughs] I did. But I did treat it all with a little bit more reverence. But actually, yes, I did connect it to the Internet so what's the difference? Oops. It's so nice to be able to say these things now.
MA: It must be a relief...
"Yeah, it's so liberating. I wouldn't ever willingly go back to that. Definitely people would find that hard to believe. 'Come on. Look at the money you've made.' You know what? I wouldn't ever want to live with that kind of stress again. I miss writing Harry so much, but still, to an extent, what makes me resistant to the idea of a book eight or a novel eight, is the knowledge of stepping back into that hothouse.
"People will be vomiting to hear me say this because I know how lucky I was to be published, and I know how lucky I am to have had the success, and I thank God every day for it, and unpublished writers everywhere will be throwing things at your book if they read this, but still...they haven't lived with the stress of it. It was sometimes a lot of pressure."
The German edition of H,AH is out in stores now, and I thought you'd like to see the awesomeness of it. I recently received a copy in the mail and it's just gorgeous. I then made a video for my personal channel and realized belatedly, as the German HP site posted about it, that you guys might like to see the book too. So... enjoy? This video was part of NEMA, my project to make vlogs in May without editing at all (= my project to vlog without doing a lot of work).
Plans are shaping up for the summer and beyond, and I'm starting to put together events for the book, so here's some info:
As you see in the sidebar, I'll be at the Contra Costa Library just outside San Francisco on May 3, where I'll be doing a keynote as well as a signing and a Q-n-A. I'm also speaking about and signing the book at two Harry Potter conferences (LeakyCon in Boston in May and Azkatraz in San Francisco in July). I'll get more specific about times and dates soon: for both conferences you must be a registered guest to attend - and at LeakyCon, I'll be putting together a program that includes information from the JKR interview and other bits that would otherwise be Vault entries.
There's more info about upcoming events on the way, but in the meantime, before I forget again: if you are interested in having a Harry, A History event (I love going to schools and libraries!) please contact David Buchalter at davidb@greatertalent.com.
The audio edition of Harry, A History has now been released! You can get it on Amazon here, on iTunes here, on Audible here or in a good old bookstore.
Renee Raudman does a marvelous job on the audio; I am greatly in her debt. You can hear a preview (of bits of the opening chapter, so that you can 'hear' Sue Upton, John Noe and Paul DeGeorge) below:
The German edition of Harry, A History will be on sale on May 21, and I couldn't be more excited to hold the first translated edition in my hands. My publisher sent over pictures of the book from last week's Book Fair in Leipzig; I seriously want one of these bags! (Obviously one of these books too, but I imagine I will get one shortly.)
Sorry for the lack of updates of late! I had a problem with the system that runs this site, but that's fixed now.
I picked the photo above because I was on the phone with a reporter from Germany recently, regarding the German-edition release of the book (early May, and I'll have more details soon) and she was asking me about the ways in which Harry changed my life. I told her all about how it had changed me as a person, and then she pushed a little further, asking how I had a debt to Harry besides that.
It's hard to explain it better than by showing this photograph. This was taken in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in June of 2007. John, Sue and I were traveling over to Albuquerque, where we'd meet up with Harry and the Potters for the first of our shows on tour. We spent an afternoon ridiculously lost in the mountains because the maps were vague, we all thought we had the right answers, and none of us yet had iPhones or the GPS software in them. Finally, amid all our sniping, we realized that the sun had crested beautifully in the sky and that we were not taking a moment to enjoy this scenery that, without Leaky, PotterCast and Harry, we'd have never been seeing together. So we got out and took a load of pictures, at Nowhere Special, Santa Fe, on a road in the middle of what I still consider to be a satellite of the Bermuda Triangle.
Even if I had known, early on, the many places, physical and non, that Harry Potter would take me, I would never have imagined this: together with two of my best friends, on a hill in the middle of nowhere, with the sun behind us and a summer of Potter madness ahead.
More soon, including details on the audio book...which is now available! I just got it in the mail, and I'm excited to listen to it. I'll put a preview here and on PotterCast.
