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.
The "proof of wizard rock" folder in the last post wasn't actual evidence that wizard rock existed: it turned out to be a proof I had done on the chapter. Yeah, boring. But, just when I was wringing my hands in despair that I could no longer present my Theorem on the Total and Finite Existence of Wizard Rock at this year's Mathematics of the Ridiculous convention, proof of wizard rock appeared. No joke.
If you'll recall, in the chapter in Harry, A History dealing with the intricacies of the beginnings of this most awesome genre of music, I reported that someone at an early Ed in the Refridgerators show had shouted out, "I love you, Harry Potter!" to Joe DeGeorge, because he happened to look like Harry Potter. On the back of that exclamation, Paul more fervently pushed his fledgling band idea onto his brother...shortly thereafter the boys were zig-zagging across the country in their Gryffindor ties and punk-studded belts, changing the way young book nerds expressed themselves through music.
It's the kind of detail that you simply hope is right. In a book that relies so largely on oral history, I'm fully aware of the compressions and expansions that happen when people play their earnest but nevertheless confusing game of lifelong Telephone. I know the guys would not tell me something they did not believe to be true, but that doesn't mean that time and the romance of the foreshadowing hadn't watercolored their memories a bit.
It had not. Listen to this, at the :40 mark. Paul DeGeorge just found it, and sent it to me. Right here, proof of wizard rock. :) Really, proof of a seminal moment in building what would become the entire genre. As a journalist I'm having a geek attack.
Hooray for audio books! The audio version of Harry, A History, comes out on March 1 from Tantor Media, and I can't wait. You can order it here. I'll have more links in more permanent places soon. We'll probably also preview it on PotterCast.
