Tag Archives: JK Rowling

Five Things I Am Into Right Now, October 2012

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One of my big complaints I had when I lived in Los Angeles was that you did not feel the changing of the seasons.

See, for me the changes in the weather around me helps me stay focused, it gives me a sense of urgency from day to day. In other words, I feel time more and I can feel it slipping away as well. This is not a bad thing, it just means I feel like I live life a little more when I feel those differences as compared to when I live in an environment where everything is the same every freaking day.

Of course, where can you go to complain about the weather?

Fall is one of my favorite seasons and this October is living up to that with a lot of favorites falling in my list. (Oh, and the fact my novel A Jane Austen Daydream has been signed to be ePublished sometime in the future doesn’t hurt either). Continue reading →

Drowning in Tweets: A struggling author tries to understand Twitter

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I dream the same dream of thousands of other people.

Yes, I am one of thousands (probably a lot more) and we are all part of the same collective consciousness, wired into the same hopes of finding writing success. And while we all know in our hearts that there are not enough readers on this planet for all of us to succeed, we all keep dreaming together, sharing the same hopes, avoiding expressing the same fears.

It is all a beautifully sad thought, like a fleeting, quiet, and hopeful melody lost in a romantic symphony.

-At the time of this writing I have 2370 followers on Twitter-

I need to begin by blaming my brother (@AESPiano).

I had just reached over a 100 followers on my blog and he thought it was ridiculous that I had more blog followers than Twitter followers. He first reached out to his followers to find me and follow me, and then he tried to convince me to do some outreach myself on the great social media site, claiming that it would help my writing career.

Frankly, I didn’t see it, but I decided to do some investigating into it just out of curiosity. I found a fellow writer who was following me and started to scroll through her followers, looking for other writers, and clicking follow on the ones that I felt might be interesting. Continue reading →

Underwhelmed by Pottermore

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Maybe it is the Ravenclaw in me, but I was expecting something with a little more creativity and inspirational zing from Pottermore.com.

Pottermore… I remember when I first heard of the Web site. What a great idea! An online experience around Hogwarts that also works as an opportunity for JK Rowling to share new insights into the world of Harry Potter. The last part is what got me the most; see, while as satisfied as I was with the end of Potter (both book and on film), a part of me still missed the universe. It had found a home in my heart next to Middle Earth and a galaxy far, far away (not the prequels), and that is quite an achievement.

Pottermore first opened for Beta testers last year. I did not work to become a beta tester because I assumed it wouldn’t be beta tested for that long. I mean, they just got done making a major announcement that stretched the entire world about the new site! You don’t do that unless you are ready to go. I mean, it is unheard of to do otherwise.

Well, surprising it is heard of! My bad.

The Beta testers “owned” the site from Fall to April of this year (while the main page kept promising its opening in a month that was long gone), as I, and most of the other Potter fans waited and waited… Continue reading →

Goodbye Mr. Potter

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I have a new film/book editorial up at Green Spot Blue. It is on the last Harry Potter films and what it means for the series.  Here is an excerpt from the beginning.

I remember the first time I read J.K. Rowling.

I was a grad student at the University of Southern California studying fiction writing and I had no hesitation in pooh-poohing (yes, I said pooh-pooh, we snobby writers talk like that) the books to my fellow writers. They were modern-day kid books, surely like a thousand published every year. A flash in the pan, a lucky break.

One of my fellow students argued for the books and, as part of a challenge, gave me the first four books to read, claiming I will be addicted after the first chapter.

…I finished all four books in one weekend.

I never loved the first two movies; I enjoyed them, I liked them, I even bought them, but I didn’t love them.

They were fun, but they really didn’t capture the essence of the books for me. Usually I would watch them wondering what someone like Terry Gilliam (JK Rowling’s first choice, and brilliant notion, for directing the first book) would have done and how long it would be before they were remade… Then the third film came out.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban truly and perfectly captured to me the book series. That is how I envisioned the world when I read them and he laced it from beginning to end with the living, breathing magic that seemed to be missing from the first two films.

He focused the story on Harry’s perspective, captured his wonder, and, more importantly, actually created terror; because, as much as we like to forget that fact, the Harry Potter books are full of it. The first chapter is about a double homicide, don’t forget, of parents while their young child watched. Why is that not more shocking to people?

Yet, for an entire generation of readers the Potter Universe is a place of safety. It is place of escape, of wonder… but it is also a world where a person can be killed simply by a wand and two deadly words.

So what is it that draws readers there with such love again and again?

You can read the rest of the article here.