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I started writing and posting Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent over eight years ago this spring. In September it will be eight years since I finished it. Last December/January it was five years since I completed all four PS fics. Six years ago the official fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix came out. Four years ago it was time for Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Two years ago JK Rowling gave us the final installment in Harry's saga.
And yet. People are still reading Psychic Serpent, and sending me links to really, really nice reviews like this one. And hoping that I get published. (Me too!) And yeah, I know, he mentions Harry/Hermione in there. But you know what? I don't care. He's not doing a review of the original books, so I'm not going to get into a debate about that. And he's not being wanky about it, IMO. It reminds me more of Marc Harry's reaction to PS, which resulted in one hell of a kickass audio book of my fic (hopefully finished at some point!) and I just can't bring myself to debate Marc over shipping; he's the sweetest, most generous and talented guy and it's all pretty much beside the point. Probably also good training for when readers of my original fiction have different opinions on my characters' ships than I do! (See? I'm being optimistic and assuming that I'll have this problem someday. :D)
Anyway, on a day when I was bracing myself before opening my "professional" email account, in case I got another rejection from another agent (although SOME response helps me know where I stand), it was nice to open my fandom email and read this. I'll continue to query those agents (I've contacted only a dozen so far and have been rejected by three) and to write my new book (vampires instead of werewolves this time, but the decidedly non-sparkly variety) and remind myself that there are some people out there who think that I may know a thing or two about pulling in and hooking readers.
I also have to remind myself that just because I haven't connected yet with an agent who's "the one" doesn't mean that that perfect match isn't out there for me. I'm an incredibly picky reader myself when I'm at a bookstore, browsing through the beginnings of books I'm considering buying and rejecting one after another. And those are books that someone already agented and published and that the bookstore chain decided to order--those aren't unvetted manuscripts from a slush pile. It's also a really rough time in the publishing industry, so if I get to the end of my list of potential agents with no results, that's not the end of the line; that just means that it's time to knock on the cyber-doors of e-book publishers with my novel and wait until I have another completed manuscript to query the traditional agents again.
Back to the salt mines...Current Mood:  grateful |
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Yesterday ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) penny_sieve posted a link to this excuse for journalism.
Let's munch on a little perspective, shall we?
In May 2008, worldwide sales of Harry Potter books were estimated to be over 400 million copies.
Twilight has surpassed The Da Vinci Code in sales, but in February of this year still only had 42 million, about one-tenth of the total sales of the HP books A YEAR AGO.
When it comes to the worldwide box office, the Harry Potter films come in at #5, #7, #12, #14 and #21. There are a number of 2008 films on the top 100 list and one 2009 film. Twilight came out in 2008.
Twilight isn't on the list.
ETA: The box office link is fixed. Enjoy the irony that there's a banner at the top of that page saying, "Who is your favorite Twilight character?" :snort:Current Mood:  smug |
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If you were wondering who to vote for in the LJ elections and/or why you should even care, wonder no more. I've met Kyle and I can say that he would be a responsible voice for the average LJ user.* It's a pleasure every day that I find a new post on his journal and I look forward to his posting that he has prevailed in this election. :D
flourish has an interesting post about triggering here. She mentions the issue of whether warnings should include ships, especially if the author wants to keep people guessing about ships or the pairings are specifically an element of suspense and mystery in the story. I think she's right that not warning in that situation is justifiable, but what boggles me in the first place is the idea of anyone conflating triggers and ships. I know that I've heard from a number of readers over the years about my H/G and R/Hr work starting off with H/Hr and D/G, or containing Ron/Parvati, as well as the numerous hissy fits people sent to me when I ended the H/Hr and D/G in the fic(s).
All of this sort of complaining, frankly, produces a, "Bitch, please," response from me. (Okay, I've never actually sent anyone a reply to an email saying that, but I'm also far less likely to reply at all if some wanky person's ONLY RESPONSE to my work is to complain about shipping. So that response has mainly been what I say aloud to the computer screen, but I've been sorely tempted to type it and hit "send" more than once.)
I think, if we've actually reached the point where people think triggers and ships are even in the same universe, let alone the same ballpark, it's time for a sanity check and some perspective. A lot of people need warnings for triggers for legitimate reasons; I do not consider a warning for ships alone (rather than what actually happens between the characters) to be a legitimate reason to avoid a reader "triggering" upon reading the work in question. Now, some people prefer warnings for ships including incest, slash, and cross-generational pairings. But we're still talking about a conceptual level; I think that if an author has "WARNING FOR INCEST" or slash or cross-gen that should be an adequate red flag for anyone who finds those things to be triggering; having to specify the precise ships in order to avoid triggering readers?
Bitch, please.
* And yes, he is a FONG (friend of Neil Gaiman) and shameless fanboy of my father-in-law, but those aren't his only positive attributes; read his manifesto to find out just why you should vote for him. He's done an awesome job of elucidating his platform(s).Current Mood:  contemplative |
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I just got this review on ff.net for Harry Potter and the Time of Good Intentions:
Wicked! I read your previous story too. This is really cool.
I didn't expect Draco to share my birthday, so that was a rather good
shocker. Hee hee. Is it real or did you just make it up? No, don't answer
that, I'll find out myself.
Keep up the good work!
I mean--WHAT? Of course it's not real! NONE OF IT IS "REAL". What I wrote isn't real and what JKR wrote isn't real. And yes--I made it up. JKR made up her books, too. How does it make sense to ask, "Is it real or did you just make it up?" How is that an either-or question?
:headdesk:
In other news,
People are still incapable of understanding that you can only copyright the words you use to communicate your ideas, not the ideas themselves (which are unlikely to be "stolen" anyway if no one probably read your book, plus anyone who thinks they came up with the idea of wizards riding trains is obviously mental to begin with)...
...and I restarted the querying process yesterday, contacting three agents by email and three by snail mail. If you're superstitious, cross some digits for me. ;)
Oh, and AZKATRAZ! Who will I see there?Current Mood:  busy |
| » Psychic Serpent on PotterFicWeekly |
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I received this email this morning:
Hi Barb, my name is Ryan and I emailed you briefly a few months ago about having your podcast be featured on the our PotterFicWeekly fanfiction podcast. Just to get in touch with you way in advance, it's been selected!
We plan to devote somewhere in the ballpark of 7-8 episodes to rereading and discussing the Psychic Serpent three parter, chapter by chapter. Each podcast weighs in somewhere in the ballpark of 2-2.5 hours, including off-topic banter. We'll begin recording over seven to eight weeks somewhere in the next two months, and depending on our release schedule the releases should be begin sometime in late summer.
Our standing tradition is to open up the discussion series to the author, so if you'd like, we'd love to record an interview with you that would air after the series is released. If any of your readers would like to send in comments or voicemails as we go, we'd be happy to attach their comments to our episodes, positive or negative. We remain spoiler-free as well, so if any new readers are picking up your story, we'll only discuss until that week's set of chapters and no further.
If you want more information on our podcast so you'll know what to expect, you can find us at www.potterficweekly.com. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask. I can't wait to get started!!
Thanks very much,
Ryan
So if you're interested in sending in comments or voicemails, go to their website and let them know.
Also--spam subject line of the day: I AM INTERESTING IN YOU.
Heh. That's what you think, dude. ;)
Apr. 21st, 2009 @ 10:40 am
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| » Not a bad birthday, I have to say |
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Thanks to everyone who's wished me a happy birthday! It was a pretty good one. We had an awesome Palm/Passion service this morning, during which the choir sang the Crucifixus from Bach's Mass in B Minor (with only about two of us on a voice part, too, except for the tenor line which has ONE guy); I played Pontius Pilate during the Reading of the Passion (which is why I wore my black lace-up boots instead of the black Mary Janes I started off with--more authoritarian, you know); I got to have a good workout at the gym (I didn't want part of my gift to myself to be gaining back some of the five pounds I've lost in the last 12 days); and then Chris and I went grocery shopping, I had a nice Sunday afternoon nap (those are the BEST), had a fabulous steak dinner prepared by Chris and a decadent chocolate mousse cake from Whole Foods (another part of why I made sure I worked out at the gym today!).
I received some lovely CDs: Samuel Barber choral music sung by the Choir of Ormond College; Yo-Yo Ma playing the six unaccompanied Bach cello suites; and violinist Julia Fischer playing some Bach concertos with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. Also got the DVD of Slumdog Millionaire!
Happy April 5th to the rest of you, too!
Apr. 5th, 2009 @ 11:37 pm
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| » WTF? |
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I will just be out there with this and say that some people make no freaking sense to me. I have someone friended on my RL journal who was asking people on his f-list, what ought to be on a top-ten list of SF that, in retrospect, makes us ask, "What were we thinking?" Of course, fantasy started to come into it, even though the discussion was supposed to be about SF. I knew that as soon as that line had been crossed someone would bring up HP, but it wasn't in the way that I thought:
I nominate Harry Potter and the Endless Sequels.
Now, I know there are people who don't like HP after trying a little, or who even read all of it and detest the way she ended it or the way she wrote the romance, etc. But the criticism of "endless" just floored me. Since, you know, she ENDED it.
So I commented innocently, "How can they be endless if she planned to write seven books and wrote seven books and then stopped?"
To which the commenter replied, "Maybe they just seemed endless."
Which makes me think he/she read all of it, but if they were starting to seem that "endless" and tedious to this person, WHY CONTINUE READING? Not to mention, wouldn't it have been far WORSE for her to claim that she was writing a seven-book series, to set up the whole arc for the series, and then abandon it after, say, five books? Or to write seven books but leave a slew of dangling threads because she was worried about some people thinking that the books seemed "endless"? I have to say, as criticisms of HP go, this is one of the weirdest and most nonsensical I've ever encountered. (Maybe the commenter has an attention-span problem?)
This is why I say, "Some people make no freaking sense to me."
Mar. 15th, 2009 @ 11:38 pm
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| » Azkatraz-bound and other HP stuff |
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It's been a while, hasn't it? I haven't abandoned my fandom journal completely, never fear. For one thing, as you can see from this post on my RL journal I'll be seeing some of you at Azkatraz this summer, in San Francisco!
I was also perusing some old messages on the Psychic Serpent Yahoo group and came across this post of mine concerning how/whether Harry would be in Potions after taking his OWLs:
I cannot see JKR letting Harry out of Potions for years six and seven, and the only possible way she has provided for Harry to be in that class is either by getting an O on his Potions exam or, since it is specifically said that SNAPE does not allow students with lesser marks into his class, to remove Snape from the equation. I also do not think that JKR would have included the information in OotP about how many times Snape had applied for the DADA job if she was going to withhold it from him forever. Perhaps book six will give us a new teacher in the dungeon for once, rather than in the DADA classroom.
And then in HBP we got Snape as the DADA professor and a new face in the dungeon. :D
(For those on the group, this is from message #8758, dated June 1, 2004, nearly five years ago!)
Interestingly, this was the reaction of one of my readers to my theory (message #8759):
Ohh and nothing good can come from Snape teaching Defense against the Dark Arts. Snape teaching a subject that Harry excels in more than anyone else just does not mix, the old man would be a bigger fool than I sometimes think he is if he does that.
Wonder what he thought of HBP? ;)
See you in SF!
Mar. 4th, 2009 @ 05:45 pm
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| » Well, aren't I just a conundrum wrapped in a riddle and topped off by an enigma? |
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Your result for The Sorting Hat Test...
Menage a quatreYou scored 47% Order/Chaos, and 49% Moral/Rational 
You're split both between order and chaos, and between morality and rationality. Surely the real Sorting Hat would know where to put you, but this test is baffled. On the upside, you're clearly a very balanced person. You may want to sort yourself according to my 4-grid:
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Chaotic |
Orderly |
| Moral |
Gryffindor |
Hufflepuff |
| Rational |
Slytherin |
Ravenclaw |
Take The Sorting Hat Test at HelloQuizzy
The chaos/order split I definitely get. This is probably why I obsess over the kitchen being neat and clean and organized every night but am perfectly capable of having a desk that looks like a hurricane hit it. ;)
Jan. 11th, 2009 @ 06:22 pm
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| » Mail from JKR... |
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...NOT. No, seriously, someone actually bothered to create an email address to try to make it seem that "Joanne Kathleen Rowling" is sending me email (as if she would use her full non-name anyway, since she just added the K for her publisher) in order to say things like, "Why are you using my characters? You have talent, but next time create your own characters! Best of luck in all your writing endeavors, Joanne Kathleen Rowling."
I mean--bzuh? Has this person not heard of fanfiction? Ever? Are they planning to pretend to be JK Rowling to every single person on the internet who's ever posted fanfic? Because that would be a lot of spam mailing, IMO.
So--yeah. When I deleted it, I deleted it as spam. And I thought I'd already had to deal with a lot of stupid in my real life today; now it's leaking into my fandom escapism. Just what I don't need.
Anyone else get this idiot emailing them? Or am I just a speshul snowflake?
Jan. 2nd, 2009 @ 08:54 pm
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| » Some people can't understand what Jo says whether it's in books or a written interview... |
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What part of "none of her invented Harry Potter locations were based on actual places in the real world" isn't being understood by some people? The Forest of Dean? Not invented. And before Surrey, London, and King's Cross are mentioned, those aren't invented either. "Invented" locations would include Little Whinging, Ottery St. Catchpole, Hogsmeade, the location of Shell Cottage, etc. If there is a place that exists in the real world that is mentioned in the books by its proper name then IT WAS NOT INVENTED by JK Rowling. Something that exists in the real world and appears in a book is not BASED on something in the real world; that is not what that word means.
Are we all clear on that now?
Dec. 6th, 2008 @ 05:38 pm
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| » FF.net grumbling and HBP trailer |
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Stupid Pit of Voles. A concerned reader wrote me a note:
Did you know that Harry Potter and the Psychic Serphant chapter 12 through
24 is missing? Just thought id let you know
So I checked it out, and when I started at the end, with the afterword and then epilogue, working my way forward, I found that the affected chapters had changed; now 2-21 were missing. So there's THAT, although I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt about it. Technical glitches happen on a big, busy site. I get that.
I wrote back to the reader:
Thanks for the heads up. I checked, and now the affected chapters are 2-21.
I have a feeling that one of their servers went down and they're slowly
restoring files from a back-up. In the meantime, I recommend going to
FictionAlley, where more of my work is posted than here at ff.net: http://www.fictionalley.org/authors/barb/
Thanks for reading!
--Barb
However, this is what showed up in my email (I requested a copy of what I was sending to the reader):
Thanks for the heads up. I checked, and now the affected chapters are 2-21.
I have a feeling that one of their servers went down and they're slowly
restoring files from a back-up. In the meantime, I recommend going to
FictionAlley, where more of my work is posted than here at : authors/barb/
Thanks for reading!
--Barb
So those asshats have not only messed about with my files and made about two-thirds of my most-read fic nonexistent on the site, they are CENSORING what members send to each other! And not for the sake of keeping swear words and obscenities out of the emails, in case people are flaming each other, which I could understand. No, they are censoring a) an abbreviated form of their own site name/url, and b) the url for FictionAlley.
Asshats SQUARED.
I'm off to send a message to the reader again, to point her to my profile, where the url for my author page exists with no censorship.
/grumbling
On a more cheerful note, TRAILER! For once, I'm actually looking forward to one of these movies! (And I'll get to see it in San Francisco with all of the folks who are coming to Azkatraz!)
Oct. 26th, 2008 @ 06:16 pm
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| » Colin Powell |
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A post on my other LJ.
(And is it silly to be pleased that Colin Powell and I share a birthday? Month and day--not year.)
Oct. 19th, 2008 @ 12:47 pm
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| » Why Neil Gaiman is teh cool |
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From Neil Gaiman's blog:
Several people wrote to ask what I thought about Eoin Colfer writing a new Hitchhiker's book--for example,
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/fiction/article4773155.ece
In regard to the above, did they ask you to do it, and would you have accepted if they had?
Nobody asked me to do it, but then, when Douglas asked me if I'd like to adapt Life, The Universe and Everything for radio I said no, and that was with Douglas alive and asking. (Dirk Maggs did it, and did an excellent job.) It seemed a thankless task.
I like Eoin very much, and wish him well with the book. He'll probably write a sixth Hitchhiker's book with more enthusiasm, and certainly faster, than Douglas would have done. But it won't be a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's book.
For the record, if I don't get around to writing a sequel to something while I'm alive, I'd very much rather that nobody else does it once I'm dead. It should exist in your head or in Lucien's library, or in fanfic. But that's me, and not every author feels the same way.
Not every author feels that way, indeed! There's nothing like an author I already like making me squee by writing positively about fanfic. ;)
Sep. 20th, 2008 @ 09:08 am
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| » September 11 |
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Yes, I know it's no longer September 11. That's meant to be the subject, not the date of the post. ;)
Seven years ago, I posted the last chapter of Harry Potter and the Psychic Serpent on September 4, and a week later, the world changed. Six months after that I, and many others, were still processing how it had changed and I wrote this. To this day, I believe that the most interesting and usually the most touching emails I have received from readers are not the emails about my fanfiction but about my afterword. The stories people have told me about their personal reactions to the tragedy (I still sniff when I read about the girl who felt that reading the afterword was "like a hand on the shoulder"), the heart-wrenching reactions to my reaction still gut me to the core. I am still incredibly grateful for the online fandom that supported and sustained each other throughout that time, the hands reaching out from around the world.
Yesterday I got yet another email about the afterword, and I want to share it with you:
I finished reading Psychic Serpent just two days ago, and read your 'Afterword' to it. It really made me reflect back on that horrible day. I remember exactly where I was, and how much time I (and many others) spent watching things unfold that day. So many of us were glued to the TV at work, and horrified by what had happened. It was like the end of innocence for our country. I was too young at the time of JFKs death to remember much about it, but there are other things, like John Lennon's death, the attempt on Regan, Oklahoma City, and The Challenger explosion that I do remember quite well, but none of them come close to the horror of September 11th. I felt so violated!!! How could a group of people think of doing this, make so many plans, and actually carry out such a dastardly, devious, murderous, act. I hope they burn in hell!!! (Sorry, had to say it!)
Thanks again for what you did six months after that terrible time, your words and thoughts!
G.H.
I keep all of my correspondence with readers, but it was rereading the emails about the afterword yesterday that had me in tears again as no televised memorial of 9/11 could. Reading about real people's uncensored reactions, their heartache and shock, is the way I want to remember that day, not empty platitudes from people trying to win elections, or trying to bolster their images.
No matter what crassness politicians bring to the table, no matter what new divisions arise in fandom or what old ones are deepened and revisited, I will no let anyone sully for me the memory of how people from around the world came together in a time of crisis and provided friendship, comfort and love.
:hugs to you all:
Sep. 12th, 2008 @ 04:15 pm
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anxious