Hogwarts birthday!

Last weekend was my birthday, and as a super special celebration Big Chimp and I visited the Warner Bros Studio Tour: The Making of Harry Potter. Not only did this make me unspeakably happy, but it also served to remind me what a monumental task it is to create a believable world. I mean, the number of minute details in the sets, things you wouldn't even notice in the films, was mind-boggling. And it all pointed back to JK Rowling's amazing worldbuilding with the seven Harry Potter novels. The wizarding world in which Harry Potter, his friends, and his enemies reside is an entire world, with no vital detail left out—from Gringotts to the Ministry of Magic to the rules for quidditch to the history of Hogwarts. This world is deep, and intricate, and not only believable but also relatable.

The tour itself was very thorough, including a visit to the Great Hall, Harry's dormitory, the Gryffindor Common Room, Dumbledore's Office, the Burrow, and the Ministry of Magic. Between the two sound stages you visit is a coutyard housing the Knight Bus; Hagrid's motorcycle; Number Four, Privet Drive; and the Hogwarts bridge. There's also a little cafe that sells snack and, more importantly, butterbeer (delicious, super sweet, a bit cream-soda-ish with a hint of butterscotch)! The second sound stage focuses on animatronics, masks, and creatures, and the super impressive and detailed Hogwarts model, which I won't talk about too much because I don't want to spoil it for those of you planning on going, but trust me, it's amazing.

We got the audio tour, which costs a little more, but it's narrated by Tom Felton and has lots of cool extra facts and videos. The only trouble was the touch screen, which I kept bumping accidentally and skipping ahead.

I could go on and on and on about the tour, the films, the books, and what a hero Joanne Rowling is to me, but you'd rather look at photos, right? Right.

Waiting in line. Not too long a wait—about 10 minutes. You have to buy tickets in advance, and they give you a time to show up. Ours was 17:30.

Harry's cupboard.

Welcome to Hogwarts.

Dumbledore's office!

Ravenclaw's diadem in the horcrux display case. Note the engraving: Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure!

Potions classroom. Thousands of bottles with different ingredients, all hand labeled.

Hagrid's hut.

Magic is Might

Details, details.

Drinking butterbeer while driving Hagrid's motorcycle: life is good.

"Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

Knight Bus!

Eeylops Owl Emporium, Diagon Ally.

Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes, Flourish & Blotts, Fortescue's, Ollivanders, Gringotts <3

All in all it was an amazing experience, and I feel so lucky that I got to go!

Question time: have you ever been on a literary/art/music pilgrimage? Who and what and when? Tell me about it in the comments!

WIP Wednesday

Just a short update to say: the first draft of Dyllan and Abigail is almost done! At this point I think we're 10,000 words or fewer from the end. Yay home stretch! I'm hoping to finish in the next two weeks. The book needs a lot of work, but on the plus side I have a pretty good idea of what needs to change and how to tighten up the plot. I can't wait to get out my plotting notebook and highlighters.

Current total word count: 111,325

Random quote:

For a moment Davy’s head spun. The other side. That’s what people called the afterlife, wasn’t it? He had the horrible thought that he was about to die, and his brain was coping by coming up with this elaborate fantasy. Tears welled in his eyes. Maybe the next world wouldn’t be as strange and frightening as this one.

How is your writing/reading week going? Let me know in the comments!

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012)

I was sad to hear the news that Ray Bradbury passed away on Tuesday. I first encountered this author's stories in middle school with The Martian Chronicles. In high school I read and loved the short story "All Summer in a Day," about school children living on Venus, where the sun shines only once every seven years. It wasn't until last year that I finally read Bradbury's classic novel Fahrenheit 451, about a dystopia where firefighters exist for the sole purpose of burning books—a powerful, frightening book.

In 2010 I had the pleasure of attending a panel featuring Ray Bradbury at Comic Con International in my home town of San Diego. He looked very old, and he couldn't hear very well, but he seemed happy, and what he had to say was interesting and thought-provoking. He talked for a while about space exploration, and Mars in particular (the colonization of which is the only chance for the survival of the human species), and writing, and life, and learning, and happiness. I had my notebook with me that day, so that I could write down interesting quotes and facts from the panels we went to. I have three quotes from Ray Bradbury's panel that I still think of often. Firstly,

"When I was twenty-six years old, I graduated from the library."

Bradbury couldn't afford to go to college, so after he graduated from high school he educated himself at his local library, going there several days a week for four hours at a time. I just think that is so cool, so empowering. We so often get caught up in the idea of formal education that we forget that we can (and should!) educate ourselves. There's really no excuse for ignorance—at least not if you have access to a library (and the time to use it). This is especially true for those of us with the privilege of an Internet connection. Which brings us to the next of Bradbury's quotes; in response to the question, "Ray, what do you think of the Internet?"

"The Internet is one great big, goddamn, stupid bore!"

Which, you know, as a blogger/Tweeter/Facebooker/Skyper...I sort of have to agree with. A little bit. In some respects. I mean, I think the Internet is great for so many things, like meeting other people with the same interests as you, and talking about books, and keeping in touch with friends and family who live eight time zones away. But there comes a time when we all need to remember the real world and real experiences, and that they happen whether or not I remember to update my Facebook status. Meeting up with friends in real life, taking the dog for a walk, making dinner—there are so many great things about life that cyberspace (do people still call it cyberspace?) just can't compete with. Which brings me to the third quote I scribbled down that day in my notebook:

"I've had a pretty goddamn good life!"

You can't say fairer than that.

Rest in peace, Mr. Bradbury.

May Reads

Another month is gone! Can you believe it? Here in Britain we've finally had a few days of sunshine and warmth, but now we're back to freezing rain, just in time for HRH Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee (and yet thousands of Britons lined the banks of the Thames yesterday for hours to see Her Majesty float by on her royal barge—there's something strangely endearing about that).

Anyway, here is what I read in the month of May:

• Fruits Basket Ultimate Edition, volumes 1, 2, and 4 (and Fruits Basket regular edition, volume 13), by Natsuki Takaya {manga}: Going back to the beginning in my favorite manga series, which follows orphan Tohru Honda as she is taken in by the beautiful and mysterious Sohma family and soon discovers their curse—that twelve of them are possessed by the vengeful spirits of the Chinese zodiac. Afflicted family members turn into their zodiac animals when they are sick, weak, or hugged by a member of the opposite sex. I love this story, especially Tohru's indefatigable optimism—it just makes me smile.
• Songs to Make you Smile by Natsuki Takaya {manga}: Curious to read some of Fruits Basket author Natsuki Takaya's other work, I've been wanting this collection of short stories for a while. I liked the stories, particularly the title one, in which the slightly odd singer in a teenage pop band tries to make the bullied, troubled girl he has a crush on smile. It's super cute and heart warming. Some of the stories in the collection are older, and you can really see how Takaya's art style has evolved into the clean, polished drawing that we see in Fruits Basket. The only story I didn't like as much was the bonus chapter, which struck me as a bit creepy with its odd sexual references.
• 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson {YA contemporary}: Fast-paced, easy-to-read novel about Ginny, a 17-year-old girl whose free-spirited aunt bequeaths her 13 envelopes, each with a task for her to complete. Only when she completes the task can she move on to the next envelope. In the first envelope: a thousand dollars and instructions to buy a plane ticket to London; so begins an adventure that leads Ginny all over Europe. At first the novel seemed a disjointed series of events, and it felt like the author just wanted to take the reader along to all of the neat places she herself had visited. But toward the end the plot really came together, and I ended up liking the book. I did have a hard time believing that Ginny's parents would allow her to travel to Europe on her own for an unknown span of time with no cell phone or itinerary, and instructions not to contact home at all. But once I got past that, I enjoyed the story. I was pleased to find that, with the exception of Scotland and Greece, I'd been to all of the places that Ginny visits in the story, which really helped me to visualize her journey. A good, readable, if not especially deep novel.
• Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor {YA fantasy}: I'd heard great things about this YA fantasy, but still approached it with a certain amount of skepticism, since I haven't loved most of the YA paranormal romance stories I've read. The book follows 17-year-old Karou, an art student in Prague who has had a rather unusual upbringing, in that she was raised by chimaera—hideous magical beasts who are actually pretty nice once you get to know them. When the seraphim—the angels—arrive, bent on carrying on an ancient war between the two races, Karou finds herself caught in the middle of it. So, I've raved about the book here. It's one of the best novels I've read this year, and if you haven't read it yet, I recommend you do so post haste. Just be warned: the sequel doesn't come out until November.
• Hot Gimmick, Volume 1 by Miki Aihara {manga}: When high school student Hatsumi has to buy a pregnancy test for her younger sister, the housing complex bully finds out and threatens to tell unless Hatsumi becomes his slave. I really liked the art, characters, and story in this manga, but I'm upset by how casually the author/characters treat sexual assault.
• Nana, Volume 1 by Ai Yazawa {manga}: Two very different young women, both named Nana, are thrown together when they both move to Tokyo for a fresh start. For the first half of the book I felt a bit iffy—Nana number one struck me as a bit helpless, naive, obsessed with finding a man to complete her life, and into drinking, all of which make her hard to like. The second half focuses on Nana number two, a rock musician in a semi-popular band. This Nana is much more interesting, and I love that she's independent and yet still vulnerable. Having read much tamer manga up to now, I was surprised at the more mature content: sex, drinking, and smoking (I guess that's why it's rated Older Teen), but all of that was okay once I got used to it. Not hooked on the series yet, but I'll read the next couple of volumes to give it a chance—it has to be one of Japan's most popular mangas for a reason, right?
• Bakuman, Volume 2: Chocolate and Akamaru by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata {manga}: Ninth graders Moritaka and Akito continue their quest to become successful manga artists. I love the way this series focuses on the creativity and especially the hard work it takes to make a work of art, and I love the way it informs us about the business side of manga. I also enjoyed the introduction of a new interesting character, Eiji Nizuma, an eccentric high school prodigy who soon becomes the boys' biggest rival. I still wish there were more—and more interesting—female characters, but I like the series and will continue reading it. 

So that's it! What have you been reading lately?

WIP Wednesday

Small aside: after reading Daughter of Smoke and Bone, the fact that the magical world in my novels has two moons which are referred to as "the two sisters" doesn't seem as cool and original as I first thought it was. Possible back-to-the-drawing board on that one.

Okay. Okay! So, tonight I will cross the 100,000 word threshold in Dyllan and Abigail. I'm getting near the end now, and everything is starting start to come together—it's exciting! I went into this novel with a very clear image of the last few scenes—the climax and denouement—but I was unsure how I was going to get there. I'm still not entirely sure, but I'm a lot closer to figuring it out.

I can already tell this novel will need a lot of revision, but I feel like my second draft will be a lot easier than my second draft of Water Magic was. I'm looking forward to tightening the plot, fleshing out the characters, and fixing the pacing.

Total word count: 99,837

Random quote:

With nothing else left to do, Hammish turned to the door and knocked. For a long time nothing happened. He was just about to turn and rejoin Margot and Radgaw at the bus stop when the door lurched open with a creak.

A pair of eyes met his—young eyes with dark, sickly shadows lying beneath them. Dark blond hair, even-toned skin that must have been olive-hued when it was healthy. But it was the eyes that drew Hammish’s gaze. Beneath a certain hollowness, they were unmistakably Folk eyes. Just now they flicked over him with impatience. “Yeah?”

The traditional weapon of the Folk is the yari, a sharpened stick with a fire-hardened tip. Worn in a sling across the back, it can be used as a spear or a javelin, and can also be used to throw and direct spells. Image by Ragnar Singsaas, 2008. http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Javelin_throw.jpg

Thoughts on mythology and DAUGHTER OF SMOKE AND BONE

Photo source: fantasticfiction.co.uk

This weekend I finished reading Laini Taylor's Daughter of Smoke and Bone. I loved the book for a lot of reasons—characters, setting, just plain good writing—but one of the things that really struck me was the way that the author used and re-imagined mythology. I think this can be a tricky thing to do, and we see it fairly often in YA and middle grade—mythology tweaked to fit the story. Werewolves who change according to the temperature rather than the fullness of the moon (Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver), vampires who come out during the day (Twilight by Stephanie Meyer; Skulduggery Pleasant by Derek Landy), and I'm sure there are loads of other examples. The thing is, this normally irritates me, because I find it jarring and that makes it hard for me to get into the story.

But with Daughter of Smoke and Bone, I didn't get that at all. I found the world of the chimaeras and the seraphim very believable within the context of the story. More so than that, I loved the mythology within the mythology—the fact that both chimaera and seraphim have very different—and beautiful—legends that explain their own origins and the origins of their enemies. These stories in themselves tell us a lot about the fictional cultures from which they arose.

So I'm trying to figure out what it is about this book that made me love it when most books with this kind of set up just annoy me. I think it all comes down to the quality of the writing. Laini Taylor can write, there's no doubt about that. But more than just the skin and bones of good sentence structure, pacing, or even good characters (though those all help). I think it's the utter originality of the story that hooked me and kept me reading. It was so much more than "paranormal dude becomes obsessed with an ordinary high school girl". Karou, the protagonist, is interesting in herself—confident, artistic, physically strong, yet simultaneously flawed and confused. She, the angel Akiva, the chimaera Brimstone—in fact all of the main characters—are complex and believable. And lines between good and evil aren't clear; there's a lot of gray. Plus, without spoilers, the way the story falls together at the end of the novel is beautiful; it's seamless.

I guess the re-imagining of mythology in this novel didn't feel like laziness or crowbarring—it was artfully done and it made sense. Which, now that I think about it, is true for all good writing.

***

So, what are your favorite/least favorite books that re-work old legends? Or do you think that it's best if modern authors stay away from mythology entirely? Let me know in the comments!

WIP Wednesday

As is becoming usual these days, I didn't actually get much done in my WIP over the past week, word count wise. What I did manage to add felt pretty solid though, and I'm still pretty happy with the story and where it's going, considering it's the first draft. And though I haven't been writing much quantity-wise, I have managed to write every day, even if it was just a paragraph or two. I'm still struggling a bit with feeling tired and drained after a full day at my library job, when I come home and don't want to look at a screen anymore for any length of time. I suppose I'll have to keep working to find a way around that lack of energy.

Total word count: 91,185

Abernwyth has two moons. Unlike in this photograph, one is significantly larger than the other, and appears to lead it across the night sky. They are commonly called "the big sister and the little sister." The superstitious sometimes foretell the future based on changes in the colors of the moons. Image: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dark_side_of_the_moon.jpg

 Random quote:

Abby’s eyes flicked toward the window, where a white-feathered face watched her with giant yellow eyes. She almost laughed with surprise, but her head hurt too much. “A cloudwing!”

Collin nodded. “Faster than almost any other dragon.”

The cloudwing blinked first its left eye, and then its right.

“He does that so he never takes an eye off you,” Collin said. “He’s taken quite a shine to you, Abby.”

 Hope everyone else is having happy writing and reading this week!