Demon Sex, Mummies, Literary Alchemy and more...

Yes, I am experimenting with catchy titles, but I will cover all those topics in the headline I promise.

First off: Demon Sex.

Erika Mailman updated her blog with a post discussing the sexual demons known as Incubi and Succubi and includes passages from the Malleus Maleficarum.

Her book The Witch's Trinity will be out in paperback in October, so if you have not read it yet - be sure to pre-order a copy today while you are thinking about it. Her novel was a Bram Stoker Award finalist and San Francisco Chronicle Book of Note of 2007.



Tess Gerritsen has a forthcoming novel The Keepsake that deals with murder and mummies. I had the pleasure of talking with Tess at the San Francisco Writers Conference this past February along with my friend Cindy Pavlinac. We chatted about her fascination with Egypt and archaeology as well as the process of mummification.

Tess decided to commission a book trailer to be made for The Keepsake and it is fabulous. Check it out:



She discusses some hidden benefits of book trailers on a guest post at the blog Murderati as well as how she went about commissioning the trailer to be made. Tess mentions that as a consequence of this filming she now has shrunken heads and rubber corpses occupying space in her garage. Hey, she will be all set for Halloween this year.

Onto a forthcoming book from another big time author is Katherine Neville's long awaited sequel to her classic novel The Eight. If you have never read that book first published in 1988, then you are in for a treat.

As described on her website:

Katherine Neville’s groundbreaking novel, The Eight, dazzled audiences more than twenty years ago and set the literary stage for the epic thriller. A quest for a mystical chess service that once belonged to Charlemagne, it spans two centuries and three continents, and intertwines historic and modern plots, archaeological treasure hunts, esoteric riddles, and puzzles encrypted with clues from the ancient past. Now the electrifying global adventure continues, in Neville’s long anticipated sequel: The Fire.

It is more than that, The Eight is a novel about the complex game of chess and she weaves in the historical figures of Charlemagne, Talleyrand, Robespierre, David, Sarat, Napoleon, and Moammar Qaddafi. There are two parallel stories being told. One takes place in the 1970s in New York City and later in Algeria, the other timeline is during the French Revolution. In both time periods, there is a deadly game being played in order to secure the pieces of a chess set that once belonged to Charlemagne. The novel combines murder, chess, Charlemagne, the French Revolution, literary alchemy, and Fibonacci Numbers. I mean, what's not to like?

Katherine has updated her website and it looks all bright and shiny. I am excited to see the list of signings to promote her forthcoming novel The Fire due out in October because she will be coming to my area. I look forward to meeting her and getting a signed copy.

Now to go from the sublime to the absurd.

John Goodman has returned to filming the adaptation of the novel Pope Joan. It took a lawsuit to accomplish this feat. You see, he decided that a supporting role in the movie Speed Racer might be better for his career than playing Pope Sergius in an epic historical move.

Speed Racer.

He chose to be in Speed Racer. Over Pope Joan.

Wow.

Of course hindsight is 20/20 and Speed Racer was a clunker, so I cannot help but think he made a boneheaded choice to back out of a signed contractual agreement to be involved in what turned out to be a lousy movie.

(I am grateful that my father-in-law sacrificed a few hours time to take my son to see Speed Racer because I did not want to suffer in the movie theater like I did a few years ago when I endured having to watch Home on the Range. Things you do for a child or a grandchild.)

Back to discussing Pope Joan the movie. I met Donna Woolfolk Cross, the author of Pope Joan, ten years ago when she was gracious enough to do a benefit book signing for an organization I headed at the time. She told me then that there were plans of a movie being made and she was given the opportunity to adapt her novel into a screenplay and she had just started working on the script. I gave a few suggestions of condensing early events into montages to get to the heart of the story, then I told her to be prepared that it might take longer than she expected. I had previously been interested in writing screenplays and so I had learned a lot about the movie industry and knew that it was a fickle business. I warned her that it could be a long drawn out process, and unfortunately for her, I was right.

I hope that the project is completed before long and that the film lives up to all her expectations.

Speaking of film delays...I am wondering about the status of the movie Love and Virtue. The production company's website has not been updated in a long time, and my Google Alert on the subject does not turn up much new information. I have seen some mention in regard to articles written about various actors associated with the production and it seems as if they had filmed the movie, however, I do not see any specific date as to when it will be released.

I did find an ominous posting on a message board for IMDb which does not seem all that hopeful to see the release of this movie anytime soon. That's a shame, because there are not many movies based on the legends of Charlemagne and even though in my humble opinion I think some of the actors are too old to play the part of specific characters...I still would like the movie be a success if only to spur interest in the epic poems of Orlando Furioso and Orlando Innamorato which inspired the storyline.

There are a few operas based on this luxurious source material and at least one play, but the legends of Charlemagne are woefully underserved in comparison to the legends of King Arthur.

For the record those operas are:

Alcina by Handel
Ariodante by Handel
Orlando Furioso by Vivaldi

and the play is Bradamante by Robert Garnier.

In other news, several of my friends have done interviews recently. Here are some links to those:

Agent Nathan Bransford was interviewed for a podcast by Bleak House as was as retired homicide detective Lee Lofland. Here is a link to Lee's interview.

Jeff Sypeck was interviewed by Julie K. Rose about songs he listened to which inspired his writing the book Becoming Charlemagne. The transcript of the interview is here and a podcast of Julie discussing the interview is here.

Then in somewhat old news, there is the controversy about Random House canceling the publication of the novel The Jewel of Medina. For those interested in reading a sample of the book for yourself, the blog Smart Bitches, Trashy Books contacted the author Sherry Jones and has posted the Prologue online.

For those interested in reading a Muslim's perspective on the controversy, here is a post by blogger Mike Ghouse entitled Self-Censoring Muslims in which he responds to an editorial published in the Washington Post on the subject.

And lastly for now...the blog War and Game posted a review of the book The Moral Treatment of Returning Warriors in Early Medieval and Modern Times. I had never heard of this book before, has anyone else read this book?

Go ahead and leave your thoughts about any of these disparate subjects. Hopefully you found something intriguing.

Linda

Expectations versus Predictions

Expectations versus Predictions

I started writing this post almost a week or so ago, thinking there's still time, there's still time. Ha! Now, there are only a few short hours left until the release of the last installment of the Harry Potter series. It seems that predictions and spoilers are everywhere.

I will not spoil anyone, for I haven't read the pages posted online or reviews that the New York Times or the Baltimore Sun have published. Honestly, I cannot buy any explanation which either newspaper can give to rationalize why they felt they should publish reviews prior to the release of this book.

They had to know the date of release.

They had to know that there have been a few clueless, braindead merchants who have opened their boxes prior to the date clearly stamped on the outside and sold copies before they were contractually allowed to sell them.

They didn't care. And I think they deserve lots of Howlers sent their way. I'll be dashing off my own. I find it highly ironic that while the newspaper industry is cutting back or eliminating book reviews that others willfully ignore the wishes of the publisher and the author by printing reviews before the books are available.

I don't care how they got a copy, it was wrong. Period.

Keith Olbermann interviewed the woman who wrote the review in the Baltimore Sun and if you'd like to know her justifications for this shameful act, you can find it here at the link Harry Potter and the Broken Secret.


Speaking of Keith Olbermann, if all goes well, John Granger should be a guest on his show tomorrow night. Tune in to MSNBC at 8 pm Eastern, 5 pm Pacific and wish him well.

Now, back to what I had planned on writing about which is namely my expectations versus my predictions in regards to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

They are not the same.

My predictions are due to a combination of my expectations, plus my careful reading of canon and trying to divine what is coming next. However, I will be happy if none of my predictions are borne out, as long as my expectations are met.

Expectations

I want to see that all the meaningful loose ends are tied up in the series. There are so many questions that have thus far have not been answered, that I want to be adequately explained.

I want to know why it is so important that Lily’s eyes were green and Voldemort’s eyes are red.

I want to know why Lily did not have to die. I doubt that he was going soft, so I have to wonder what other purpose did Voldemort have in store for her? Why would he want to spare her life?

Will Norbert come back and save the day? I know my good friend Ama has been rooting for that scenario since the end of book 1. From the deluxe version's book cover it appears that it is a dragon, and I don't want it to be just any old dragon. I want it to be Baby Norbert all grown up.

Why exactly didn’t Harry die as a baby? Was it truly due to his mother’s sacrifice? If so, didn’t other mothers/fathers/lovers throw themselves in front of a loved one to save them, and why wouldn’t the Avada Kadavra curse backfire before? Many people have taken bullets for others, so why would that time have been so different from others?

I’m am of the belief that Harry’s scar is a Horcrux which was made accidentally and it goes to explain why he’s a Parselmouth and why Tom Riddle’s name sounded vaguely familiar in Chamber of Secrets. That’s because he’s got a sliver of Tom’s nasty soul in his body, and it would explain the psychic connection between Voldemort and Harry.

However, there are so many little things that I’d like revealed as well. Who exactly is the Gray Lady and what’s the story behind the Bloody Baron?

Is there anything special with Mrs. Norris and Filch’s relationship? How exactly do they communicate with one another? And how does Mrs. Figg communicate with her cats? Is Jo going to deliberately spell out that Crookshanks is a half-Kneazle? Or is this something that only obsessed fans who read online interviews and scour the accompanying school books written for charity will know, but that average readers of the series will never be explicitly told?

As for the big ending, what I really want is for it to be satisfying.

I want to close the book and think, “yes, that is the only way that it could have ended.”

I plan on having a box of tissues at my side just in case. I actually hope that I'll be blowing my nose throughout the last few chapters because I want her to move me emotionally.

I want this series to become classics that will last through the ages, and therefore I want an ending that is substantial. Rib sticking good, not a cotton-candy-rot-your-teeth end that you will forget quickly.

That does not mean that I expect or demand that it end happily. There are many stories that have become classics that do not have Happily Ever After ending.

I expect that Voldemort will die, but I truly do not care whether or not Harry lives or dies, as long as the ending works well.

I would rather that there is not a big happy wedding scene at the end. Many fans that I've interacted with in the fandom over the years have said for years that they want a Happy Ending. To them it means that it will necessarily include Harry marrying Ginny along with Ron marrying Hermione thus creating One Big Happy Weasley Family (OBHWF). A matrimoniathon if you will.

I’d rather that not be the ending, but I will accept it if JKR writes it satisfyingly. I don't want that as an ending because on the surface it sounds too cloyingly sweet for my tastes, similar to eating five servings of peanut brittle.

I prefer drama with multiple emotions being felt simultaneously. Sweet and sour. Honey and Vinegar. So if JKR goes the OBHWF route, I hope that there will have been some sadness in the Weasley family. Translation: One of the Weasleys will have had to die.

I don’t care which one. Molly. Arthur. Bill. Charlie. Fred or George.

It will give that melancholy tinge to the scene as long as there is a gap in the family photos showing where someone else should have been standing.

I didn’t mention Percy, because unless he reconciles with his family before his death, the gap wouldn’t have the same emotional meaning.

By the way, I do expect and/or hope that Percy will repent for turning against his family in OotP.

I expect that we shall go beyond the veil again, just like we did in Chamber of Secrets. Perdita Potter had a wonderful essay on this that used to be on the Symbolic Flight area on Portkey, but alas it appears to have been taken down.

Perdita suggested that the reason that the Trio could go beyond the veil and return is that they were invited by the dead. Possibly Harry can traverse beyond the veil again, if such another invitation is extended without it meaning that he has a necessarily subsequent death.

Things I would like to see happen in Deathly Hallows

● I want to see a full house-elf rebellion.

There has been too much foreshadowing of house-elves and their oppression by the wizards to just have it merely being a lame political crusade from Hermione in years four and five that she gave up in her sixth year when she decided she wanted to date Ron.

If there isn’t a full blown revolution by house-elves, I will be sorely disappointed in that plot point being built up but not fulfilled.

● I want to see Sirius again even if he is a ghost, and I want to know the entire significance of the magical mirror he gave Harry.

Jo has hinted in several interviews that we have not seen the last of that mirror.

I should hope we haven’t, because if it was merely there in OotP to serve as a plot device to yank on the readers’ heartstrings than I think she violated a rule by Anton Chekhov.

Chekhov was a famous playwright who held that if a prop were introduced, such as a rifle, it must have plot significance otherwise it should not be included.

“One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.”

Or

“If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.”

I want all of Chekhov’s rifles to be fired in Deathly Hallows. All of them.

I don’t want her to have forgotten any of them.

In her infamous interview with The Leaky Cauldron and Mugglenet she was asked what color Ron’s eyes were. She couldn’t believe that she hadn’t snuck in anywhere in the thousands of pages that his eyes were blue.

For those who are keeping track, Jo is trying to show full compliments within the Trio.

Harry’s eyes = green

Hermione’s eyes = brown

Ron’s eyes = blue

Harry = Half-blood

Hermione = Muggleborn

Ron = Pure blood

Harry’s wandcore = phoenix tail feather

Hermione’s wandcore (revealed only on JKR’s website) = dragon heart string

Ron’s wandcore = unicorn tail hair

And yes, I want Hermione’s wand core to be revealed in the canon and not just on her website.

I wouldn't mind if Hagrid dies. In fact, I expect it. I knew lots of my fandom friends were expecting him to be D-E-A-D in book 5. Instead, it was my favorite adult character who had a suffered an early demise.

As John Granger details in his discussions about alchemy - the stages are the nigredo, albedo, then the rubedo.

Black, White, and then Red.

It's Rubeus Hagrid's time to be killed. Although he might be the one whom she said she spared.

Predictions

For those who are still with me in this essay and wondering where I think it will end...know that I have mentioned variations on this theory for several years on various fandom sites.

It is not based on any reading of embargoed material.

If you wish to read further, scroll down - or just leave me a reply now and leave yourself untainted.

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predictions....

I think Harry will die.

He will realize at the end of his quest that the last remaining Horcrux that must be destroyed is the scar on his forehead. If Voldemort’s evil is to be vanquished, he must be willing to sacrifice himself for the good of the Wizarding world as well as the Muggle world.

Harry must sacrifice himself.

Just as Ron was willing to do at the end of Book 1.

I think that Harry will die at the same time that Voldemort dies. Similar to King Arthur/Mordred dying in each others arms.

And Harry will be decapitated.

It’s a grisly way to go, but pretty definitive and it has been foreshadowed.

Repeatedly.

The line in canon that made me think this was his ultimate end was midway through the series in Goblet of Fire.

GoF Scholastic pb edition p. 223

Harry laid down his quill too, having just finished predicting his own death by decapitation.

Here’s a partial list of decapitation in the series. I say partial, because I am sure that I will have missed at least one instance because there are so many.

All are from Scholastic books and paperback versions.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone

p. 124 Nearly Headless Nick

p. 130 the first password was “Caput Draconis” Latin for dragon’s head.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

p. 123 The Headless Hunt

p. 135-7 description of head hockey and headless horsemen

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

p. 125 Harry accidentally beheaded a dead caterpillar

p. 134 Lupin mentions “a headless corpse”

p. 137 A Boggart in the shape of a mummy fell down and “its head rolled off.”

p. 291 Buckbeak was to be executed by decapitation

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

p. 386 Harry and Ron were playing with trick wands and Ron’s tin parrot beheaded Harry’s rubber haddock

p. 411 Ron used a Severing Charm to remove the moldy ruffs and cuffs from his dress robes

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

p. 61 The row of house-elf heads hung on the wall with care.

p. 113 mention of Aunt Elladora who started the tradition of mounting house-elf heads on the walls.

P. 335 The sign of the Hog’s Head tavern of a severed head replete with dripping blood.

p. ?? Twins with their headless hats. I can’t remember exactly where this appears in canon, but I trust people remember this example of the twin’s magical creations.

p. 818 an unauthorized Portkey being made of the severed head from the fountain of Magical Brethren

Interestingly enough I didn't notice any instances of decapitation in Half-Blood Prince. Perhaps, JKR has decided to soften Harry's death after hearing of so many beheadings of people in Iraq during this war/occupation.

I don't know, but if she sticks with her plan as it was laid out years ago, I'm betting on Harry losing his head.

Now, that was my prediction before Order of the Phoenix (OotP). I thought Harry would just die a noble death. After reading OotP, I started thinking that maybe he'd live afterall. Similar to The Princess Bride where Wesley isn't fully dead, just mostly dead.

Perhaps we will discover the full power behind that permanently locked door in the Department of Mysteries that Dumbledore described containing the "force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. " p. 843 in The Lost Prophecy chapter.

I think that somehow Harry will be Resurrected to Life.

Jo had been quoted in the Vancouver Sun back in 2000in regards to questions about her being a Christian saying:

``Yes, I am,'' she says. ``Which seems to offend the religious right far worse than if I said I thought there was no God. Every time I've been asked if I believe in God, I've said yes, because I do, but no one ever really has gone any more deeply into it than that, and I have to say that does suit me, because if I talk too freely about that I think the intelligent reader, whether 10 or 60, will be able to guess what's coming in the books.''

I've looked at that for years and thought that Harry would have to be willing to sacrifice himself.

I still think that will happen. We shall see. There's not much more time before all will be revealed.

Go ahead, and let me know what you predict will happen. Who you think will die, but please don't post any spoilers. Only your educated guesses.

Thanks,

Linda

On Criticism

I've been trying to think of what to write for my next post, and had felt particularly uninspired. I felt it best to be silent than to waste time by putting something frivolous on the blog.

Then I read an entry on one of the agent blogs that I follow. Jessica Faust wrote about giving honest critiques to writers at a recent conference.

BookEnds, LLC — A Literary Agency: Critiques

It was a negative experience for both parties involved. She was trying to convey her professional opinion to a writer who voluntarily chose to submit their work for critique.

Unfortunately the writer did not like hearing Jessica's criticism, and became hostile.

That is not the professional front that you should put forward with anyone in the publishing industry.

I understand the human reaction from both the writer's point of view as well as the person presenting the criticism. I've been on both sides of that equation. Well, except that I've never been an agent with fifteen years experience.

On the receiving end of criticism.

I remember vividly when I was a freshman in college and sat next to my professor's desk while he reviewed my paper. I stared at his red marker hovering over my words scratching them out repeatedly as he diagrammed all the failings he saw. Try as I might, I could not stop the tears from flowing at the sight of my paper being defaced in such a manner. After he finished his critique, he handed me the paper covered in crimson marks and declared that "he liked it." I was given an "A" on the paper, but was numbed by the ordeal. I staggered back to my chair with no idea what he said to me. I felt like a patient given a terminal diagnosis and couldn't focus on anything said past hearing the words "brain tumor." Even though I did well, I felt humiliated, and this was an Honors level class.

I tried reassuring myself that I couldn't have gotten into the class if I hadn't shown some talent. I could help others restructure and improve their papers, but his class made me feel inadequate when it came to my own.

The professor was an old man with a gray pallor who stood in front of the class hunched over like a vulture. He played with the keys on his belt while he lectured and I can't remember a single thing I learned from him. The only things I took away from his class were my fear of his red pen and the conviction that he was a human bird of prey.

Since I was a science major, I couldn't allow myself to become distracted from my core studies by obsessing over general education courses. The reason why this bothered me so much is that writing comes from your soul and your intellect. Writing is a permanent reminder of what your thoughts and how you articulate an argument or simply tell a story. It is not the same thing as learning to plug numbers into a mathematical equation and turn a crank to get a result. Writing is a reflection of the author, and when professors responded negatively to the product of my intellect, I decided to withdraw from submitting future work to their scrutiny. I took a test and "comped" out of my third term requirement for English. Those negative experiences in college class stifled my muse for close to five years of my life. I can't let that happen to me again.

I have developed a thicker skin since then, but I still understand how callous and careless criticism can wound rather than help.

Now, years later I seek out critique of my work in the hopes that errors that I cannot see will be spotted by a fresh pair of eyes. I also need perspective to know if I am achieving the emotional reactions from my readers that I am striving for in certain scenes. I want to know if the dialogue rings true, and if my pacing is too fast or too slow.

It is nice to receive accolades, but if there is something structurally wrong with my story, I need to hear it while I can still do something about it.

I've belonged to a critique group for several years now and it has for the most part worked well. However, you should never just take someone's opinion as a mandate to change things. You should always take people's suggestions as just that: suggestions.

A few months ago after a critique group meeting I found myself in a terrible funk. It was because one of the members gave me criticism that I not only found unhelpful, but damaging to my psyche. I started doubting my own ability to construct a sentence.

I was suffering from what my engineering friends would say is "analysis paralysis."

I felt as if everything I wrote or attempted to write was dreck. Now, I knew it wasn't true, but this was the level of the funk I found myself.

Anne Lamott in her book Bird by Bird refers to it as listening to KFKD radio. (Think of KF**KD).

As I read Anne Lamott's book looking for inspiration, I realized that she has some massively long sentences. Her style runs counter to Strunk and White's Elements of Style by a mile. One sentence was 94 words long. That can't possibly be thought of as concise. Yet, herbook is one of the most frequently cited favorite reference books by writers, even though she eschews concision in her writing. Why? Because she's funny.

A sentence is supposed to convey a thought, and sometimes thoughts are complex which then will need time and space to be developed adequately. Writers are also advised to have a variety in their sentence structure. Too many short sentences in a row are read as staccato and can be jarring to readers. Does this mean that from now on I will be emulating Lamott's use of humongously long sentences? No, but I'm not going to hang my head in shame if I write a sentence having more than X number of words.

One of my friends told me that he tries not to have sentences longer than 14 words. He literally counts the number of words in each sentence. I am not about to follow that practice. Instead, I shall gauge the effectiveness of my sentences by whether or not the meaning is lost by its end. If the logic train derails in the deep woods, the sentence needs revising. I shall also take into consideration the overall flow of the piece. If the narrative becomes snagged then I'll revise, but not because it went past an arbitrary word limit.

Giving out solicited criticism

I have offered my feedback to other writers and have thankfully not gotten such a visceral response as Jessica Faust received.

My critique group is structured so that we send our writing samples to the other members ahead of time. It allows us to print out and read the submission and make line edits. It also allows for us to have a broader view of the piece rather than a few sample pages being read aloud.

One of my strengths is in spotting continuity errors. That generally comes about when a writer has made some changes in a story, but forgot to incorporate those changes throughout the text or when the writer hasn't thought through all the implications of a plot choice. I questioned the age difference between two characters once because I didn't think that things added up correctly and my friend admitted that he had changed the little sister's age, but forgot to update it throughout his novel.

I've also given critiques to members of my writers club when they ask for my opinion on their writing. Recently I read the first attempt at short story writing by someone who has only written technical papers. He had become inspired by interacting with fiction writers and wanted to try his hand at it.

I had started reading his story and made some line edits before coming to the realization that structurally the whole thing simply didn't work. There was no conflict and therefore no drama. He had two talking heads in a room that were discussing a political issue. Neither character was defined, it was simply a way to have dialogue exchanged which allowed political beliefs to be espoused.

Nothing happened in the scene. It was only an excuse to dress up a position paper as fiction and use quotation marks in the hopes of informing people through entertaining them. It failed because it did not entertain.

I've written political essays in the past, so I know full well the urge to put forth my positions on issues that I am passionate. However, I also know and love drama. If you wish to mix drama and politics, the dramatic needs of the story must always come first.

I wound up explaining those differences to him and suggested he read Audition by Michael Shurtleff which I find indispensable when thinking of dramatic conflict. I also made a few suggestions of how could put his characters in peril. Then, he could slowly draw out the information in a police interrogation, should one of those characters choose to use methods other than peaceful, civil disobedience to further his political goals. By the end of our discussion, he thanked me for my time and my insight. I didn't give him any of my line edits, because I knew that very little of what he originally wrote would survive any second drafts he made on that story.

Sometimes it is the global problems in a piece of writing that is the biggest obstacle that must be dealt with before you get down to the sentence structure level of spelling, punctuation, grammar, pacing, and concision.

Offering Criticism to people you don't know

I became friends with John Granger because of my responding to his open invitation in his first book on the Harry Potter series, The Hidden Key to Harry Potter. He had included his email address in the back of the book and I wrote to him via email.

It wasn't a gushy note that laid the praise on thick. Nope. I wrote him a detailed message where I started out introducing myself and told him what I liked about his book, and then I mentioned errors that I spotted including page numbers for his reference. Some were spelling mistakes, whilst others were factual errors. I then shared my thoughts where I differed with him on areas of interpretation or speculation which could not be classified as errors but instead were differences of opinion. I backed up those reasons with citations from canon, but I was not dogmatic about it. I realize that my opinions on these matters might be proven in the future to be totally wrong. Therefore, I did not try to persuade him to the absolute correctness my theories, but rather to introduce him to other schools of thought on the matters under discussion.

I was trying to be as diplomatic as possible, because I felt that it was the polite thing to do. He appreciated how I comported myself and we have since then have corresponded via email for close to four years. There are many areas of speculation that we disagree on, but we are never disagreeable about it.

Not everyone who has read his books or online essays seems to share that same sense of propriety.

Prior to the Sonorus event, I met up with John and Mary Granger and had lunch with them. John bemoaned the fact that not everyone in the HP online fandom followed what he called the "Linda McCabe school of diplomacy" by contacting someone directly before critiquing their work in public.

That discussion came up due to several online fansites I read recently with topic threads discussing the concept of literary alchemy in the HP series. There were some people who had done a lot of researching and theorizing on the issue, and had been inspired to begin their inquiry into the subject by John Granger's work. However, the difference is that they never tried to engage him in a discussion and see if their underlying assumptions had any validity to them.

Some who posted mentioned his work in unflattering terms and dogmatically stated that he was incorrect in his interpretations, and that they knew how these things worked.

I've read enough on the subject to realize that alchemy is a complex subject that cannot be fully understood in an afternoon's worth of reading or even a month or year. It can and has been the lifelong pursuit of many people over the centuries. Alchemical symbolism is deliberately complicated and understanding it is not like simple mathematics where you place numbers in an equation and churn out a result. Nope, it is more like higher mathematics where there may not yet be a solution to given problem, but the trick is to try and focus your intellect on how to approach solving the problem.

Which means that when you are trying to predict future plot lines using the various characters in a series following a literary alchemy framework isn't as easy as it looks, and there are many, many ambiguities which can be resolved in multiple if not an infinite number of possibilities.

Only J.K. Rowling will truly know what influences she drew upon when she made her detailed plot of the series. Only JKR knows what details in her story such as the mention of the herb dittany is there for symbolic meaning or simply there to dress up the narrative.

She is like a magpie with mythology and takes things from a myriad of sources and then twists them to fit her own plot needs. She is not bound by any rules that force her to follow any predetermined formula. In fact, having unforeseen plot twists is exactly what her fans have come to expect from her. Expect the unexpected.

John decided against posting a rebuttal post in that forum to defend his scholarship in this area for he felt that the standards of polite discourse had not been followed. If they had tried to engage with him from the beginning in a discussion about Harry Potter and literary alchemy, he would have responded. Instead, they simply attacked him in a public forum and put forth their own interpretation as if it was the only credible possible explanation.

I enjoy having layered symbolic meaning to stories. It adds a richness and depth to its meaning. However, there can be more than one meaning derived from symbolism and it is wise to remember that.

Later, while reading my literary blog subscriptions, I came across a link to an article written about how best to approach people you don't know by email. There are a lot of good points in the article and I would hope that these precepts would soon become a standard part of netiquette.