August 2007 Archives

From harrysjulie:

Oh, and did you ever notice that Daffodils look like trumpets?

Why, yes! And cornucopias. And gramophones. And bullhorns.

From Lindsay:

Where would you live if NY wasn't an option? Also, what are your three favorite restaurants, and what do you order when you go there?

Ooh, fun questions. I wouldn't have been able to answer the first before the tour, but now I can definitively say (and everyone watch my mother wince) San Francisco. I was in it for barely a second, but I felt a kinship with it and fell in love with the wacky, colorful skyline; the upswept fog that can, at times, look like cotton candy magically suspended over the city; the always nearby water; the curvy streets; the tiny-marshmallow-like smattering of boats in the bay; the INSANE drivers - seriously, NY has nothing on this place - coupled with the INSANE cable cars, and the way the city at street level at night looks simultaneously seedy and sophisticated. I did NOT like driving on the Golden Gate Bridge, as whomever is in charge seems to have not thought of anything but soda-bottle-like-contraptions placed every few feet as a method of dividing the left side from the right side. At least there's a nice, solid, concrete divider on its East Coast cousin, the Verrazzano.

I'd also seriously consider Washington, DC. I used to live there and still love it. Perfect blend of city and suburb, but it can be a cold, white, hard place - moreso than NY, I think.

Restaurants: They tend to change depending on borough. In Staten Island, our favorite restaurants are 1) a little diner about 10 minutes from my mom's house, that's less of a diner than a full restaurant that likes to call itself a diner; the kind of place where the owner knows everyone and also knows which dishes to recommend on which night; I usually have a turkey burger, or a chicken teriyaki, or sometimes a grilled chicken over sauteed spinach (yum). 2) Aesop's Tables: Tiny restaurant on Bay Street that looks like a Shakespearean fairy garden. Been awhile since I've gone, so I don't remember the food all that well, but it won for mood. 3) Da Noi: Best Italian food on Staten Island. Chicken Capricciosa, usually.

Brooklyn: I'm still getting settled in, but, 1) DiFara's. Best pizza on the planet. Plain slice. Made by little guy from Napoli who doesn't seem to exist to have any function but roll dough, spread sauce, dollop cheese, cut basil, and pour oil. He's been doing it for forty years. It shows in the pizza. If I drag you here I probably like you. 2) Ponte Vecchio: In Bay Ridge, and easily my family's most visited haunt for occasions - my father loves the puttanesca there, and he's very hard to please on that score. I usually succumb to a big plate of pasta here. 3) Aunt Rosetta's Kitchen: Private establishment. Usually only frequented by Anellis and Scalas (but you can bring someone in by marriage or lengthy dating). The head of the kitchen knows to make me special meatless sauce, even when making pasta al forno or manicotti. Cooks with vegetables grown out the window. And on Christmas Uncle Enzo makes sure we know that the lobsters scream as they hit the boiling water. Awesome place.

Manhattan: Not even a chance I can pick three, but here are some that pop to mind quickly: 1) Shade: Crepes place in lower Manhattan that I don't go to often, but always makes its offerings memorable. It used to be just a stand out a window; now there's an attached sit-in bar/restaurant. Watching the crepes get made is the best part, though. I usually get some sort of green vegetable, turkey, and cheese in a crepe. 2) Ollie's: Midtown Chinese food restaurant; when I worked next door to it, I used to order the steamed veggie dumplings obsessively. They were only $5 and easily the tastiest things I'd ever had out of a Chinese food place. I've never had a dumpling come even close since. 3) Friend of a Farmer: Easily the best brunch I've ever had, and I'm not alone - the line is usually three blocks down on a weekend. Fresh country bread rolls, hearty pancakes, appley tastes everywhere...I haven't been there in about three years but I would go right now if it weren't 3 a.m.

Now I'm hungry. Thanks a lot.

From Olivia:

How/When did your love of theater start?

Mostly from sixth grade drama, but really when my godmother took me to see Crazy for You about a month after my grandmother died. It was a perfect salve, and stuck with me.

Do you prefer musical theater?

To regular theater? Not specifically. I think about musical theater more because it's more easily thought about / sung. It's also usually more fun to go to musical theater - at least, it has more shiny things that occupy the eyes. When I'm feeling pensive I like a straight play (or a Sondheim musical).

When did you know you wanted to be a writer?

A lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, later than most people. College. Well, no, scratch that: I wrote a novel when I was eight. But I didn't think I could feasibly write as a career until college.

Do you like your new apartment?

I'll like it a lot more when I have a bookcase, a sofa, a place for my TV; when I've sold my extra desk and futon and air conditioning unit; when I've painted the bedroom and installed the door to the tub and recolored the kitchen and acquired a nice rug. But other than that I love it loads. It finally feels like it's mine. It feels most like it's mine when I wake up and make coffee.

Favorite books(aside from the obvious haha)?

Savage Beauty by Nancy Milford. Good in Bed by Jennifer Weiner. Hot Seat by Frank Rich. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (hated it in high school; loved it when I reread it after college). The Hours by Michael Cunningham. His Dark Materials: The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife, The Amber Spyglass, a three-book series by Philip Pullman.

The JKR interview. -that can never be over-discussed can it?

Never! But I don't know what you want to know. People often ask me why it was so great for me personally, and I've said it a lot but I'll say it again: It's because Jo, as an idol, didn't disappoint, as so many idols do. My notions about her were not destroyed, only enhanced -and that's a gift even more huge than the golden snake ring wrapped around my finger. I'll also say that that it changed my life in many ways, made great and towering goals seem within reach, and gave me the ability to sometimes have, sometimes fake, the confidence I need to accomplish so many things.

OK, enough for now, and it's late. :) More soon. And thank you for all your wonderfully kind words about Grogsnot. Every time one appeared, ol' Groggy seemed to be limping a little more. :)

or, answers part 2

You should blog about the random things that remind you of musicals, from Helena

Everything reminds me of musicals. I'm looking at a pile of stuffed animals right now at my friend Christy's house, where I'm staying tonight, and I'm thinking of Avenue Q. Every time I make a scary decision or am faced with the choice between acting out of fear and not (more on this in a sec), I think of Rent. When I rifle through my iPod it's to lament how little of my showtunes have made it on there, thanks to an iTunes disaster, and how much replenishing I need to do. The only thing that doesn't remind me of musicals is Harry Potter, which means, with the amount of Harry Potter in my life, that I can achieve some sort of balance. Though, it's always tempting to break into "Annie": "It's a Hard Knock Life," featuring the Weasley family, or "Maybe," featuring Harry in his cupboard. I think I started to filk this whole musical once, into "Harry" from "Annie." There are surprising parallels.

Here's question. What kind of music have you guys been listening to the most in the car so far on your PotterCast tour? Wizard rock? Something else?, from "A 30-ish Potter fan"

Tour's over, but, we did listen to a lot of Wizard Rock, half of the time to John's delight but some of the time to his consternation ("ENOUGH WIZARD ROCK!" etc). He had no shot with me and Bre and Sue in the car. The leadup to book seven made us more likely to want to listen to wizard rock than ever before; it was definitely a much larger portion of my musical diet then than it is now. It was all Harry and the Potters, the Remus Lupins, Draco and the Malfoys, Ministry of Magic, and some Oliver Boyd and the Remembralls, the lattermost two of which I hadn't heard before I got my hands on Bre's iPod. I just don't know who Oliver Boyd IS, or what he has to do with Harry Potter, and forgot to ask Christian (who "is" Oliver Boyd) that at Prophecy. Woops. Anyone know? Bueller? Bueller?

Outside of wizard rock, we listened to a lot of musicals (Rent was popular as we were driving into Santa Fe, for obvious reasons), because they made good singalongs. One very late night, to keep ourselves entertained and awake, we staged an entire Disney singalong.

When it wasn't wizrock or musicals, and I had the controls, I most often put on The Blow, The Fratellis, Norah Jones, Rilo Kiley, Jason Anderson, Bruce Springsteen, U2, Michael Jackson, Cheap Trick, Bon Jovi, 'NSYNC (yes, seriously, I love them in that high school way) and Elvis Presley. Totally dysfunctional playlist, but that's what my iPod is like. No rhyme, no reason.

And as much as humanly possible, I indoctrinated others to the ways of Eddie Izzard.

Now that you are travelling, have you started work on your book? You're meeting fans and seeing this phenomenon stark. Its so immense that it makes one feel so small and minute..It would be a tough job condensing it all in a book..Any fears??...Hats off to you for such an attempt....Also, when you publish the book, where will it be available? I'm in India...will it reach us Leaky fans here?, from Silos

OK, one thing at a time:

Firstly, thank you for the good wishes. The book will currently only be available in the US, but on Amazon to whomever wants to order it from anywhere. Hopefully it will be published in the UK and other countries so that you don't have to pay ludicrous shipping charges to get it. India...I can only hope! It all depends on how good I make it. Eck.

What you said is very true: I got to see it stark, and it is an immense thing that makes you feel immensely small.

"It would be a touch job condensing it all in a book. Any fears??" - Well, let me see.

There's the fear that despite the evidence I put forward in my proposal, I am not the person to do this job. There's the fear that I'm too young, and too inexperienced. There's the fear that the phenomenon is much too big for me and I've taken on too much. There's simple fear that hits me every morning when I stare at a blank page. There's the fear that I'll not get all the facts I need and the book will therefore not offer anyone anything new. There's the fear that the personal elements of the book will simply be uninteresting to anyone who isn't me. There's the fear that I won't make deadline. There's the towering fear that I'm not a good enough writer. There's the fear that those personal elements won't be uninteresting at all, but will tell much too much about myself - will be way too honest, way too central, make me way too vulnerable. There's the fear that those I write about will hate how they've been portrayed and therefore hate me. There's the fear that my friends and family won't like it, and will spend their lives trying to hide that fact from me. There's the fear of it flopping and spelling the end of my writing career. There's the fear that Jo would perceive me as writing a companion book, as trying to "cash in" on the phenomenon instead of adding something valuable to it. There's the fear that I won't add anything valuable to it. There's the fear that I'm never working hard enough or long enough. There's the fear that what I've written today, just now, is rubbish and should be sent out to writing classes as examples of bad prose. There's the fear that I'll miss something crucial, or accidentally make a big factual error. There's the fear of disappointing my editor, my agent, my mother. And above all, there's the fear of disappointing myself.

So... yes.

A large part of my daily energy is spent on something like Occlumency. When I sit down and try to proceed, this little green dude with horns pops up in my head and starts listing all these fears, loudly. I need to name him. Let's call him something completely ugly...Grogsnot. Got a nice hard sound to it, don't you think? Grogsnot, my little green dude, dances around and tells me how inadequate I am, how every word that gets put in front of the other is worse than the one before it, and that I was crazy to even attempt to try and do this, so why don't I just give up and go play Guitar Hero for the rest of the day? Sometimes it's easy to tune him out and get to work; sometimes it's not. I'm getting progressively better at it. His biggest enemy is my progress. As I make phone calls, send emails, write, read transcriptions, organize, make timelines - as these things occur, he gets paler and paler, and further and further away, until he's gone and I've had a productive day. Then he is banished for the rest of the night, but sleeps and restores his energy, and is back to try to get to me the next morning. The only thing that poisons him is good work, and as I settle down from the craziness of this summer, and head into lengthening periods of quiet work, he is becoming less powerful. Maybe one day I won't meet him at all. That'll be a good day.

The book is due (to be edited) Jan. 9, and Jan. 11, which will be a year since J.K. Rowling finished Deathly Hallows, is a Friday. This means that during this year's holidays I will be tearing my hair out; I will probably emerge only five days or so: Thanksgiving, Nancy's wedding, Christmas, Christy's wedding, New Year's Eve (maybe). I will not celebrate my birthday until 2008 (though this year I forgot to celebrate it with friends, so maybe it'll be a double). On January 9 and 10, I will sleep. I will hopefully also be celebrating my friend Rob's release from prison (Jan. 9 at last schedule, but who knows when it'll really be). On January 11, if all goes to plan, I'll have a big party with friends and family to celebrate life and good work and the stamping out of the little green Grogsnot.

Hey - sorry for the radio silence of late, but you can probably guess why it occurred. Life is returning to its usual level of insanity, which is good. So, I'm going to start answering the questionsyou guys posed here in this post. Some fun stuff there, so I'll try to go in order:

Did you watch the Tonys?", from Airemay

No! It's a sign of how Pottercentric my life has become that I am way, way, way behind on my musical-going. I had a creeping feeling I should have gone to Spring Awakening early, and then it went and won a million Tonys and now tickets are hard to get. John's wrangled one for the end of the month, though; he and a few of his eighteen sisters are coming into town to see Rent and Spring Awakening, and I'm happy to join them at both! I saw Anthony in Rent after all, on his first night back - it was insanity. I've seen him get mobbed a few times - that night was different. This wasn't the thoughtful, hopeful crowding of people who want to look him straight in the eyes and appreciate what the past few hours have meant: this was full-on celebrity gaga get-me-a-piece-of-your-clothing kind of mobbing. I've never seen security just pick him up and throw him in a car before, to assure his safety - but that's what had to happen. I'm not sure what's gone on at the theater since; someone came up to me recently and said that he was the only one to come out of the stage door and spend 25 minutes signing autographs. Unsurprising and awesome. The show, itself, was good and bad - good for obvious reasons, bad because the cast didn't seem to have settled themselves into each other yet, which is only understandable. I'll be interested to see it in a few weeks.

SUMMER! WOOOOOT! Where are you excited about going? what do you wanna see while you're there? What do you wanna do? etc etc, from Andy

I was most excited about visiting Santa Fe, Ohio (to meet Sue and John's families, including Sue's gorgeous little boy Andrew and John's nutty brother-in-law Steve) and Northern California. Santa Fe turned out to be quaint and awesome (pictures to come) but impossible to drive in and sleepier than I'd like any one place to really be. We had a great night out with Potter fans, though, at a charming New Mexican restaurant that had great Slytherin Guacamole and soapapillas to make you melt. Ohio was as crazy as expected, with 13 people as funny as John Noe attending the show along with, it seemed, everyone else in Columbus. Best crowd ever. Northen California stole my breath. We drove up the scenic route by accident, and just kept stopping to admire the coarse, choppy ocean, purple-shaded sky, and towering, craggy rock formations. In Eureka, CA, we had about 20 people at the show and had some really great canon discussion. We also stayed in a bed-and-breakfast that looked like an old Haunted Mansion. I also loved seeing Cheryl in San Francisco, in particular watching the fireworks with her and James, on July 4. And coming to the Borders in NYC to a crazy, welcoming crowd that included my parents, agent and editor, was wonderful.

We really didn't have time to sightsee anywhere, and it was OK; nothing beat pulling over on the side of the road in San Bernadino, CA, to find an abandoned sofa, or the teeny gas station in New Mexico where the house across the street was actually a post office and the girls inside the store were selling hot dogs and lemondade. Dust flew from the screen door of the store, every time it closed. Those are the kinds of things you can't get out of a tour book.

I've been thinking about this topic for a few days. The status of the local book store and will they be around for much longer? Since you attended Printers Row Book Fair, are going to be at Andersons for the book release and PoterCast is sponsored by Borders you may have some interesting insight to this topic., from MikeD

I think and hope and pray the local bookstore will be around forever. I think local/independent bookstores have an uphill battle, with chain stores cropping up everywhere. The case of Potter is interesting, too, as a lot of independent stores refused to sell HP7 because to compete with the chains and online retailers they would basically have to pay people to take it. "This should be the biggest sales day ever," one independent retailer told me. Instead they had to sit out of the biggest book celebration on record. I'll go into more detail about this in the book.

We're always mindful that we're sponsored by a large, corporate book chain, but since large, corporate book chains do a lot to advertise and popularize books and reading, there's a certain level of indignation about this situation to which we can't rise. I just think that independent stores have to work harder to attain and maintain a local audience; they have to have events and get creative about their marketing, they have to create unique atmospheres - they have to, in short, be as different from a book chain as their non-book-chain status suggests they are. That's unfortunate, but I also think that a quality independent store will attract a core of people who love quality, independent stores, that could keep them going. There's no question that the presence of large chains makes life harder for smaller stores - but there's also charm and freedom that smaller stores have that large chains can't enjoy.

More soon (and feel free to leave more in the comments, this is fun).