Today's special guest is the lovely Catriona McPherson. Welcome to Type M!
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By the
time this blogpost goes live, I’ll have finished it, so will millions of others
and the world will have spoken. So
I thought I’d chip in with a spot of prognostication.
It
was great to be around while the publishing phenomenon of Harry Potter
unfolded, wasn’t it? It was
fun. Remember when Amazon’s
headers were: books, DVD, music, household and Harry Potter? What writer could fail to thrill at
that happening in a fellow writer’s life?
And then there was the time when a crowd of us from the Harrogate crime
writing festival went to watch the midnight launch of The Half-Blood Prince. What better celebration of the joy of books
could there be than all those little Yorkshire witches and wizards up past
their bedtimes, fizzing with anticipation? There was more enthusiasm on that street outside Waterstone’s
than you could find in the conference bar at midnight on a Thursday, let me
tell you.
And
now it’s happening again. JK
Rowling is #1 and #2 (hardback and Kindle) in the Amazon charts on both sides
of the Atlantic before the book is even published. I can’t even imagine how happy that must make you.
So
here are my predictions – in advance, like all good predictions should be. Don’t you hate how people are always
showing, after things happen, that Nostradamus predicted them? Anyone can get a name for being an
oracle that
way.
First,
it’ll be really, really good.
She’s a born storyteller, like Stephen King and Dorothy Whipple. Yes, she over-uses the word vast and yes, of course, the
epilogue of the last Harry Potter was like something at the end of a rom-com,
but come on! My prediction is that
The Casual Vacancy is going to be one of the best stories I
read this year.
Second,
it’ll be full of easter eggs.
Pagford, the village where it’s set was where Peter Wimsey and Harriet
Vane went after their wedding. So we can look forward to some charming nods to
Rowling’s literary heroes, similar to the one at the beginning of The
Philosopher’s Stone,
when Albus Dumbledore’s eyes were described as “light, bright and sparkling”
(like Jane Austen’s prose).
Third,
I predict, with a spit and polish of my crystal ball, that one or two people
might drop in on Amazon to share their thoughts. The reviews will cluster at the extremities: a lot of
one-stars and five-stars and a smattering of two- three- and four-stars. The five star reviews will gush and the
one-star reviews will sneer. The
three star reviewers will be so pleased with themselves they might forget to
mention the book at all.
Fourth,
someone will be offended. Or at
least will claim to be. Actually
they’ll be – to use a good Scots expression – not suited. If JK Rowling’s adult novel has any
sex, swearing, politics or violence, a lot of people are going to be deeply not
suited. She’s a children’s
writer! And after she had the
common decency to find her own three children under a gooseberry bush, now she
goes and spoils it all!
Fifth,
every newspaper and magazine is going to review it, but some of them will
review it undercover of drawling about how amusing it is that everyone else is
reviewing it. (Like how the Guardian writes about the
Kardashians.) All of these
newspaper reviews will be considered, temperate, and fair but the comments on
the online editions will be a pit of cackling madness.
Sixth,
it will take less than a month for the first copy to appear in the Yolo County SPCA Thrift
Store. A related prediction: there will be one
in the Edinburgh Oxfam Bookshop by next Friday.
The glass grows cloudy; the veil has fallen; these are my predictions for NewJKRowling Day.
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Author of the Macavity, UK Dagger and UK Theakston’s
Old Peculier nominated Dandy Gilver mysteries, set in Scotland in the 1920s. St
Martin’s Press launched the series in the US in 2011 with The Proper
Treatment of Bloodstains and the latest, An
Unsuitable Day for A Murder, came out in June. The
UK is a book ahead: A Bothersome Number of Corpses was launched there in July.
Catriona lives in northern California with two black cats and a
scientist. Check out Dandy’s world at www.dandygilver.com and Catriona’s at catrionamcpherson.blogspot.com.