Tales of a Wizard — 10 Wow Things About J.K. Rowling

J.K Rowling’s life may not be as happening as Harry Potter, but her journey has been quite intriguing as well. Here are a few facts that you might want to know about the author of Harry Potter:

• This year, a first edition hardcover copy of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone sold for £150,000 at an auction. It contains exhaustive commentary by the author and also includes 22 illustrations by Rowling herself.
• The first fan letter Rowling received was from a woman, who addressed her as “Dear Sir”.
• Rowling made it to Forbes’ “The World’s Most Powerful Women” list for two consecutive years (2012 and 2013). Her selection was backed by the fact that apart from being the richest and one of the highest paid authors in the world, she has inspired an entire generation of children to read again.
• 31^st July is important for both Harry Potter and J.K Rowling. It’s their birthday.
• Rowling was a researcher at Amnesty International before taking up writing as a full time career.
• Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone was entirely typed on a typewriter. The initial ideas for the first Potter book were written on, well, a napkin.
• The first Harry Potter manuscript was rejected by twelve publishing houses. Bloomsbury reluctantly accepted it paying Rowling a modest advance.
• Rowling was adamant on casting British actors for Potter films. Also, Steven Spielberg turned down the offer to direct the first film saying that he wanted to make an animated movie combining multiple Harry Potter novels.
• What’s J.K. Rowling’s favorite book? The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.
• Rowling has a habit of visiting Potter fan sites regularly. She was once told to shut up in a Mugglenet chatroom due to her lack of knowledge on Harry Potter.

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Memories Revisited: We Remember Seabury Quinn

Who were the most popular writers of Weird Tales magazine? Most readers would name Robert E. Howard, H.P Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith. But we keep forgetting Seabury Quinn — the creator of the once incredibly popular occult detective Jules de Grandin.

Quinn, a resident of Washington D.C., was a law graduate. He served in World War I and subsequently started his writing career as a pulp fiction writer. His early stories include Demons of the Night (published in Detective Story Magazine), Was She Mad, The Stone Image, and The Phantom Farmhouse. Quinn also worked as a government lawyer during World War II.

Quinn’s main claim to fame was, of course, Jules de Grandin. Interestingly, he was not the first to develop the concept of occult detective. Notable examples from the past include Sax Rohmer’s Morris Klaw (check out The Dream Detective), and Algernon Blackwood’s John Silence: Physician Extraordinary. However, Grandin simply smoked his predecessors to ashes in terms of popularity. Right from their first adventure together on Weird Tales — The Horror on the Links — Grandin and Trowbridge was a blockbuster hit with the readers. The occult detective turned out to be one of the most popular attractions of Weird Tales and this led to Quinn’s lifelong association with the magazine.

Quinn’s work was even more popular than his iconic competitors like Howard and Lovecraft. He knew exactly what the readers wanted and dished out something unapologetically pulp and surprisingly non-repetitive with the right dose of sensuality. Also, he was Weird Tales’ most prolific writer by far.

You might try out The Complete Adventures of Jules de Grandin (Battered Box edition), but there is also a comprehensive 6 volume paperback series from Popular Library:

• The Adventures of Jules de Grandin,
• The Casebook of Jules de Grandin,
• The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin,
• The Horror Chambers of Jules de Grandin,
• The Skeleton Closet of Jules de Grandin.
• The Devil’s Bride (only Jules de Grandin novel)

Quinn’s last pulp story was Master Nicholas (1965) published in The Magazine of Horror. He died in 1969, just a week before his 80th Birthday.

Unlike Lovecraft and Howard, Quinn has faded away from public memory. Jules de Grandin brought him fame and fortune, but he was also panned by the critics, who described his works as “undistinguished”, and “stereotyped”. Nonetheless, Quinn was enormously popular, and he is still a guilty pleasure for old school readers. His works are delightfully pulpish, but as Robert Weinberg points out, they are “best when taken in moderate doses.”

Seabury Quinn ebook free:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/32514/32514-h/32514-h.htm

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Download ebook: The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (PDF)

The Three Musketeers (and its sequels) cannot be simply defined as historical fiction. To a lot of people French history is limited to just what Alexandre Dumas wrote in these novels. Dumas’ outstanding delineation of King Louis XIII, Queen Anne, and particularly Cardinal Richelieu makes the dry characters of history books intriguing and alive. And how would you forget the dangerously seductive Milady de Winter, who you wish were more than just a fictional character (check out Milla Jovovich in the latest movie adaptation of the novel)?

As long as friendship, loyalty, passion doesn’t perish from the face of the earth, we shall remember Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the wild, courageous, handsome D’Artagnan.

Did you know that D’Artagnan’s character is based on Charles de Bast de Castelmore, who was count of Artagnan. Charles was a musketeer in the service of King Louis XIV.

Chivalrous romance, conspiracies, nail biting escapes, assassinations, betrayals, duels — this novel has more force than an intercontinental ballistic missile.

If you have an inspired, headstrong revolutionary in you, The Three Musketeers is your Bible. Viva de France.

Download The Three Musketeers ebook (PDF)

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/dumas/3musk1.pdf

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Thus Spake the Gurus: Famous Authors on Themselves

A note to the literary prodigies:

We know why you said it.

The Honest Man

You write for people like us. You have got too many followers. But the snobs won’t take you seriously. Their noses are so high that when they sneeze the ceiling gets wet. You don’t know if you want to laugh or cry over it. Actually, you are not bothered, and eventually you  make a statement on what you are.

The Perfectionist

The world adores you, but you can’t stand yourself. Whatever echoes within yourself doesn’t take shape the way you want. You are still brilliant, but you simply won’t accept it.

The Modest and the Refined

Good Sir, thou knowest thy worth, but thou art too humble to say it. Modesty forbids what the law does not. In the name of polite and noble behavior, you are unkind to yourself.

The Sarcastic Intellectual

We knew you were good; there was no need for double entendre. Save it for your enemies mate; we are on your side. Respect.

The I-know-my-cards Guy

You aren’t Shakespeare and you’re happy about it. You got something else to offer and you know the readers will jump at it. Bravo to the no-nonsense marketing bloke.

For whatever reason you said it, you were damn right. You know, we’re all trying to make a point.

Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend’em your ears. Let the Litterateurs speak.

“It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn’t give it up because by that time I was too famous.” — Robert Benchley

 
“I can’t change overnight into a serious literary author. You can’t compare apples to oranges. William Faulkner was a great literary genius. I am not.” — John Grisham

 
“I am the literary equivalent of a Big Mac and Fries.” — Stephen King

 
“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.” — Gustave Flaubert

 
“It was dishonorable enough that I perverted art for money. I then topped that felony by becoming, as I say, fabulously well-to-do. Well, that’s just too damn bad for me and for everybody. I’m completely in print, so we’re all stuck with me and stuck with my books.” — Kurt Vonnegut

 
“A conglomerate heap of trash, that’s what I am. But it burns with a high flame.” — Ray Bradbury

 
“I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.” – Mark Twain

 
“Lolita is famous, not I. I am an obscure, doubly obscure, novelist with an unpronounceable name.” — Vladimir Nabokov

 
“I have been successful probably because I have always realized that I knew nothing about writing and have merely tried to tell an interesting story entertainingly.” — Edgar Rice Burroughs Continue reading →

Cover of the Week: Salambo by Gustave Flaubert

This epic saga of lust, cruelty, and sensuality is set in Carthage and describes the intriguing events that follow the First Punic War. The rulers of Carthage refuse to pay the mercenary army they hired to fight with Rome. The mercenaries, led by Matho, subsequently attack the ancient walled city. Both sides use treachery and deceit to fight the enemy. In between, the sensual and enigmatic Salambo, daughter of one of Carthage’s generals, enters the stage and makes the equation complex. She plays for her own reasons and affects the outcome of the war.

Salambo is not Madame Bovary, but it is the book that helped Gustave Flaubert to reinforce his position as a writer of distinction. Replete with epic battles, looting of treasures, horrible torture of prisoners, and colourful descriptions, this is one memorable journey, which gives you “an orgy of historical hashish”. If you were a time traveler, you definitely want to be on Flaubert’s Carthage.

Read Salambo online:

http://www2.hn.psu.edu/faculty/jmanis/flaubert/salammbo.pdf Continue reading →