Meeting Charlaine Harris

So, today I was given the best present ever, in return for a long day filled with college queues and trying to convince them to let me back for a second year, a present in the form of meeting the author, Charlaine Harris.
Known for her Sookie Stackhouse books, Harris shot to fame after the the books were taken up by HBO and turned into the highly successful True Blood franchise, starring Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer, who play the telepath Sookie Stackhouse and her love interest, the vampire, Bill Compton.

With this being the thing that drew me to her work, it was no wonder that when it came time to think up questions to ask her, all I could think about was True Blood, as I'm sure was the case for a lot of the people in the room with me, as we waited for the arrival of one of the greatest supernatural writers of this generation.
When she finally stepped into the room and took to the mic, she was charming, funny and incredibly witty, telling us that it was okay to ask questions about True Blood and other questions that didn't relate to her current book, as long as they made sense, but not to ask her to allow us to lick her, honestly, she actually said that!

Along with informing a girl that some people may not have read the last of the Sookie books yet, after the girl in question said aloud the name of the person that the lead woman ends up with at the end of the series, she also answered questions regarding locations where her stories are based, how the first book she ever wrote in a creative writing class was picked up and published, and also how her favourite vampire is Lestat (not to mention she corresponds with Anne Rice!)  She also answered my own questions.

When we met Charlaine to get our books signed, I'm the one with the half blonde hair.

As a practising writer myself, I felt the need to ask her about character creation, which made me question whether some of my characters in the past have ever even been needed, or if they were even pivitol enough? I also asked her for her opinion on fan fiction.

Admittedly, I was very worried in asking her this question. Especially after she admitted to talking to Anne Rice regularly, what with Rice being so against fan fiction and all, even to the point where she tried to sue ( This may even be a topic I might blog about some time in the future), I feared that Harris would be very offended by the very idea of fan fiction. I mean, Rice HAD posted this to her website, (warning in advance, it's really from her website and I had nothing to do with the writing of it, I merely copied and pasted, and I get no money out of this blog whatsoever):

"I do not allow fan fiction. The characters are copyrighted. It upsets me terribly to even think about fan fiction with my characters. I advise my readers to write your own original stories with your own characters. It is absolutely essential that you respect my wishes."

But, just as she said that she was all for equal rights, no matter race, gender or sexual orientation, she was also for fan fiction, although she admitted that she didn't understand it, claiming that she had been told to read some after she was offered a position on some board for some convention thing.

So anyway, I ended up being convinced to buy her book, and stand in line for an autograph, while my amazing friend, who surprised me with my ticket, stood beside me with her copy of True Blood, which she had gotten for 50p in a charity shop (the clever bitch, aka sunrisewithmysadcaptains.blogspot.co.uk). When it came our turn, I had to ask if she had read any fan fiction based on her own world, to which she admitted she had. I have to freely state right now, that I am involved with fan fiction and I have never posted any True Blood fan fiction on the net, I mean I considered it, but I had really bad writers block when it came to plots.
Again, she said that she had read it and found it weird, but she wasn't against it, she just doesn't understand it.

The prize of the day, my autograph by one of my favourite authors.

I have to admit, beforehand I was worried about meeting her. After all, they say that you should never meet your heroes. But after today, I have to say that I have no regrets, just as she had said earlier during the Q&A that she had no regrets about anything she's ever written.
She was the nicest woman you could ever meet, definitely someone you'd invite to tea and probably end up having the most fascinating conversations with, and very open minded too. I can't wait for her to come back to Liverpool again, and I will most certainly be starting into that book tonight.

"Midnight Crossroad" is on sale now at all leading bookstores



These photos belong to both me and sunrisewithmysadcaptains.blogspot.co.uk (meganceri.wix.com/meganceri)

How To Build A Girl Review - Our Feminist Secret

As I tend to ramble on about Caitlin Moran quite a bit, it is only fitting that I give you my opinion of her latest book, and first adult novel ‘How to Build a Girl’.

Let’s be thorough about this and begin with the cover. It’s very green, the font is very 60’s-70’s styled. The legs of the model girl aren’t those of a heavy girl's, yet the leading gal here is meant to be a bit on the chunky side. And to be quite honest, I find the whole cover a little contradictory.

The story itself is from the point of view of Johanna Morrigan, a working class girl from Wolverhampton, who lives on a council estate with her family, surviving on benefits. Basically, something happens which makes her believe that she needs to get a job and make money in order to save her family from squalor, a modern day twist on 19^th century based stories, where women must fend for their own, kind of like Gone With The Wind and Scarlett O'Hara declaring that she will 'Live through this'.

In between the introductions of the characters, and successfully landing a job as a music journalist, Johanna undergoes a mortifying experience, which results in her idea to destroy herself, and build a new girl in her place. This new alias of hers is called Dolly Wilde, and this new alter ego is the one who lands her first kiss, job, sexual experience, sort-of-crush and begins smoking.

At the beginning of the book, the writer states that it is ‘a work of fiction’ and that the characters are from the writer's own imagination. She also states that she isn’t Johanna and that the characters family is also not her own, along with experiences.

As much as I liked the book, it wasn’t personally what I felt it was hyped up to be. Perhaps it was because I was so excited about it, but I just didn’t feel any spark. It was good, don’t get me wrong, but it felt as if I was still reading Moran’s autobiography but with a few changed names.

In some regards it made me feel that some originality was lacked. I mean I know that the saying goes ‘write about what you know’ but as a fan, I knew already about the anecdote about the Guinness from Dublin to Wolverhampton.  And you could tell that ZZ Top was based on her husband, what with him being from Birmingham and being a guy from the office that she didn’t notice until the end, which she writes about in her book ‘How to Be A Woman’ too.

And if you think about it the titles aren’t that different either. In fact the new book sounds like a prequel.

But in the end, you see something, as clear as day. You find that she is talking to her children, telling them that we all make mistakes, we all try to better ourselves, and that it is okay to trip up and fall over sometimes in life. And I like that. Not a lot of kids can say that their parents did something as difficult and as harrowing as write a book for them. I know that I can’t.

And I will always commend someone for writing a book, and somehow manages to quote Elbow in the process. Admittedly, I was also bought over by the fact that Courtney Love and Stevie Nicks were mentioned. So yeah, I’m a bit biased.

But apart from all of this, it isn’t sexually graphic, but it does bring up masturbation a lot. The characters are lovable and each have a mind of their own, a thing, as a writer myself, I find quite difficult to do. Krissi is intelligent and demands his privacy while somehow exiting the proverbial closet, while their father plays music, forever trying to get the family out of their place in the council estate and to greener pastures. And of course, the man I ship the lead character with, John Kite, a mixture between Del Boy Trotter and Guy Garvey.

Part of me is upset with the ending. We don’t learn who Johanna marries in the end. We don’t learn how Krissi’s life turns out, or what happens with the parents of little Lupin. Nothing is known of the sexist douchebag Tony Rich, and we will never truly know what happened when she finally moved to London.

In a way it ends like how it begins.

But at the end of the day, it may seem quite all over the place, but it is planned out and you can see it once you try to actually focus. It’s a life lesson, but it is also one that you wouldn’t want your younger sister to be finding, so hide it well until she becomes old enough. Hide it like a big entertaining secret. It may not be as feministy as other books, but Johanna, is a positive being and once she ventures out into the world of men she is optimistic and sees herself as objectifying men, NOT the other way around.

It’s a secret I commend you hide, like a good bottle of champagne, only to be brought out for special occasions. One big feminist secret.

P.S This was written in July, I just had no internet for the rest of summer but I will be making a post about going home to Ireland and seeing Wales this year.

Habitual Disclaimer: No, I don't own the photo used on this post, it has nothing to do with me, and I will be remaining broke for not creating anything successful, or anything picked up by anyone in 'the biz'.