Three Questions for JKR Q&A Tomorrow

September 21, 2022 by

I am not sure what Rowling, Inc., means by “interactive” but it suggests there is a possibility that The Presence will be taking questions from her listening audience. If true, this would be a first-time-ever event for the Strike series and something Rowling has only done before during Potter-Mania, something she did with children readers.

Except one event. The last time she answered questions from a live audience of adults (rather than from pre-screened cards), if memory serves, was in Carnegie Hall, the night she revealed she had always “thought of Dumbledore as gay.” I’m pretty sure that’s not the sort of publicity she’s hoping to generate for Ink Black Heart through her “interactive” Q&A.

Given the number of Rowling Revilers in the world today, too, that would attempt an ambush of her in any “interactive” environment, I have to doubt that her handlers, being sane, would expose her to this credible danger. If it is a live Q&A, though, and you could get through to ask her one question about Ink Black Heart — and it has to be about Strike6, remember, nothing about her A-Levels reading list, protestors in Iran, or The Christmas Pig diamond earrings — what would you ask her?

I share three ‘off-the-top-of-my-head’ questions after the jump and hope you’ll write yours in the comment boxes. Who knows? Maybe Team Rowling will choose one or two questions from Serious Strikers for a change! [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Hog Pro Notes

Ink Black Heart: The Coda Latch

September 20, 2022 by 4 Comments

I am beginning to write up the notes I jotted down in Utah earlier this month about the structure of Ink Black Heart. My premise for this work, as you’d expect, is that the sixth Strike novel is a ring composition; the first task in this sort of research, because it is the easiest of the four qualities of a ring to identify, is to see if the opening and closing chapters act as a ‘latch’ for the work as a whole. Heart’s open and close are neatly separated from the rest of the novel’s parts by being names other than ‘Parts;’ the first four chapters are its ‘Prologue’ and its last chapter or epilogue, which follows Part 5, is called the ‘Coda.’

Before I begin the structural exegesis, though, something that will eventually include — in addition to the latch — explorations of the story turn in Part 3, parallels between Parts 1 and 2 with 4 and five, and each Part being a ring unto itself, I want to note something peculiar about Rowling’s structural choices in Strike6. She chooses to call the last piece, as noted, a ‘Coda,’ rather than, say, an ‘Epilogue,’ a first for this series or any of her novels and screenplays. I think there are at least three decent explanations for this change, which I’ll share after the jump. [Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Ring Composition

Ink Black Heart: The Strike Characters with Twitter Accounts

September 19, 2022 by Leave a Comment

Our last update to the Cormoran Strike characters that became active this summer, a pre-publication blitz of posts in 2022 time from ‘people’ as diverse as Pat Chauncey and Ciara Porter (not to mention Wolfgang the pet and the Office Sofa), was August 22nd. See Twitter Character Update for that, Nick Jeffery’s introduction to the phenomenon, Strike on Twitter – Sixteen Characters in Search of a Story, and Rowling’s engagement with the fun being had online before Ink Black Heart  was officially on sale.

https://twitter.com/TheRealCCRoss/status/1562066862275497986

Has anyone been following these accounts after the fact? Do we have evidence that they were given copies of Ink Black Heart before the public at large? Do you think it was a Rowling, Inc., publicity stunt for Serious Strikers to enjoy or a fandom effort by Zealot Tweeters who love the Rowling-Galbraith murder-romance-mysteries?

This post is a Placeholder for discussion to which we will add information as it becomes available. To find this conversation quickly in future, click on ‘Ink Black Heart Discussion’ in the Pillar Post column at the upper left of the home page and scroll down to the ‘Twitter Characters’ link. Cheers!

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Twitter

Rowling Asked About Parallel Series Idea

September 17, 2022 by 3 Comments

The Rowling Library earlier this week published an article by Oxford Research Fellow Beatrice Groves called ‘Harry Potter and the Ink Black Prince.’ In it she discussed Rowling’s latest novel, The Ink Black Heart, in light of the Parallel Series Idea (PSI), a theory discussed here beginning in 2014 that argues Rowling-Galbraith is writing the Strike series as deliberate echoes of her Harry Potter novels. You can read about these playful parallels and echoing between each of the first six Strike mysteries at the HogwartsProfessor Pillar Post on the subject and the page on the Heart-Prince touches.

More after the jump about PSI and the question posed to Rowling about whether it is a valid theory.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Cormoran Strike, Ring Composition, Twitter

Ink Black Heart: Does Rowling Tip Her Hand About the Killer with a Hermes Reference and ‘Prince’ Parallels?

September 16, 2022 by 3 Comments

Evan Willis is a HogwartsProfessor faculty member with a special expertise in Rowling’s hermetic artistry. He was in communication with me throughout his first-reading of Ink Black Heart so I can testify that the journey he describes below is not something he made up after the fact. His long-awaited write-up of his thoughts on Strike6 exceeds even my very high expectations and it establishes I think his theory that Mercury markers are keys to Identifying Rowling murder mystery killers; enjoy! — John

Hours after it came out, I started on Ink Black Heart. I wanted to read it slowly so that I had adequate opportunity to test, theorize, and predict, and so only got to the end of it early this week. I sent off a couple comments and e-mails as I read indicating where my line of reasoning had gone so that I might document my testing, while trying my best to avoid spoilers (this site, along with Twitter, became very dangerous to go anywhere near).

My conclusions? That our parallel series idea still has deep predictive and explanatory power (Half-Blood Prince parallels are extraordinarily strong here), that the important Half-Blood Prince references are where it connected back to Philosopher’s Stone (pointing to a 1-6 connectivity in both series), and that Rowling has subtly indicated the identity of the killer in each of these novels very early on by inclusion of a passing reference to a mythological character with direct ties to the figure of Hermes in the near vicinity of their first appearance.

Join me after the jump for discussion of how I arrived at all three of these conclusions — and how I just missed identifying the killer before Strike and Robin did.

[Read more…]

Filed Under: Agatha Christie, Cormoran Strike, Evan Willis, Ring Composition