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She should have been cast as Charlotte Campbell, no? From the Amazon page of her autobiography, Silver Linings: Read More “Margot, Oonaugh, Gloria, Anna, or Kim? Jess Impiazzi’s Role in ‘Troubled Blood’”

@CormStrikeFan, the twitter handle of StrikeFans.com, tweeted the list above early in December last year with the comment, “Here’s a predictions checklist for The Ink Black Heart you can fill in.” The thread beneath the list includes StrikeFans’ own choices and some of the Serious Strikers who follow these tweets shared their checked lists, too.

I’m of two minds about the list.

On the one hand, it’s a brilliant idea, a handy compilation of plot point options from which the reader who knows the story well will get profound endorphin hits while reflecting on the likelihood of each occurring in Strike6. It took some real self-restraint not to print out a copy of the StrikeFans list and start checking boxes myself.

On the other hand, the list is really disappointing. Only two of the possibilities on offer require anything more than having read the series (the one about “The Black Heart Pub in Camden” and the other about Marilyn Manson). There isn’t a hint or suggestion beyond the “Swans appear somewhere” that any of the literary artistry and meaning of the Strike series that we have discussed here at HogwartsProfessor thus far might be helpful in predicting what will happen in the coming books.

After the jump, to correct this failing I will share a one-step introduction to the seven subject guides with which Serious Strikers here read the adventures of the Peg-Legged PI. I’ll add brief prediction possibilities that each guide suggests as things to look for. The good news about this exercise is that, though there is little chance that I will hit on the actual Rowling-Galbraith plot points or story, I will be using the tools and ideas that have helped us understand the five books we have in hand and which will definitely be deployed in the exegesis of Ink Black Heart. Read More “How to Think About ‘The Ink Black Heart’ – Seven Guides for Making Predictions”

In my first post on the Parallel Series Idea (PSI) last week, I advised readers reviewing older posts we have written, especially those on Goblet and Lethal White, to “Be sure to read the comment threads on those posts because some of the best parallels are reported by readers there.” The problem is I didn’t take my own advice in reading the comments. Well, I did but it lead me to where I had not.

Louise Freeman commented on yesterday’s Chamber and Silkworm PSI post, “I think I remember a list of parallels from our first Strike podcast on Reading, Writing, Rowling.” I looked up that podcast, “Lighting Up ‘Strike’ – ‘Harry Potter’ and ‘Cormoran Strike’,” in hopes of finding some great Career of Evil and Prisoner of Azkaban interior echoing for the post I’m working on. The conversation about PSI starts at 50:00 and it’s pretty good. I’ll have to go back and include as comments the Stone-Cuckoo links I heard there I didn’t make in the post dedicated to that pairing — and my Career-Prisoner piece will be much better for this blast-cast from the past.

The embarrassing thing? Katie McDaniel, the host of ‘Reading, Writing, Rowling’ asked me in that episode to share the most compelling evidence for the Parallel Series Idea and I obliged her — by sharing a comment made by Patricia Baker in 2014 in response to my first suggestion that the Potter and Strike series were being written in parallel. In her comment, she lists a host of Chamber-Silkworm echoes that are the same as, as good as, or better than the six I listed yesterday.

In recognition of her great catches (and of my failure to read the comment threads I recommended readers check out), I’m devoting this post to her finds, which you’ll find listed below the jump. I will update yesterday’s post with an Addendum with links to the original comment and to this post — and I will write Patricia Baker to apologize for my oversight and to invite her to share her Stone-Cuckoo and Prisoner-Career lists!

After the jump, then, Patricia Baker’s 2014 Chamber-Silkworm PSI correspondences and one more idea about where to look for parallels Serious Strikers have found and written up. Read More “Patricia Baker: Chamber-Silkworm PSI”

‘PSI’ stands for ‘Parallel Series Idea,’ which, as explained yesterday, is the thesis generated at HogwartsProfessor in 2014 that Rowling-Galbraith is writing the Cormoran Strike novels in parallel with their respective numbers in the Harry Potter seven books. PSI has become something of a ‘given’ or premise in speculation about what is coming in the series; it is assumed here, for instance, that Ink Black Heart will echo in important ways Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (see Louise Freeman’s first efforts along these lines, First Flip of the Tarot Cards: Louise’s Predictions for Strike 6) and Strike7 will be something of a finale for the first seven Strike books akin to Deathly Hallows.

The challenge before us is that the PSI thesis has only been demonstrated or even explored in any depth with respect to the parallels in Lethal White to Goblet of Fire and those in Troubled Blood to Order of the Phoenix. Yesterday I posted six parallels between Cuckoo’s Calling and Philosopher’s Stone, today I hope to write up the parallels first spotted in 2014 between The Silkworm  and Chamber of Secrets, and deo volente we will soon after have a third post about Career of Evil and Prisoner of Azkaban.

When these posts are up, I will create a PSI Pillar Post for ease of access and referencing as Serious Strikers prepare for the release of Ink Black Heart. If you think, as several writers here do, that Charlotte Campbell is the Strike series Voldemort and Jonny Rokeby either the Dumbledore stand-in, the Severus Snape parallel, or both, previous PSI study will be an important touchstone and starting point for your speculation about Strike6.

After the jump, then, a listing of the parallels between The Silkworm, easily Rowling’s most self-consciously literary or ‘meta’ work to date, and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, my favorite stand-alone novel in the Hogwarts Saga. This list will be woefully incomplete and is written largely to serve as an invitation to you to jump in via the comment boxes and share all the parallels I missed — or parallels with other Potter books or to question the entire Parallel Series Idea. Let the conversation begin! Read More “Strike-Potter PSI: Silkworm and Chamber”