If this is Veterans Day, I must have the day off! I am home for a few days break in the ‘Deathly Hallows (Part 1) Speaking Tour’ and, while I am loving the home cooked food and sleeping in my own bed, I can honestly report that all the places I have spoken in the last three weeks – from Augustana College on the Mississippi River to Church of the Holy Cross above the Chesapeake Bay, from the cool Emmanuel Community United Methodist Church  in Wisconsin in the north to the wonderfully warm University of South Carolina — have all been so welcoming and kind that I didn’t want to leave for the next date. I’ll write a proper ‘thank you’ with stories from the tour when it’s over, but, until then, here are two observations as a welcome to newcomers and a note to old friends I’m neglecting…

(1) I’ve covered close to 5,000 miles by plane and car and spoken at great schools and at beautiful churches, a library, even an independent Book Store. Everywhere I’ve talked and no matter what the subject at hand was on a given night, the buzz at evening’s end was about Ms. Rowling’s writing in rings, both as the structure of her seven story cycle and as her template for the chapters of each book. The reason I’m traveling so much is because of the upcoming Deathly Hallows (Part 1) Warner Bros movie release and the fact that I’m the only person to have written an entire book on the artistry and meaning of Hallows, namely The Deathly Hallows Lectures. What has folks talking, though, isn’t the alchemy of the finale, the eyeball symbolism, or Christian content of Harry’s victory over death and the Dark Lord at King’s Cross, it’s the heretofore unrecognized traditional template for storytelling that Ms. Rowling used for the series and every novel in it. I have written up my talk on this subject with all the necessary charts and images that can be downloaded here or purchased as a short book; overlook the many typos please — and prepare to have the way you look at the world’s best selling books changed forever.

(2) Because I was as surprised and delighted as any Harry Potter reader to discover that there was anything as significant as the stories’ fundamental structure left to be revealed more than three years after Deathly Hallows’ publication,  I was not surprised that this topic became the focus of my conversation with audiences on the current tour. What has surprised me is how many people listen to the Leaky Cauldron’s ‘PotterCast’ and the ‘Potter Pundits’ segment Travis Prinzi, James Thomas, and I do on that program. It seems every talk I have given has been followed by at least one person referencing the program during questions or telling me during ‘Gilderoy Time’ (book autographing exchanges) that they love the Pundits and our new book, Harry Potter Smart Talk. Smart Talk has six new essays from the three Pundits as well as transcripts from our most popular shows, reading which collection Melissa Anelli wrote in her introduction to the book is like finding “the Ivory Tower in Hagrid’s Hut.” As one reviewer wrote,

The formal essays by the individual pundits are excellent in the same way [as their podcast conversations are]. They are fascinatingly informative and profoundly probing, but the writing style is lively and anything but dry. … and these guys really know their stuff – not just what they bring from their respective academic fields, but also just about every detail there is to know from the Potter books.

I’m speaking in Marion, Ohio, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, next week (details below the jump) and I look forward to meeting you there! My thanks to everyone I’ve spoken and stayed with on the tour thus far for their enthusiasm and their kindness to me — and my thanks to readers here for their patience with me during these travels and the big gaps between posts.

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