JKR Live Q&A on Twitter Tomorrow

It's my great pleasure to confirm that the very special @jk_rowling, aka @RGalbraith, will be joining us live on Twitter THIS SATURDAY 4-5pm to discuss The Ink Black Heart! ARE YOU READY, MUKFLUKS? 🖤❤️📚 https://t.co/A4rgovdAVO

— JKR's Barmy Book Army (@JKRsBarmyBooks) October 13, 2022

Rowling-Galbraith’s previous ‘Live Ink Black Heart Q&A‘ tease turned out to be pre-recorded discussion; it was invaluable and a delight, don’t get me wrong, but the twenty-seven questions were chosen or approved by the author months in advance and there was nothing ‘live’ about her interaction with Ink Black Heart readers.

Tomorrow, though, it seems The Presence will be doing an honest-to-God open forum with Strike6 readers on Twitter in support of ‘JKR’s Barmy Book Army‘s discussion of Ink Black Heart. The posted time is 4-5 PM, British Summer Time (BST), which is five hours ahead of American Eastern Time, six of Central, and eight of Pacific. If you’re free tomorrow morning or afternoon, this Twitter feed will be your best shot at getting the questions you want Rowling-Galbraith to answer presented to her.

What will you be asking about Ink Black Heart? After the jump, I share my Top Three questions and one other structural surprise ‘Shot in the Dark’ which I hope someone will ask her (or all the HogPro All-Pros will ask her to flood the line?). What burning Strike6 question do you want her to answer?

My top three questions:

(1) Is Barret Browning’s Aurora Leigh the backdrop story to Ink Black Heart the way Rosmersholm and Faerie Queen were to the fourth and fifth Strike mysteries?

(2) Why did you insert all the echoes and parallels in Ink Black Heart with the sixth Harry Potter novel, Half-Blood Prince?

(3) You inserted pointers and hints in chapter 1 and the Coda that the ‘Prudent’ reader should apply the tools of Jungian psychology for understanding Ink Black Heart as archetypal myth. Are the mutually supportive recoveries of Robin and Cormoran being written on the models of the lame Fisher King and the Handless Maiden, folk-tales beloved of Jungian psychologists? Is it the myth of Cupid and Psyche or of Leda and her human and demi-god children, Castor and Pollux?

That last is way too long for a tweet, alas, but here’s the killer Super Bonus Question, short and to the point:

At what point in your writing did you decide to make the fifth book in the series the sixth book and vice versa? 

Ink Black Heart‘s time fits neatly in the months between Lethal White and Troubled Blood and Louise Freeman has pointed out all the evidence that suggests there was a ‘5-6 Flip‘ at some point in Rowling’s planning. It would be great to great a confirmation, denial, or no comment from The Presence on this idea; if there is one question among all the others I hope readers will share, this it it.

What question do you hope she’ll answer? “Is Mads pregnant with Cormoran’s baby?” “Was Valentine Longcaster, a Cupid cryptonym if there ever was one, Jealous-Venus-Charlotte’s agent in setting up Madeline and Cormoran?” “Was your marketing team responsible for the Strike character twitter accounts posting last summer?” Share your question with us on the comment thread below! And best of luck to all Serious Strikers in getting your question to The Presence tomorrow!