Monday, November 17, 2008

Twilight for HP... or 75 comments! Woohoo!

My word, you folks sure got close to 80 comments. Impressive - but you are not a jedi yet... I certainly gave you enough time to have a red hot go, as "they" say. But alas, guilt has got the better of me and here I am posting after a bit too long not posting... um... I'm like, an excellent writer and stuff...

On with the show!

As much as the hype is off-putting, I am very glad the Twilight series has my niece reading; she would not look sideways at a book before. Now, who knows, she might venture out further into the realms of the written word and for that I can only be grateful.

The uber-series is an interesting creature - perhaps making reading cool again; I often marvel that without Master Potter's 7 tomes there would probably be no MBT, not through any influences (though I read a review today that suggested I was apparently employing the good ol' school-environment shtick a-la Harry P, to make Lamplighter work...) but because Ms Rowling has forged such ground that publishers are willing to give odd ideas like mine some listroom. For that I salute you, Ms Rowling!

For the funness of it all the Winter Blog Blast Tour begins! Organised by the tireless Chasing Ray, it is a veritable smorgasbord of author interviews. Mine own interview will be found on Tuesday 18th November (why else would I be telling you, right?) over at Finding Wonderland.

Oh, and shouts out to Portals whom I had the wonder of meeting in living flesh not last weekend but the one before, I hope it was not too underwhelming...

BTW the ever increasing vocabulary of the Varificon or "Word Varification Dictionary" is growing at an impressive and rather funny rate. Please, continued...

21 comments:

portals said...

What a pity, we got so close to 80 comments.
Lets try harder this time.
Mr Cornish- It was not underwhelming at all.
You suggested a competition about Varicons at the freecon. Can we have that?
Merst- An ominous silhouette of a hunched figure in fog.

Samuel said...

Hi Mr Cornish,

Just commenting on a hunch – could the review you read have been mine? I'm Samuel, of Samuel's Reading Chair. If it was, then I hope you didn't think I meant that you were intentionally ripping off Harry Potter! I just meant that the writing techniques you employed were similar, and effective for the same reasons.

Looking forward to Factotum!

noelle said...

As much as I hate to admit it, I probably would not have started seriously writing if not for Eragon. I guess just knowing that a young author can get published, and be a success - and the fact that his books weren't very good - motivated me to finish my first book.

Vizers: old men who don't know much about anything, but like to pretend they do, dishing out sage advice wherever they can even if they have no idea what they are talking about. They are usually very offended when their advice is ignored, and if their advice IS taken and it results in disaster, they are very likely to say, "There, what did I tell you!"

R.J. Anderson said...

It has just occurred to me that I need to rec Catherine Fisher's Incarceron and its sequel Sapphique to the readers of this blog. Incarceron (a sprawling, sentient prison) is somewhat reminiscent of Gormenghast without being derivative of it, and the world and characters are fascinating and compelling.

Another book that may be of interest to MBT fans is Jeffrey Overstreet's Auralia's Colors (the sequel, Cyndere's Midnight, is also out in stores now) -- again, similar influences to D.M. Cornish and some interesting similarities of outworking those ideas as well (although Mr. Overstreet has never read our Mr. Cornish -- I had to urge him to do so).

BTW, the word verification was "shnowd". Interestingly reminiscent of "shrewd"...

Anonymous said...

just for the record, JK Rowling really did not forge ahead anywhere. almost everything in at least her first two books had already been done--somehow no one paid much attention to it before, and now it's apparently new.

noelle: hehe. when i get hard up for motivation to write, i sometimes read Eragon. tmakes me roll my eyes and sigh angrily and 'surely ANYONE, even I, can do better than this!'

undialm: a very sticky, semi-transparent white salve, completely non-toxic, often used for treating spider bites or smearing in unsuspecting people's hair when they are not looking

RottenPocket said...

I could swear 'Ecreda' was already a word but finding out involves a dictionary site and many pop-ups.

So, interview today? Dangit if it weren't for the School Formal I'd be checking in until it showed up on the site. As it is, money-hungry make-up artists and dreaded photos for all.

Ahhh, the Publishers are just looking for something different every time. J.K. Rowling was popular after the first two, and the third was the best of the series which gave her credit and so on. MBT is in a class all it's own. I'm probably a year older than what HP was aimed at, but it still evolved in maturity with it's readers with each book. I hope I'm not the only one when I say that I was very disappointed at all the loose ends and unfinished plots that litter the seven. I do however appreciate the ability to make a classic wizarding world setting into an epic, good on her for that.

So yeah, I think it's more along the lines that MBT and you earned it's success, not simply followed the path forged by another. That's definately something to be proud of (and exploited).

noelle said...

Pitubje: (pronocuned pit-TOOB-jee) a child or cute animal who meets a tragic end in a play or movie and causes the viewer to become exceedingly depressed; no matter how many deaths proceeded it, this event is considered more tragic than all of them combined. Example: I Am Legend, Macbeth.

smudgeon said...

Finglych [FIN-glitch]: A word that is the result of careless typing, which the creator then tries to pass off as a real word in another language (rather than correct).

Jeffrey L Riffe said...

In defense of the school-environment shtic.

When writing about kids for kids, one can hardly disregard school as a major component of their lives. As a parent of three school aged children and with a wife that teaches, I must say that my entire family's focus revolves around school. So one should hardly wonder that school is an often used vehicle in children's/YA literature.

With all due regards to Mme. Rowling, she hardly invented the concept though she did revitalize the young reader industry with it.

MBT's use of this vehicle is very tastefully managed and can hardly be said to be over-done in any sense.

...and in the interest of full disclosure. My current body of work is firmly entrenched in the school-environment shtick. I must confess that I fear my efforts might well be judged as endeavoring to grasp the coattails of the esteemed Mr. Potter.
Truth be told, I would rather be accused of grasping the coattails of MBT as I view it a finer example of the genre.

Anonymous said...

But then, we of Cornish's avid followers aren't biased at all are we? I could discern some similarities to Harry Potter in Lamplighter, but it wasn't blatent or major. Rossamund sneaking around the pipes and foundations of the Manse after curfew was the most striking similarity.

Mr. Cornish:
Are you going to use any Vericon words in upcoming works? It would be an amusing inside joke. That said...

Fotalli= n. (Fo TAH lee) a flamboyant, cerimonial pistol so covered with finery and etchings that it is hard to hold it steady. It is usually employed by Northern merchants for the sake of presenting a 'formidable front' at buisness meetings with those of their own kind.

adj. Any overly dressed weapon.
-Ben.

Anonymous said...

I'm not going to attempt to read meaning into books I read for pleasure; I've got enough of the "find the meaning of the tissue on page 392" (this is no way a reference of any book I know of) during school. That being said, I do find everyone else's book analyses very interesting. It's always interesting to find out what others are thinking.

wuggi: small, brown hybrid between a bear and a dog that is adept at walking on its hindlegs; usually lives in forests and has a pleasant, curious attitude; once kept as pets by the poor as substitute dogs

portals said...

I dont think MBT is too derivative of anything. It may be slightly influenced here and there, but it's consistent and original.
Eragon however, is absoloutely ridiculous. It is the shame of writing. Paolini seems to go out of his way to actually copy other storylines. For example there's this elf woman, who is completely unnecessary, but Eragon has to go and save her. Eragon also turns out to be the evil emperor's right hand man's son. Then it changes and he is actually the Eragon version of Obi-wan's son. They also live in an Empire but dont have an empereor, they have a king.
I can't see how it got published, let alone how it got this huge.
I think MBT is much better.
Harry Potter is full of cliches and predictable storylines, and towards the end of the series the links became tenuous and J.K.R seemed to make a desparate attempt to have a book full of twists but it seemed a bit silly.
Harry Potter was quite enjoyably to read though, and some of it was quite creative, although I found that it just deteriorated over time.
You know what's really cool? Native American music ...
Anyway, I think originality is really important in every part of a book. Names like Eragon, and John Smith are just awful.
I think I'm being a bit negative though...
Parin- (PEAR-IN)noun, a large,slow,fat fish, infamous for its stench but famous for its tasty, tender meat.
We should do those profiles where we make a character who lives in the H/C and describe them again.

portals said...

Forgot to mention something.
I saw that HarperCollins added the word 'meh' to the dictionary, as a term of boredom or indifference.
Word verification is...
Maxishi.
?

Anonymous said...

I agree, Mr Cornish, that hypes are so exaggeratedly, but in one way it´s good because there is so many books published all over the world and just a few reaches to other countries and gets attention. I know it´s the people in the top of the culture-league who decides what kind of books is gonna be "imported" and translated but there must be lots of really good books that readers miss out on.

Anonymous said...

Mr Cornish, nice that you can some swedish.

smudgeon said...

I like Portals' point about Harry Potter: it was indeed getting rather silly towards the end, but nonetheless it was entertaining. A "good bad book", as they might say. I read the Da Vinci Code (it makes me feel so icky just typing that) in a night once - not because it was good, but because it was a "good bad book". Entertaining but so incredibly stupid it made me want to gouge out my eyes at times...I'm assuming Eragon et. al. are of a similar breed, but not actually being a fan of fantasy/magic/dragons/vampires myself, I wouldn't know.

Unchay (v) [un-CHAY-...]: Contraction of "unchain". The act of removing shackles/ropes/manacles/restraints from someone who seems to be a good guy, but at the last minute they say or do something that makes the good guy think it may indeed be a ruse/bluff. Usually only applies to the moment at which the restraints are 90% removed (as in "just let me unchay...hey!").

noelle said...

psynci: a fortune-telling monkey, often employed by street performers.

Kathryn said...

I can't blame your niece for getting into Twilight, i love that series too!One of my friends is so obsessed with that series that we have sort of nicknamed her obsession "obsessive Cullen disorder". While all of the girls are reading Twilight, I've got all the guys in my class reading MBT. Tell your niece to keep up the reading!

Anonymous said...

Read on S. Meyers site that someone took the partial draft to her 5th book and posted it on the net, so now she has put that book on hold. I guess as an author you have to be very careful who you intrust your drafts to.

Anonymous said...

I agree Twilight was an entertaining series... but it was alot of fluff... I view the books compared to Star Wars Movies..... so...

A New Hope to Twilight.. both fantastic introductions into the world of each... great story line, action and satisfaction in the end.

Empire Strikes Back to New Moon... in my opinion the best movie in the Star Wars series and the best book in the Twilight series. Both have good starts the main characters go through some personal changes, and it is a bit open ended at the end.

Return of the Jedi to Eclipse... both of these are ok... there seemed to be some filler... I really felt that the Twilight Series could have been wrapped up in this book.

Phantom Menace to Breaking Dawn.... I was disappointed in both these... there were some cool parts in both... but in the end seemed like a waste. I wanted some type of Hamlet ending in Breaking Dawn. I think it would have worked better, but again it is a teen book.

Thanks for letting me rant....

Anonymous said...

Have seen the movie and i must say I was disapointed. It felt like they just had cut bits and pieces of the book and sewn it together. Please Mr C if someone is making a movie of your books, don´t let them do that! But I know Australians do quite nice movies and TV-series. Very rememberable ones anyway.