(no subject)

A good friend of our family, a young man named Jayson Ball, was involved in a serious car accident a few days ago, and has been in a coma in hospital. For those interested in Jay and his condition, I've created the Jayson Ball Update Page. So now you know what I've been doing with my spare time all week...

Just one question for JKR...

Digging through my archives of old posts to HP4GU, I found an interesting little tidbit:

> If you could ask [J.K. Rowling] *one* question, what would it be?

My first place question would be, "Have you ever read Dorothy Dunnett, and if so would you consider her an influence on your writing?"

The second place question would be, "Did you have Alan Rickman in the back of your mind when you created Snape?"

Of course, she would not be at all likely to answer either of those questions directly...

I'd forgotten about the Dunnett angle. But now I recall that there were two distinct things in JKR's writing that made me think there might be a real influence: the "live" chess game the Trio plays in PS/SS, especially the part where Ron sacrifices himself so the others can win; and the way JKR uses unreliable narrators and informants to skew the reader's perception, particularly with regard to characters such as Sirius and Snape.

Man, now I really want to ask JKR that question. melissa_tlc, take a note of it, will you? Just in case you do get that opportunity a few months down the road... :)

( A bit of Dunnett/HP humour, slightly spoilerish... )