Our Author Takeover this week comes from MuggleNet friend and fellow Potterhead Kelly Creagh, author of the Nevermore trilogy. Kelly, a Pottermore-sorted Ravenclaw and self-professed Snape lover, credits Rowling for her love of creative writing.
Kelly is a lover of many things outside of Potter, including Edgar Allan Poe (his mysterious death is the inspiration for her Nevermore trilogy) and magician Harry Houdini.
You can find Kelly at her website, www.kellycreagh.com, or on Twitter @kelly_creagh
Truest Form of Magic
I am on. Muggle. Net.
ER. MER. GERD.
How did this happen? I’m not sure. But the world truly feels like a wondrous place right now. As it always did while I was reading (or rereading) Harry Potter, which I actually didn’t start until undergrad.
Harry Potter has that power. The power to absorb you and then to cling to you and follow close on your heels long after you close the book to head to your next class. Years after tuning the final page of Deathly Hallows, I still feel the story in my shoes. Don’t we all?
Isn’t it strange that one of my fondest memories from college is a day I took a break between classes to settle into a stone alcove on campus and dive back into Order of the Phoenix, my favorite HP book?
To say J.K. Rowling became (and forever will be) one of my heroes is a vast understatement.
This wonderful woman created such a deeply engrossing, detail-infused world filled with multi-layered and realistic characters. Her words were powerful enough to create for me [a] specific memory that consists of…me reading. That’s it. And though I recall the book I held, I don’t remember the page, or even what scene I was on. I do recall, though, how those pages made me feel.
Like I always had friends waiting for me in my messenger bag. Like I had a [P]ortkey to a whole other world. Like I was there.
I hated Umbridge (more than Voldemort!) and I feared for Harry—felt so bad for him. I worried about the prophesy and about Snape, too. Oh, those remedial [P]otion[s] classes! If only Harry could see what I knew his teacher was trying to accomplish.
The effect these books had on me (and everyone) is the truest form of magic I know. And I’m convinced. Rowling is a powerful, high-level witch from her own wizarding world. I’m sure of it. How else could she have transported and transformed me through her writing and her genius? Harry Potter is pure heart. The scope and depth of the series is almost unfathomable. A true masterpiece.
I think that moment in the alcove has stuck with me for another reason, too. Whether I realized it consciously or not during that reading session, I think I knew then and there that I wanted to be a writer. In other words, like Jo, I wanted to be a witch. And like Harry, I wanted to become what the universe and the strange coincidences and all the odd encounters were trying to convince me I already was.
If not for Harry Potter, I’m not sure I would have been brave enough to apply to graduate school for creative writing—or to go. I’m not sure I would have started an ambitious project about a cheerleader with spunk and a goth boy with the ability to write and to bring his dreams—and nightmares—into reality.
And if not for Harry Potter, I may not have been able to bring my own dream to life.
Both Harry and Jo have been my teachers. And while my own stories are different, I hope that they achieve, at least in part, what Jo’s writing does. I hope my stories serve readers in the same way. That they both transport and transform. That they shed light on the world and on the magic that goes on (and often lies dormant) within us all. My wish for my stories is that that they will point others to follow their dreams and hearts as Jo’s led me to follow mine—and to banish the doubts that get in the way of the discovery of one’s own power.
Portus! Lumos! Expecto Patronum!
Lofty goals, I know. But Dumbledore was full of them, so I’m in good company.
As the release date for Oblivion, the third and final book in my Nevermore [t]rilogy, approaches, I find myself thinking back to all the people, books and events that have influenced me as a person, as an artist, and as a writer.
Along with Edgar Allan Poe, whose life, works and mysterious death play a major role in the entirety of the Nevermore [t]rilogy — Jo Rowling and Harry top the list in terms of major influences.
Admittedly, there’s a certain misunderstood [P]otions [M]aster high on that list as well.
(*Anime heart eyes!*)
If you haven’t read Nevermore yet, I think that if you do, these influences will be apparent.
I can only hope they are.
Oh, and in case you were curious, Isobel is a Gryffindor, and Varen is a Ravenclaw.
Poe? That one’s tough. But I’m pretty sure he’d have been a Ravenclaw, too.
Call it a hunch.
