JKR vs NVDL

The last Harry Potter book is 607 pages, and I admit, I loved reading the book. It's not that Rowling is a good writer as much as she weaves amazingly imaginative stories (there is a difference). That said, Deathly Hallows ends on an extremely cheesy, lame note. I'll give you a hint: Harry's son is called Albus Severus...

Other than that, there are some breathtaking images Rowling imbues in this fabulous tale. I have been coming home from work and diving into this book each day for a week. I am quite sad that that option is no longer availed to me. It's going to be a MASSIVE challenge to turn the last book - so much wheat, so much chaff - into a movie.

But as I say, what surprises me often is that this most popular writer of our time is definitely not the BEST writer. It's her imagination. The same could be said, perhaps, of the likes of George Lucas and many others.

What struck me towards the last third of Harry Potter was a bizarre sense - and I don't mean this in an arrogant way, I mean it in the sense of...sniffing at one's inner potential, one's own potential to be a great (or at least popular) novelist - that I was onto something as a 16 year old, something that may have pipped Harry to the post, may have ultimately become (or outdone) the Harry Potter Franchise.

Inspired by HIGHLANDER, a book called Centennial, Star Wars and various other fragments, I began to weave a tale set in the Scottish Highlands. The idea was really to find an excuse for modern individuals to go and live in a castle, and then to unleash all those chivalrous, medieval themes. The princess, the knight, the sword, the king, the abstract qualities of good and evil, and other deep mythological themes.

The working title of this epic was VERSATILE FLYING SECRETS, though being more than twice as old (and twice as smart) as I was when I was writing it, at 16,17 and 18, perhaps a better title would have been CHRISTOPHER ULYSSES AND THE FORGOTTEN CASTLE. My version of Harry Potter was the character, Christopher Ulysses, a platinum haired, lithe young man who inherits a castle (and all the spooks and historical accouterments contained therein).

The writing of the novel took two years. I remember completing the final sentence about an hour before my matric final science exam (for which I received an E). In the book I also killed off the central characters mother. This was an unexpectedly poignant event, and a profound experience. Two or three months later my own mother died.

It is interesting that when we create a hero we must create a villain. Is life like that? Every Superman needs a Lex Luthor (to prove his worth), Batman needs a Joker, Hitler needs a Churchill, God needs Satan. But in reality, the two are the same, the two are one, the one cannot live without the other. This too, is a metaphor.
My Voldemort was Ogilvie Skye, an absentee landlord who used all manner of evil to procure land. With Venner Field he involved himself personally. The story culminates in a slaughter, just as Harry Potter's story does. But my story is much darker, more mythical and perhaps more terrifying (in two words: less fun) than Harry Potter. The question is, which is more imaginative. For Skye's kingdom I sketched a black and blue (cold) world, where the fields were filled with blue grass, and the walls were black and glistening like bloody wounds in the dark.

I used Lucas' light sabre as Skye's weapon. It was a solid beam of light, in the hands of a Dark Lord. Christopher Ulysses (grey eyes, platinum hair), a 17 year old, attempts to lead a fugitive fleet of granddads and geeks, each leader pushing people into the fray. Skye's army are armed with modern automatic weapons, Ulysses troops are armed with good intentions, tartan kilts, swords and shields. It is the story of the world becoming undone (and undoing itself). Our traditions destroyed against our ambitions, and vice versa. The young massacring the old, plastic undoing thread etc etc. In the end, Ulysses loses a hand to the sabre, but propels Skye into the open oven of a blast furnace. Whilst this battle is underway, the Highlands rage with civilians apparently gone made. Swords battle pistols and rifles. It is a comical, mythical Armageddon, all engaged in war. All coming to grief, except a chosen few.

I remember losing the entire manuscript whilst stationed at an Air Force base outside Pretoria. I posted up reward posters. I finally found it, with some leftovers of a bag of person possessions swiped from my KAS. The manuscript then faded into obscurity. Perhaps it is time to resurrect it. Or perhaps, sleeping dogs should be all lowed to remain that way.