Ravenclaw, Alas

overdramatic do-gooders

This evening at a book signing event (for Secrets of the Alchemist Dar at a Barnes & Noble in lovely Paramus, NJ), I was introduced as the book's editor, and so afterward a woman came up to me and told me that she writes in B&N every day -- a fantasy novel. Did I like fantasy?

Yes, I like fantasy a lot, actually.

But I had to confess that my powers of acquisition in publishing are limited to coloring & activity books, and even then (although I didn't explain this), buying a license for the c&a market involves a dozen high-powered executives and lawyers and specialized licensing liaison diplomats and five-year business plans approved by accountants. My contribution to that process is to seem smart and creative and flexible and detail-oriented and think up good titles to decorate the PowerPoint presentations. So I wouldn't be able to buy this woman's fantasy novel outright, unless (and I didn't explain this) I took it on as a serious labor of love and asked for the dispensation to do extra work editing an additional book for another imprint.

oh, Draco

I have never read a manuscript in which I believed in so strongly as to battle the fight of my life over it, at least one that has come to me from an unsolicited source.

I was getting confused and she'd given up on me so I noticed that she had a Gryffindor shirt on and so I shrugged toward the lion crest on her pocket and told her, "Anyway, I'm in Slytherin."

evil?

She gasped and seemed a little shocked at my admission, but recovered gracefully with an unburdening of admiration for snakes, followed by an impassioned defense of Snape, expressing her disbelief that he was a bad man and avowing how that potions professor had always, if slimily, looked out for Harry's interests.

Actually, I agree.

Snape will turn out to be the most deviously loyal of them all.

my peeps

Anyway, I lied.

I wish I could be wealthy and imposing and cruel and cold-hearted and elegant as a Slytherin.

I am not that cool.

The sorting hat has picked me for Ravenclaw, the house of clinical academics and intellectuals, all smart and distant and dreamy, with a love for books, internal emotion, and farfetched but usually correct beliefs.

*sneers contemptuously*

At least I'm not a fucking Hufflepuff.