We’re counting down the days until the publication of The Hallmarked Man! Nick Jeffery and John Granger take perhaps the last look at Rowling’s most recent postings before they dive into discussion about the meaning and artistry of Strike8.
In today’s conversation, they review Rowling’s relationship with Stephenie Meyer, the author of the Twilight series, a New York Times feature article ‘The Wizard’s Everlasting Spell’ about the growth of Potter fan fiction with a romantic twist, and Rowling’s acerbic review of Nikola Sturgeon’s memoir Frankly. Nick and John discuss along the way the initial response of cultural gatekeepers to the quality of the writing in Harry Potter, the history of Rowling’s relationship with the writers of romantic fan fiction using her characters in light of Fifty Shades of Gray, and Hogwarts Professor’s role in making ‘Rowling Studies’ legitimate and the culture-wide acceptance of Rowling as a writer of merit “something we’ve always known” rather than a controversial assertion.
And what does all that have to do with the imminent release of Hallmarked Man? Nick and John share their more-than-tentative plans for reading Strike8 and the best way — not the only way, of course, but a much better way than, say, cataloging predictions everyone will forget by mid-September — to prepare for our first reading of an epic Rowling-Galbraith title.
We hope you are as excited as we are to the advent of Hallmarked Man and that you’re looking forward to exploration of its breadth and depth beneath the surface plot with us in the coming month!
Links To Subjects Discussed Above:
The Wizard’s Everlasting Spell Why Magic, Dragons and Explicit Sex Are in Bookstores Everywhere: Romantasy is propping up the fiction market. Thanks to a generation that grew up reading about a boy wizard. (The New York Times, 20 August 2025, Alexandra Alter)
The new version of the [‘Dramione’ Potter fan fiction] story that so captivated Ms. Stallone will soon be released as “Alchemised,” and the novel’s publisher, Del Rey, is betting that the feverish devotion to its fanfiction predecessor will translate into blockbuster sales. Del Rey has ordered a first printing of 750,000 copies for the novel’s release in late September; translations are lined up in 21 languages.
Besides appealing to hordes of existing fans, “Alchemised” has another advantage: It taps into the raging appetite for romantasy, a subgenre that blends fantasy elements like magic, fairies and dragons with love, yearning and explicit sex.
In a way, the romantasy explosion — driven by the success of blockbuster authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros, whose series have sold millions upon millions of copies — stems from the legacy of popular young adult series like “Twilight” and “Harry Potter.” Those books molded generations of young readers who have grown up but still crave big fantasy novels — now with a dose of erotica.
“They grew up with the characters, and the stories ended, but there’s still such a huge appetite,” said Leah Hultenschmidt, publisher of the romance imprint Forever. “They’re still hungry for that magical world building, an epic cast of characters and heroism, and maybe they just want it a little spicier.”
Publishers are frantically searching for the next breakout romantasy series. Last year, romantasy sales topped more than 32 million copies in print alone, a 47 percent jump over the previous year, according to Circana Bookscan. Five of the 10 best-selling adult fiction titles this year are romantasies. At the same time, adult fiction sales overall have stagnated.
The kind of romance that’s selling like crazy now — erotically charged genre mash-ups — first took off in fanfiction before publishers recognized there was an appetite for it.
“For a long time, you had to go to fanfiction to find that,” said Anne Jamison, a professor of English at the University of Utah who has studied fanfiction. “Romantasy basically is what fanfiction made.”
* Alchemized Sen Lin Yu
* ‘Romantasy’ Novels on Amazon, Etc.
The twilight of Nicola Sturgeon: J.K. Rowling reviews Frankly
I know I’m stating the obvious, and I’ll probably be one of countless reviewers making the same point, but it’s impossible to read Nicola Sturgeon’s memoir without remembering the smash hit fictional franchise, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer. For those who don’t know (ie, everyone who wasn’t a tween or teenage girl, or living with one, 2005-2015), Twilight was massively popular for roughly a decade, each new book or film being greeted adoringly by its devoted fans. [opening paragraph)
Rowling and Romantasy:
* ‘The Twenty Richest Authors in the World:' Rowling #2 (!), Meyer #18, Collins #20
* The Sunday Times’ List of the “100 Bestselling Books of the Last Five Decades:” Rowling #23, Meyer #42, 58, 59, and 64
* Twilight Book Sales
* Stephen King: “Stephenie Meyer Can’t Write Worth a Darn”
* Speaking of Disappearances – Whatever Happened to Stephenie Meyer?
* Fifty Shades of Grey Book Sales
* ‘Fifty Shades Outsells Harry Potter’
* ‘Rowling Refuses to Read Fifty Shades’
* Rowling about Sales of Fifty Shades: “Just think how many books I could've sold if Harry had been a bit more creative with his wand.”
Rowling August 2025 Tweet about Writers who are All Lake No Shed (and Vice-Versa)
The Silkworm and its Women Writers:
* Kathryn Kent: “I write fantasy with a twist… It’s fantasy slash erotica really, but quite literary” (416) “She makes Dorcus Pengelly look like Iris Murdoch” (232)
* Dorcus Pengelly: “She writes pornography dressed up as historical romance” (225)
* Elizabeth Tassel: All Shed, No Lake (per Strike)
You told Quine that Bombyx Mori sounded brilliant, that it would be the best thing he’d ever done, that it was going to be a massive success, but that he ought to keep the contents very, very quiet in case of legal action, and to make a bigger splash when it was unveiled.
And all the time you were writing your own version. You had plenty of time to get it right, didn’t you, Elizabeth? Twenty-six years of empty evenings, you could have written plenty of books by now, with your first from Oxford… but what would you write about? You haven’t exactly lived a full life, have you?… (442)
Did it feel good, raping and killing your way through everyone you knew, Elizabeth? One big explosion of malice and obscenity, revenging yourself on everyone, painting yourself as the unacclaimed genius, taking sideswipes at everyone with a more successful love life, a more satisfying — (440)
* Michael Fancourt about women writers (298):
I said that the greatest female writers, with almost no exceptions, have been childless. A fact. And I have said that women generally, by virtue of their desire to mother, are incapable of the necessarily single-minded focus anyone must bring to the creation of literature, true literature. I don’t retract a word. That is a fact.
* Hobart’s Sin, Owen Quine’s first and best novel, the “Key” to Tassel’s Bombyx Mori, the “book within a book:” “The plot of Hobart’s Sin turns on Hobart, who’s both male and female, having to choose between parenthood and abandoning his aspirations as a writer: aborting his baby, or abandoning his brainchild” (229)
* “It’s all about a hermaphrodite who’s pregnant and gets an abortion because a kid would interfere with his literary ambitions” (242)
* Rowling about The Silkworm: It is the Story that Inspired the Series, the Lake Origin
Actually, the plot for Silkworm predated the plot for Cuckoo’s Calling. I’d had the idea for that plot, the book within the book, for seven or eight years before I wrote it. That often happens with me, I have an idea and I keep it and sit on it. But I keep it and I play with it like a Rubik’s cube and there’ll come a point where everything clicks and it’s ready to be written. I have a lot of notebooks filled with these kinds of things. Silkworm was like that. I sat on that plot for a long time before using it.
* “It’s a novel about novels with another novel inside it” (~1;15)
Reading for Wisdom and Jollies
An Introduction to and Example of Reading Rowling at Four Levels: A Quadrigal Reading of The Christmas Pig
Reading Rowling the Hard, Right Way versus Enjoying the Surface Story and Discussing Themes: An Introduction to Perennialist Reading
Traditional Symbols in Harry Potter and Cormoran Strike: A Perennialist View
Harry Potter’s Bookshelf — What to Read to Understand Rowling’s Artistry and How to Read Her Work to Grasp Her Meaning and Intention
The Deathly Hallows Lectures
Harry Potter as Ring Cycle and Ring Composition
* ‘How Does Ring Composition Work Anyway?’
Darke Hierogliphicks: Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (Stanton Linden)
How to Think About The Ink Black Heart Pre-Publication – Seven Tools for Serious Readers to Review (February 2022)
And Don’t Forget!
* In Praise of Friendship - a Robin and Strike Heresy
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