Book two is titled Wayward Son, an American reference to the “carry on” in the song by Kansas for your American-set book. The idea of “carry on” in Fangirl was a reference to the phrase “Keep Calm and Carry On.” Whereas the title of the first Simon Snow book is referencing the “carry on” lyric in “Bohemian Rhapsody”-a very British song. How do we function in America a little bit differently from the U.K.? How would the fact that we’re all spread out and we have fewer shared traditions, from place to place, affect us? You kind of just think about how the language is different.
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And then I thought, This book is not going to be called Magical Encyclopedia of the Americas. It feels more right than any other “magical America” takes I’ve seen from British authors.įirst it was overwhelming.
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I love your take on a magical America in Wayward Son, with its treaties and territories and individualism. Carry On is about what if everything we knew about the world was wrong, and then what if everything we knew about ourselves was wrong. All of his coping skills are about winning the war, and none of them are about living at peace. So Simon becomes a very good vehicle because he’s been through an enormous trauma, as every Chosen One has.
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I think when you reach adulthood, you realize how much more complicated everything is, and what little clarity you have cobbled together in your teen years. How much of that trope could I dissect and turn a different way? This is Superman, Luke Skywalker, Harry Potter, Frodo. We have digested so many Chosen One stories. We are all, as eaters of pop culture, on the same page as we begin that book. Okay, we’ve got a very special orphan, the most magical orphan there is, and he’s on a train going to magic school. I was all of a sudden a full-time author, and I was writing this book for people like me. I also was at a place where I was a bit overwhelmed. When I sat down to write Carry On, I didn’t even realize how much Chosen One stuff I had inside of me. But with Wayward Son you really broke out beyond that original concept, specifically in your concept of a magical America. Whenever I introduce new readers to either Fangirl or Carry On, I feel like I have to carefully explain the nature of this quasi- Harry Potter fan fiction. best-seller list, follow the adventures of Simon Snow (a British boy with magical powers, which might sound familiar) and his wizarding-school roommate, rival, and eventual boyfriend, Baz.īut like the Harry Potter universe itself, Simon’s world has room for many more stories-and on Thursday, Rowell teased a third book in the series, titled Any Way the Wind Blows and coming “soon.” How soon is “soon”? As Rowell told Vanity Fair in a recent phone call, it at least won’t be a four-year wait again. Carry On, published in 2015, and now its long-awaited sequel, Wayward Son, currently at the top of the New York Times Y.A. Fangirl, about a college freshman named Cath and her very popular Harry Potter-inspired fan fiction, not only struck a particularly resonant chord with her readers, but set the Nebraska-based Rowell on a surprising path to publishing some magical, J.K. She published two novels, Eleanor & Park and Fangirl, which cemented her reputation as a young adult fiction writer uniquely gifted at writing smart-yet-dreamy contemporary stories about sensitive young women and the very nice boys who like them.
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In 2013, Rainbow Rowell had a year most authors dream of.