How the J.K. Rowling controversy has affected me personally

Back in 2023, I was at a local author showcase at a library in my area, in a large room with a bunch of other authors. Each of us had our books, advertising flyers, posters, and other merchandise displayed and ready for sale. While there wasn't a whole lot of traffic from the public, it was nice to associate with other local authors, buying and selling each other's books among ourselves and learning about each other's experiences as writers. We would walk around to each other's displays and talk to each other about our books.

One author in particular was a proud member of the LGBT community, and her books and writing were both geared toward and reflective of her community. While I do not belong to that community, I admire her for being open and upfront about who she is and where she comes from and what her writing is about. When this young lady came by my display, I talked about my two published books and how the first one was a parody-mashup based on the premise of Harry Potter mixed with other franchises, and how the second one mostly parodied the Narnia book, Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

I can't recall if I was giving away books for free that day, or selling them, or offering to trade, but what I recall very clearly was the fact that when I offered one of my books to her, she turned down the first book and went with the second book instead, saying something like, "I can do Narnia."

I thought that was a bit odd, since most people would want to read the first book in a series, but I was okay with it. After all, I was happy that she was willing to take any of my books.

It was only later that it finally hit me, the probable reason for why this person had made the choice not to read my first book. It was because my book parodied Harry Potter. And for a very large number of people, that is no longer okay.

So much has been said in the past five years about J. K. Rowling and the controversial statements that she made, and continues to make, about transgender people, in particular about transgender women. I'm not posting here to weigh in on her statements and whether I agree or disagree with one side or the other of the controversy. There's nothing I can say that will meaningfully add to that dialogue.

What I am here to talk about is how the controversy itself has affected me personally, and how much it hurts to know that my Jerry Copperpot parody/mashup book series, deserving or not, will be forever tainted by indirect association to Harry Potter.

So, when it came to addressing the controversy while writing my new novels, parts three and four of the Jerry Copperpot series, I felt that, given the metafictional nature of my writing, the best way I could handle it was within the text itself.

In book four, Jerry finally gets to meet his hero, Jake A. Rolling. But instead of the smiling young dark-haired fellow Jerry is used to seeing in the author photos on the books, he turns out to be a frail white-haired old man, tired and prematurely aging beyond his years- incidentally a very intentional reference to Bilbo Baggins in the Lord of the Rings after he gave up the ring. Rolling goes on to explain to Jerry the reason for his appearance: 

“Oh, come now, Jerry.. haven’t you ever seen a joke get old?” Rolling said.

“What? I don’t get it. You’re not a joke; I think you’re awesome. All your fans do,” Jerry said.

Rolling waved one hand dismissively. “But that’s not what I really am. Deep down, I’m just an old joke, Jerry. Nothing but a play on words, poking fun at a name that nobody is allowed to laugh about anymore. Things happen outside of fiction that affect the way fiction is perceived.” 

“What do you mean?” Jerry asked. “What happened?”

 “It was unfortunate,” Rolling said, “that when she got canceled... so did I. The magic was never the same after that. When the fandom fragmented, it was like a divorce, you see. A divorce in the fan base. You and I, the jokes and the parodies-- we’re like the extended family; the innocent relatives on both sides who get shunned and disinvited.” Rolling paused, looking off to the side for a moment. “Things are so polarized in that world… the cancel culture, they call it.” He looked back at Jerry. “It seems they’ve lost their sense of humor for a joke like me. And so I’ve gotten old-- quite literally, mind you. Such a curious fate.”

That's the condensed, fictionalized version of it, and an excerpt from a rough draft, but I'd like to go a little deeper into what I meant when I wrote that.

Here's the thing about being part of a fan community-- it's like a family. An extended family bound together by love for something, be it music, books, movies, TV shows, anything pop culture can produce. These feelings of love are strong, powerful emotions.

And just like a family, when something creates a rift in a fan community, it's like what a divorce does to a family. People take sides, they stop associating with one another. The powerful feelings that once held them together get turned around and push them apart. There's a real psychology involved in this.

So when J.K. Rowling's statements about trans people split the Harry Potter fan community along roughly ideological lines, it was just like a divorce. Half the fans, now former fans, have turned against her and her art, while the other half have stayed with her and even take stances in her defence.

I've seen this happen in different fan communities for one reason or another. For example, the fan communities of some of my favorite '70s rock bands have experienced a schism when those bands have parted with core members. It happened with Styx fans, and it happened particularly with the Journey fan community, who it seems has lost their sense of humor and cannot take the slightest joke about their favorite band.

Such schisms in rock band fan communities pale in comparison to the split in Harry Potter fans. It's almost unfair for me to make the comparison. But like those Journey fans, some current and former Harry Potter fans have most certainly lost their sense of humor. After all, who wants to laugh when the author of books you once loved is making transphobic comments that are deeply hurtful to the LGBT community and their allies in general?

So when they see my novel, where my character Jerry Copperpot is reading a book called Harvey Totter by one Jake A. Rolling, there's no desire to laugh. No matter that my first book was published in 2019 before this all started, and conceived and mostly written in 2016 before the politically polarizing era of Donald Trump began.

Some might say that I've got nothing to complain about. Due to my age, I didn't grow up with Harry Potter, therefore I didn't have a cherished part of my childhood become poisoned and tainted, made unpalatable by Rowling's transphobia. And neither did wind up with those who feel they need to defend and support Rowling and her art. Perhaps I should just shut up because I'm not one of the children of this divorce; I didn't watch my parents break up and my household fall to pieces. I am merely a member of the extended family.

And yet, in a divorce, the extended family suffers too. Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins on both sides get cut off, disinvited, and excluded. And here I am, the goofy uncle who tells bad dad jokes, who is no longer welcome to gather with some of them, or if I am permitted to attend, my jokes are certainly not, for they have grown old and stale and irrelevant.

It's not to say that I don't mourn parts of my own childhood pop culture that have become tainted by their creators' controversies. I myself threw out all my Bill Cosby records when he admitted to his crimes against women, and I can no longer laugh at Woody Allen the way I once did after learning of the allegations made against him. I can understand, in a small way, where they are coming from in this respect.

But it still hurts to know that my parodies have been effectively canceled, simply by association and through no fault of my own.

Even one of my own kids, who recently came out as part of the LGBT community, has mixed feelings about the connection between my novels and JK Rowling's books. And my kids are my biggest fans. This is not the place to discuss my own family situation in detail, but it would be an understatement to say that my own experience dealing with my child's identity and mental health situation has been difficult, being torn between my liberal politics and my conservative religion, between accommodating my kid and still practicing my beliefs with the remainder of my family. The anxiety, pain, worry, and heartbreak in this particular experience have been overwhelming at times, and there are some days when it seems like Mulderscull, the personification of my anxiety, will win in a tragically ironic real-life way that I never would have imagined when I created him as a character in my first novel. 

My writing has become a form of escape and helped greatly in dealing with my mood and emotions during these times. And all I can do is carry on, and hope that someone, somewhere will still read my books or listen to my audiobooks and be a little more understanding of where I'm coming from.

Drafts of Books 3 and 4 are more or less complete

 Just another update, I've managed to insert enough new material to bring the Book 4 manuscript up above 200 pages, making it just long enough to really call it a novel, and I'm very happy with how it's turned out. I've finished naming chapters on both book 3 and book 4, and I think the drafts are at a point where I can set them down long enough to get back to work on other projects.

Also an interesting thing I wanted to share; while going back to do some work on the audiobook for book 2, I went back looking through my notes and files on my XP laptop where all of my books started. The first inklings of a plot idea for Book 3 were recorded in late May of 2018, approximately three weeks after I finished the rough draft of Book 2. This early note was very short, but it contained the core concept/theme of "discontinuity" that carried through the manuscript all the way until now, along with the idea of starting book 3 with a "deleted scene" from the first book that dates all the way back to 2016.

But the idea stayed on the back burner for quite a while, as I was focused on completing and publishing books 1 and 2. Compiling ideas and notes for book 3 began in earnest in 2020, along with the first few pages of actual writing. The plot for book 3 really started to come together in 2021. But numerous distractions, including life changes and changes in routine during and after the pandemic, along with the very particular problem of watching too much streaming TV, slowed the writing process for some time. Progress picked up more about 18 months ago, when I made a conscious effort to make changes in my life to facilitate my creative projects.

I've really been blessed to see some of these projects come to fruition, and it was very satisfying to look back at some of these half-forgotten notes to see that the seeds that would grow into books 3 and 4 were already there before the first two books were even published.

More particularly, it's also very satisfying to see that the Jerry Copperpot series, which for years has only consisted of two books, will eventually become a four-volume saga worthy to be called a "series."

Book 3 manuscript now becoming two books!

After some consideration, it became apparent that my latest manuscript was so long that asking my readers to sit through nearly 500 pages of bad dad-joke humor was a bad idea, so I decided to split my newly completed manuscript into two parts. I got the idea to do this after I tried to tell one of my kids a plot summary, and she lost interest halfway through.

Book Three will still be called Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons. Book Four splits off at the point where the road-trip narrative ends, and the setting returns to Magicternia before subsequent events in the story. The working title for the concluding book in the series is "Jerry Copperpot and the Last Metaphor."

The only problem with this arrangement is that the story split occurs around page 300 of the initial manuscript, leaving only 155 pages for Book Four. Because of this, I have been hard at work coming up with new material to work into the narrative and flesh out parts of the story that I may have gone through too quickly in my race to get to the end of the story. So far I've managed to grow the new manuscript up to 180 pages, and I'm hoping I can get it up to at least 200 pages so that I can credibly call it a decent-size book to stand alongside the other three in the series.

Of course, this unexpected change of plans and focus on writing additional material means further delay for the audiobook of Book Two and other projects mentioned in my previous post.

I have also managed to experiment with making cover art for the two books using multiple generative AI tools, and the resulting illustrations so far look very, very promising. It's tempting to post them here now, but I don't want people to get an illustration into their heads that doesn't wind up being used; I know how frustrating it can be to expect one thing and then get another later on.

Progress update 09-22-24

I am excited to report that the rough draft of Book 3 is now complete! If I didn't mention it before, the working title is "Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons." It's taken a long, long time, from the first early notes in 2018, to the first paragraphs in 2020, the plot summary in 2021 and three years of on and off writing. It's been a longer and messier process, more reminiscent of the first book than the straightforward experience of writing the second. But I'm so glad to finally have the whole story in a readable form. I feel like this book brings the trilogy to a satisfying conclusion. Not to say that more books featuring Jerry and his friends aren't possible, after all it was a long 5 years in Jerry's timeline between book two and book three, and anything could have happened during that time. But for now, I believe a trilogy will be sufficient. The editing process of the first two books took a couple of years each, so it would be logical to say that the book will likely not be available for at least two more years.

On a separate note, I have gone back to work on the audiobook for Book Two, and the completed file for Chapter 18 is now up on Soundclick. (Only 7 long chapters left to go)

There are other projects in the pipeline:

-The Spanish version of Book One is way back on the back burner for now, but it is still a project with some progress made.

-I've also entertained the idea of an encyclopedic guide of sorts to the world of Jerry Copperpot, talking about all the characters, locations, etc. in the series.

-And finally, I've gotten requests from my kids to write a full version of the book-within-a-book Harvey Totter and the Philanthropist's Clone, which I've done a tiny bit of work on, but if we ever see it completed, I expect it will be released under the pseudonym "Jake A. Rolling."

So there's your update.

Releasing my first music album

 

It took 20 years, but I finally released an album of music! This is a collection of songs, mostly written by my brother Rob Goble. In 2003-2004 I recorded my own interpretation of a number of his songs, along with one instrumental, on a Tascam 4-track. Recently I decided to take those tracks (which had since been digitized) and enlisted soundman Bill Durham to help me mix them and make them listenable. The result was this album, "A Place to Run."

You can buy the album on Bandcamp https://mikegoble.bandcamp.com/album/a-place-to-run

And you can stream it for free on Soundcloud https://soundcloud.com/michael-j-goble

Please spread the word about it so that maybe some people who don't even know me might find out and listen to it.

Fans of my audiobooks may notice that the album contains the instrumental "Copperpot" (previously known as Untitled Instrumental) which is used as the backing music in the beginning and ending credits section of the audiobook. My wife suggested that I give it that name for that reason.

It also includes the song "Grandpa was a Cowboy" which is based off of a poem by my uncle W. Kent Goble.

Thanks to Rob and uncle Kent for letting me release these, and special thanks to Bill Durham for being willing to help out mix these old tracks up to a better standard, making them sound way better than I ever could. Also thanks to magician Rick Morrill for his advice on improving the MIDI keyboard tracks on the electric version of the title track.

Theme Song for Chipmunk's favorite anime

 

Hi folks,

Those of you who've read or listened to Jerry Copperpot Book 1 may recall that Chipmunk's favorite TV show is a fictional anime called "Mega Mutant Matsumura Metamorphodroids." I've been on an A.I. music kick lately, so I decided to revisit the one-off joke of a fictional anime by using the Suno A.I. music generator to create an actual theme song in Japanese. So here is a link to the song:

https://suno.com/song/cf26760d-2542-4723-9fa2-ec5abbed2969

Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

And yes, for your information, I actually am a white belt in Matsumura Shorin-Ryu. I took it for three weeks back when I was in third grade. I learned to count to thirty-nine in corrupted Japanese, do a stance and a couple of blocks and punches. Then I quit because I wanted to stay home and read my library books.

March 2024 Update on Book Three

Hi folks,

I thought I'd stop in and give you an update on Book Three of the Jerry Copperpot series.

The working title is "Jerry Copperpot and the Flight of Wagons." It mostly leaves behind the Harry Potter, Goonies, Star Trek/Star Wars and Narnia references of the previous books, and instead makes extensive parody reference to the Rankin-Bass animated films "The Last Unicorn" and "Flight of Dragons," along with Miyazaki's "Castle in the Sky" among many other things. In part, it's a road-trip novel, set five years after the events of the first two books, and Jerry is now a teenager with a driver's license. Jerry wants to leave the weirdness and metafiction of his past behind him, but it catches up to him in a big way, sending him on a final adventure with consequences for both his personal life and his whole world.

I almost wrote a whole advertising blurb for the plot, but I think I should save that for the final release of the book, once it's all written and copyrighted.

I estimate I'm about 75 percent done, now about 360 pages of manuscript so far. This sounds like a lot, but with it being the conclusion of the trilogy, I have a lot of material to cover. Also I have a lot of parodies and mashups to include- there are multiple targets to the parody and that makes it a little more ambitious and more complicated at the same time. I'm really excited to finish this story and eventually share it with people.

Work on the manuscript has accelerated in recent months, partly as an emotional escape from the stresses of life (of which I have many right now, to understate things) and partly just for the reward of a sense of accomplishment in working on my hobby.

I also had to leave behind certain other hobbies; namely watching too much TV. After two years of the book languishing near the back burner, I decided if I didn't cancel Netflix and other paid streaming services, I'd never get this book done. My kids were kind of mad that I canceled Disney, but I had other reasons to cut expenses at the time anyway, and we're getting by just fine without it.

Maybe now that I've told everyone what I'm working on, it will give me a little more accountability and motivation to move forward and get it past the finish line.

Plus once I get the rough draft done, I will be able to refocus my attention on the audiobook for Book Two, which has also been slow in coming in recent months.

Wish me luck!