8:50am on Saturday 21 July.  I have a 9:00am appointment.  Because I am early I linger, leaning on the rail, looking down at the queue outside Dymocks on the level below.

The woman fifth in line is wearing a purple cloak.  There is a buzz of anticipation but overall it’s an orderly queue.    They all clutch pre-paid receipts.  These people are waiting for Harry Potter.

A librarian friend introduced me to Harry back at the start of book two, before the hype had really begun.  I enjoy the books, but not enough to stand in a queue before opening time just to get the next book.

9:00am.  The saleswoman cuts the tape to the box with a flourish, and starts putting books into the purple promotional bags.

Even though I am now, officially, late for my appointment, I stay to watch.

The first to people to receive their books are teenage girls.  They’re together.  Then another two girls, then Purple Cloak.  Then it’s a boy and his mother, another boy with his mother, and a boy without his mother.  They’re all young.  I’d guess somewhere between ten and thirteen.

Next comes an older man on his own, and then another mother and son.

One young boy starts reading as soon as he gets his book.

I regretfully decide that it’s time to go.

As I walk through the shopping centre I see evidence of Harry Potter everywhere.

Two young boys—friends or brothers, I can’t tell—sit on a seat, reading.  A girl trails behind her mother, reading.  Her mother stops and the girl runs into her but hardly notices, she’s so busy turning the page.

Over at the rival bookstore a passable looking Hagrid charms the crowd. Robbie Coltrane has made Hagrid his own.  No-one else could ever play Hagrid now, in my opinion, and this man looks a lot like Robbie.

It makes me smile and I’m still smiling as I arrive at my destination, ten minutes late.

After I am finished I walk back through the shopping centre.  Hagrid has gone, replaced by a young woman in a pointed hat with oversized Harry Potter glasses.

The two boys have gone too.  There is someone new in their seat.  A girl—not the same one I saw earlier—and she is reading Harry Potter too.

And Purple Cloak is still here, walking slowly along the upper level, eyes glued to the pages.

It’s wonderful to see so many people reading.

That’s what I love most about Harry Potter.  People reading books.

Just because stereotypes exist in real life doesn’t mean you can put them into your novel. 

The street is full of men in classy suits today.  Black or dark charcoal is in. Not a navy suit among them. 

The men wearing them are cocky, confident and loud.  The single women—there is only ever one woman in each group, and they all wear smart black pant suits—never get a word in.

Some of the conversation I overhear is egotistical.  Boasts about how they will exceed their targets, boasts about what they will do in the future.

They turn out to be real estate agents, here for training.

Of course they are, I realise.  They behave exactly the way you would expect a group of real estate agents to act.

They were one big stereotype.

Had I written about them in a novel, of course, I would have to change many of the characteristics.  Otherwise I would have been told to cut the stereotypes.

Warning: Minor spoiler alerts for Renegade’s Magic.

I just finished reading Renegade’s Magic, Robin Hobb’s third book in the Soldier Son series, I enjoyed it so much that I read it in one sitting. It’s a big book, it took all day and I hardly moved from the couch.  I’m stiff now.

As I got into the story I couldn’t thinking, “Two people in one body. Oh, I wish I had thought of this idea first.”

Holly Lisle wrote that when she reads something wonderful, her reactions vary from …

“… huge envious green goose bumps, because I know there’s no way in hell I could have ever written that book or story … sometimes I am moved to unenvious rapture —I love what I’ve read, but I have no desire to emulate it …[and] sometimes I am filled with passion and wicked larceny—what I read thrills me and catches at my gut and at my imagination and I just have to steal some part of it for myself ”
Holly Lisle, How to (legally and ethically) steal ideas

While I doubt that we will ever write a story about two people in the same body—especially after this blog—Holly Lisle gives some good pointers on How to (legally and ethically) steal ideas. The key is to take the germ of the idea that really grabs you, just the germ, nothing else, and to change everything else so that it’s really unrecognisable.

And that’s fine by me. Most of Renegade’s Magic brings out in me the ‘unenvious rapture’ of loving the story, but I don’t want to emulate it. Sometimes, while I am reading I think, “How on earth can Robin Hobb think up ideas like that? Look what she’s doing to poor Nevare now. How can she take the story in that direction and still make it work?” I cannot even imagine doing it myself.

No. If we came up with a two people in one mind story I doubt it would even be a fantasy. It would be science fiction. (See how my mind is ticking over with possibilities, even though my head is saying no, we’ll never do it.) Our two definitely wouldn’t be a mage asundered, nor would they be two parts of the same person. No, our shared body story would have two distinct individuals, somehow thrust together into one container. The only things they would have in common with Hobb’s book would be the two minds in one body, and the fact that neither of them really liked it.

It’s what Holly Lisle calls ‘ethical thievery’.