Books: Harry Plotter and The Chamber of Serpents
Exclusive interview with MJ Ware and a review of her Harry Potter parody
Rating: Three Stars
“The book actually came about thanks to writer’s block,” says Harry Plotter and The Chamber of Serpents author MJ Ware. “I found myself thinking about what it would be like for any student unlucky enough to sorted into Slytherin house. Would they really be destined to become evil? Were all the kids there actually evil? I began to feel that maybe those kids were getting a bad rap.”
Serpents revisits scenes similar to those in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. The names of characters are changed, with Dumbledore as Dumblesnore, Snape as Smape and so forth. The idea of telling the Hogwarts story from the point of view of an out-of-place student is fun. As a parody though, Serpents isn’t funny or clever enough. If you’d never read Harry Potter you probably wouldn’t read it. Austin has no hero’s journey of his own, what he does helps others. For those missing Harry Potter, Serpents provides a fun way to hear the story from another viewpoint.
Austin Winter is a boy whose father has been transferred to the U.S. consulate in London. An owl flies into his room at the American Embassy with a letter saying he’s been accepted at Hogworts School of Magic and Mystery. His father is pleased to hear that his son has been accepted to any school, but Austin leaves out the detail that it is a magic school. At Hogworts Austin is cast into the most despised of all the houses. As the only American at Hogworts, Austin struggles to keep up and to find his place.
“I never intended to write a Harry Potter parody,” says Ware. “I was working on a novel called Second Class Magic, about kids from underprivileged families who discover they posses magical gifts. But, I was having trouble getting going. So to get the creative juices flowing, I put the main character, Austin, into Hogwarts. At some point I decided Austin would end up in Slytherin, and from then on the Parody sort of wrote itself.”
While writing the book, Ware met with Harry Potter film director Chris Columbus. “His home office is decked out with HP memorabilia including a set-used broom,” says Ware. “He was very gracious and signed my copies of the movies. I think it’s because of this that I tried to honor the movies whenever they didn’t conflict with the book, such as the colored linings for the house robes.”
When Ware abandoned the book he was working on to write a Harry Potter parody instead, he found he had a lot of research to do. “I knew that people love Harry Potter so much that any little thing I messed up would be pointed out,” says Ware. “I wore out the binding on my hardback copy of Chamber of Secrets. There were times when say, I wanted Austin to meet up with Hermione, but he couldn’t because she was off with Harry and Ron. So I had to substitute another character or change my timing to make things fit. On top of that, I had to work with lawyers to make sure I stayed within the bounds of fair use laws.”
Ware says he spent a lot of time at Muggle.net cross-checking Harry Potter facts. As a self-published author, Ware uses independent editors.
Ware’s first book was Super Zombie Juice Mega Bomb, about a group of kids that defend their town from Zombies using squirt guns. In Ware’s book Zack and Zoey Save Walt’s Brain, Walt Disney’s cryogenically head is stolen.
“I admire the Harry Potter books so much I wanted to make this novel free,” says Ware. Serpents is free under a Creative Commons license. The audiobook version, to release in a couple weeks, will also be free.
Ware lives in Folsom, California, on the edge of the Sierra Mountains. He was born in Anaheim, California.
Harry Plotter and The Chamber of Serpents, A Potter Secret Parody by MJ Ware. Kindle Edition. 152 pages. CG Press. LTD. Publication date May 6, 2015. Available through Amazon. Language English. Text-to-Speech enabled. ASIN: B00X96VQW8
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