Category: London

Just…Wow!

Posted on by Diane Zahler

So THIS happened: Marvelwoods announcement

 

 

 

I am pretty much in shock. And in heaven. And, most wonderfully, in London! It’s an embarrassment of riches.

 

You might wonder how I could have sold two books within a few months of each other. I don’t actually write that fast. And nothing in publishing happens that fast! I finished The Marvelwood Magicians before writing Baker’s Magic, but I decided to change the narrative point of view in The Marvelwoods, so I rewrote the whole thing. And because the editorial wheels spin at different paces, Baker’s Magic found a home first. I love both of these books, and I’m incredibly happy that each is with an editor who loves it as I do.

 

Now I’d better start writing that next book…happy writer

 

Second Star to the Right

Posted on by Diane Zahler

I’ve been absolutely loving London. So far the weather has been great (there, I just jinxed it!), and I’m dickenswalking everywhere. Our neighborhood, Clerkenwell, is a trove of literary locations, especially ones related to Charles Dickens. Dickens lived nearby and memorialized the area in several of his books.

We went outside our little piece of the city this weekend to 100_8788Kensington Gardens. It’s a big park in the center of the city, with beautiful fountains and ponds, grassy areas, birds of all types, restaurants, a museum, even a palace. But to me, Kensington Gardens has always meant birdsone thing: a book I remember having read obsessively when I was 8 or 9 called Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens. For a long time I thought it was the actual novel Peter Pan.  Everyone knows Peter Pan, either the book or one of the five movie versions (with two more coming this year). But what about Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens? Was it the same book? Did it even exist?

It turns out that the author, J.M. Barrie, introduced the character of Peter Pan in a book for adults called The Little White Bird, published in 1902. Two years later, he wrote a stage play, Peter Pan, or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up. It was a great hit, and a publisher peter panconvinced Barrie to take several chapters of The Little White Bird and publish them in 1906 as Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, with illustrations by Arthur Rackham. It wasn’t until 1911 that Barrie expanded the tale and published Peter and Wendy, which later became Peter Pan.*

peterpanThere are others besides me who know that early version, though — here’s the statue of Peter Pan, located right in the middle of Kensington Gardens.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I’m not 100 percent sure I’ve ever read the actual novel Peter Pan. I’ll get right on that…