As a book writer, I can quite proudly say that my desire to writing and subsequent writing was tremendously influenced by JK Rowling's success with the Harry Potter series of books. I came across Harry quite by accident. Many times, I would visit Borders Books or Barnes and Noble at lunch time in Washington, DC. Books are my passion, and I like all kinds of books, fiction or non-fiction. I am aware that I was aware that he was being promoted. However, my interest was in series of books because I loved to read on the metro, and when I did read I would read a whole series. This was over a period of a decade, at least. There may have been three or more Harry Potter books out there before I really became aware of them.
For several months, Harry would be staring at me from the store book shelves, but I must have missed him many times before I made the plunge and bought the first Harry Potter book in my life. It has had a profound influence on my perspectives in every sense of the word. I bought the book because there was a Harry Potter series of books. This made sense to me since the Harry Potter books require an investment in learning characters. I am not very good in remembering all the different characters in books before losing interest, so I have to think there is a payoff from all the effort.
One of the comments on my own book series of Wuh Lax has been that there are so many characters. To be honest, I don't really care, and to be frank its because I can remember them and I think young people reading my books will remember them. It may be now because they play computer games and in such games one has a host of different characters. It may be easier for kids to remember a larger number of characters. If one invests the time to learn the characters in the Wuh Lax series you will be rewarded. I don't really expect you to buy the first in the series until I have about three or four of the series in print and on the books shelves.
If you have read the first Wuh Lax book, you will know that some of my characters are based on real people who have influenced my life and have passed on to the other side. In my book, they come back as actors within an ethereal realm interacting with our matereal world. The ghosts of the past people are what drives events in our present day life experiences. That I am sure of, so it is not very difficult for me to imagine my mother or my cousin, or former friends and relatives visiting me and my characters in the here and now or in the past. Another thing that you will know is that my book is very philosophical at its roots and has a lot of science in it. The first book is only an introduction to these aspects. My writing will be educational as well as entertaining and will contain all sorts of discoveries.
What the Harry Potter series did for me was show me how to develop a world using words and then populate that world with information and mystery that will ultimately provide entertainment while it educates. The reaction of many people to the Harry Potter series was that it was evil in some ways because it took kids minds away from Jesus Christ or religion. Many churches wanted to ban the book. Of course, this is absolutely against what I felt about the book, the series, and the author. I could relate to Harry as a closet boy, bullied and deprived. Immediately, I wanted him to rise up and be somebody important. What Rowling did was give him a destiny and for that I was eternally grateful because harry Potter really came alive as a being within my mind. He is as real as Captain Aubrey in the Patrick O'brien series, or Hornblower in the Forrester series.
My favorite author, as you may know is Captain Frederick Marryat. He is one of the few writers to satisfy my yearning to read within a single book. Marryat's book, 'Children of the New Forest' was transforming. Another writer, who is stupendous in building a story is Sir Walter Scott, the author of Ivanhoe.