All I know is when HP#5 comes out I will be clawing my way to the top of the scrum to get myself a copy.
I am very happy for her.
The CNN cite states:
Emphasis mine.
I googled Muggle and only came up with four quickly scanned pages of Harry Potter related Muggle-mania.
Has anyone else ever seen this word outside of HP and Nancy Stouffer’s work? I’m kinda curious.
The third book is out - her name is Trudi Canavan, and the series is called The Black Magician Trilogy.
I proofread her second book (even got my name in the acknowledgements of the first two) but haven’t yet got around to reading the third.
Shirley Ujest
Has anyone else ever seen this word outside of HP and Nancy Stouffer’s work?
Ansible 156 (see the section labelled Potterism) has a few citations including “a 1205 Kentish dialect word for `tail’ and 20th-century slang for marihuana … and a Louis Armstrong record called Muggles”.
This is not necessarily relevant: even if a word pre-exists, one might still have a case for claiming plagiarism about its use in a specific trading context. For instance, “sunlight” is a common word, but the makers of Sunlight soap would have reasonable grounds to sue me if I started also to sell a soap called Sunlight.
However, in this case I think Stouffer shot herself in the foot by saying categorically that she invented it the word.
I got a little more curious about N.K Stouffer(Nancy K. Stouffer) and found a few of her books on Amazon.com.
The vast majority of her reviews are rather scathing and not because of the Harry Potter thing either. Even without the lawsuit controversy, Stouffer’s books are still said to be awful.
The reviews were fun to read!
There’s a nicely acerbic review and (spoiler warning) detailed synopsis of Rah and the Muggles here .
Interesting link, raygirvan. I think I am blind from the odd graphic.
Reading this review and the amazon reviews, makes me think that this author is trying to capitalize on Rowling’s success.
Remember the whole flap with David Gerrold and tribbles vs Heinlein’s Martian flat cats? (Or The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and When Harley was One, or–well, never mind).