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Dan Brown and the Protesting Nuns
From: www.writerswrite.com

" It looks like Dan Brown's troubles with religious figures aren't over yet. The Catholic Church has been pretty vocal about its dislike of The Da Vinci Code. Now that the movie is being filmed in Europe, more troubles have appeared on the horizon. This time, it's protesting nuns.

But as Tom Hanks arrived at Lincoln Cathedral yesterday, he found himself somewhat upstaged. A handful of protesters were making their feelings known about the decision to film scenes from The Da Vinci Code in the historic building. Led by a Catholic nun, Sister Mary Michael, they claimed the movie, based on the bestselling novel by Dan Brown, should be filmed elsewhere. She led a 12-hour prayer vigil to push the message home. The controversial thriller is the story of a Vatican conspiracy to suppress the supposed marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalene.

And despite the dean of Lincoln Cathedral branding the book 'a load of old tosh' he has agreed to let the movie be filmed there. He and the church authorities said yes after the producers donated ?100,000 to the coffers.

Parts of its interior will serve as a double for Westminster Abbey, where church authorities refused to take part. Other locations include the Louvre in Paris, Winchester Cathedral and Rosslyn Chapel, near Edinburgh.

I read the first three [Harry Potter books]. The fourth one stopped me in my tracks, partially because even though the story moves along, I just don't feel like they're well written. Besides, I wrote a book called Wizard's Hall [in 1991, eight years before the first "Harry Potter" book]. And there's an awful lot of Wizard's Hall in it [the Harry Potter books]. I always tell people that if Ms. Rowling would like to cut me a very large check, I would cash it. [Wizard's Hall] has got a boy named Henry [who] goes to wizard school, doesn't think he has talent. He has a good friend with red hair. There's a wicked wizard who's trying to destroy the school, and the pictures on the wall move and speak and change. I have kids who write to me all the time and say, "I thought you had stolen Harry Potter, but my teacher pointed out that you published it eight years before Harry Potter."

McMurtry said this week that the shop's outlook has improved due to staff cuts and an upturn in business. The North Texas shop contains about 400,000 books, including hard-to-find, out-of-print and used editions.

"I think it will be able to stay solvent and stay open," McMurtry said. "I didn't want to close it." McMurtry revitalized his one-stoplight hometown when he opened the shop in the mid-1980s. The store grew as McMurtry closed his bookstores in other states and moved the books to the North Texas location. Many residents still resent McMurtry's portrayal of Archer City in The Last Picture Show and other novels.

The links between the Che Guevara epic and Kerouac's novel are clear -- both road movies, focused on two young men who learn about life and living on the way. Both are hugely influential, both boast a cult following and both were written by men who symbolised a generation - Guevara's revolutionaries and Kerouac's 'beat' poets.

To Owen King, 28, this reflects a desire to cut his own path and see his work accepted or rejected on its merits. But an even stronger motive, he said, is to dispel any assumption that he is writing in the same genre as his father.

"I don?t think it?s fair for Stephen King fans to be deceived, and I know I?m a Stephen King fan," he said in an interview outside the Bangor Public Library. "The last thing I want to do is to present something as ?Stephen King, Part II,? and have it be something that?s a big disappointment."

He considered using a pen name, but was put off by the idea of going by an alias when meeting people or having a go-between handle details of his professional life. The prospect seemed too complex and too weird. ....King acknowledged that his book is grabbing more attention than would a first-time effort by a writer without comparable lineage, but he seems to have made a conscious effort not to capitalize on his father?s fame.

"I think the model that I look at is someone like Jakob Dylan, whose dad is obviously every bit if not more famous than mine," King said. "He?s a guy who sought to build a career on his own, doing something that?s a little bit different than what his father does."