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Post by Dante on Oct 5, 2010 16:42:19 GMT -5
Sherry Ann has uncovered a recent interview with Lemony Snicket which contains the following rather intriguing quote: And I'm doing research for a new series for older children that is about more experiences from my own life; it takes place at a time before the Baudelaire children were born. This can only be the new four-part series we are eagerly awaiting from Lemony Snicket in 2012. When exactly during Lemony Snicket's lifetime will it be set, and which characters will it concern? Please speculate wildly and with no backing evidence here.
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Post by Tiago James Squalor on Oct 5, 2010 17:05:33 GMT -5
Could it be...the story of young Jacques, Kit...and Lemony? OH. My. God. *dies* It could also mean that the details and circumstances of the schism are relevant to the new series, and that the new series could heavily feature characters that were dead from the start. I want it to be 2012. Now.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Oct 5, 2010 18:55:34 GMT -5
This series does have a prequel-like sound to it. "Doing research" seems like something Lemony would do for ASOUE, but if it's events from his own life, wouldn't he remember them? Or was he too young, implying the events will be from his childhood? Or will he be researching the lives of those in his own, telling each of their stories and intertwining them?
Also: ASOUE was also originally meant to be a total of four books in length... but no. Still an interesting choice in numbers, though.
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Post by Dante on Oct 6, 2010 2:50:35 GMT -5
Also: ASOUE was also originally meant to be a total of four books in length... but no. Still an interesting choice in numbers, though. Not quite... Handler's idea was always to do thirteen, but he was only contracted for four to start with, and he honestly didn't think people would want more than that. As in, he literally didn't think they'd sell. My feeling on this is that, despite the new series being a prequel, we are going to see a lot of original material. Handler's approach to aSoUE was always very flexible in continuity terms, so I don't think the prequels will be that continuity-heavy - that is, it won't be something we could write a fanfic about from the information we have already. This could also be influenced by the economic necessities of working for another publisher; the new series has to be distinct enough to avoid confusion with the original aSoUE. As such I would imagine that the name of the series and the titles of the books will use a different construction as well - something similar, but not nigh-identical. They'd have to abandon the "Book the Xth" format as well just to be comprehensible; restarting at "Book the First" would cause confusing overlap with aSoUE, continuing at "Book the Fourteenth" would be chronologically inaccurate, and "Book the Minus Third" would be unpublishable. So yeah, my guess would be that we're talking about original protagonists who we know nothing about, but who'll have run-ins with characters we do know about - including, yes, some who were dead throughout the entire series. I'm not concrete on that presumption, though. After all, why write a prequel unless you want to capitalise on all that backstory material? Unless, of course, the events of aSoUE would make a sequel series difficult, since of course by the end of aSoUE nearly everyone's dead and V.F.D. has basically been destroyed. Here's another thought. The new series is set in the past, okay. But when is Lemony writing it? Is this something he writes before aSoUE, or after? Will his niece be helping with his research? Although I expect most of us would assume that Lemony's writing chronology matches Handler; just as the new series is being written by Handler a few years after the old one ended, so too will the new series be written by Snicket a few years after the old one ended. This would require us then to ask another question: What is the impetus for Lemony to suddenly return to this old case? The nature of the narrator of the series requires us to look a little deeper at the reasons it was written than any other series would.
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Post by cwm on Oct 6, 2010 3:24:44 GMT -5
My guess is that statement will prove to be quite misleading. I think we're assuming a lot by getting "prequel" from "experiences from his own life before the Bauds were born" at all.
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Post by KlausBaudelaire833 on Oct 6, 2010 3:58:26 GMT -5
I've heard about this "new series" before. I was trying to make a thread out of it, but it seems that I'm beaten.
I know that some of you wouldn't believe this, but I've inished all the books, except "The End". I hpe this "new series" will be out in 2011 or 2012.
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Post by Hermes on Oct 6, 2010 7:39:06 GMT -5
I agree with Dante. I think it's significant that he says 'more experiences from my own life'; this suggests that he thinks of ASOUE as about experiences from his own life, in that it's about events which affected him , and in which he took a peripheral part, by contrast with Thirteen Words or The Lump of Coal, which are about events quite unrelated to him.
'Research' (and, elsewhere 'an investigation') suggest it's not, centrally, his own story; and did he not say somewhere that the connections with ASOUE were ones that only the keen would recognise? So, I think fundamentally a new story about new characters, but with the Snickets, and perhaps Beatrice, Olaf et al in the background.
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Post by Emma “Emmz” Squalor on Oct 6, 2010 9:12:55 GMT -5
I'd love it if the new series was centered around the adult characters of ASoUE, since we see only the points of view from those of the children. I've always wanted to know more about the adults' pasts, particularly that of Esme Squalor. Still, as Dante pointed out, something focused on original characters with mentions of those we're already familiar with would be great, too, as it's always fun to read something new. Whatever Mr. Handler has planned, I just wish 2012 would hurry along, so we can find out! ;D
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Post by Dante on Oct 6, 2010 9:53:36 GMT -5
I wouldn't worry too much about the long wait 'til 2012; we've managed four years since The End already. We're more than halfway there.
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Post by Leanora Crowe on Oct 6, 2010 12:38:42 GMT -5
I've heard rumors that the series is about the Baudelaire family before The Bad Beginning. They supposedly have dinner parties quite often, and some of the VFD members are said to be present at them. I don't know if "The Dismal Dinner" has anything to do with this, but it might. I have no clue. Don't hold me accountable for this information. I'm just repeating what I've heard. I don't know how true any of this actually is.
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Post by Dante on Oct 6, 2010 13:19:02 GMT -5
I've heard rumors that the series is about the Baudelaire family before The Bad Beginning. They supposedly have dinner parties quite often, and some of the VFD members are said to be present at them. I don't know if "The Dismal Dinner" has anything to do with this, but it might. I have no clue. Don't hold me accountable for this information. I'm just repeating what I've heard. I don't know how true any of this actually is. I'd be interested to know where you've been hearing these rumours; however, I wouldn't put much stock in them. Daniel Handler is clearly keeping his cards very close to his chest when it comes to the new series, and in every interview so far he's barely said anything about the new series; it strikes me as unlikely that the few people in a position to know this sort of information would give it away in a fashion that allowed the general public to hear it. These rumours are probably just speculation. In any case, The Dismal Dinner takes place after, not before, the Baudelaire children were born, and judging from TBL the Baudelaire parents would have had very little time to hold any dinner parties before Violet's birth. This has, however, reminded me to put TDD in DDocuments, something which I think I've been intending to do for a long time but haven't gotten around to yet.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Oct 6, 2010 16:13:57 GMT -5
I wonder how long these books will be. With only four in the series--plus that it's a young adult novel--I imangined them to be longer than an ASOUE volume. Another question that I think was raised earlier was the time it will take to come out with the next installment; I suppose that would depend on how popular they are? Or do they already have a time set, despite how many people are interested?
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Post by Hermes on Oct 6, 2010 16:25:46 GMT -5
Where have you heard that it's YA? I thought it was only Why We Broke Up that was being described that way.
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Post by Dante on Oct 6, 2010 16:27:15 GMT -5
I think that by "older children" in the quote at the start of this article, Handler meant older in relation to the audience of his picture books. I think there's an implicit contrast to his reference to the "book for teenagers" with Kalman. So I think that the audience for the new series is the same age group as the original series.
That said, given that there are only four books compared to the original thirteen, Handler's probably not going to be skimping on plot; I don't get the impression this is the sort of thing he could churn out in less than two hundred pages. I also see the fact that the later books in aSoUE were in the mid-300s as being Handler's style maturing to its peak, although that's also due to the higher plot density... but in any case, I would in general expect the new books to hover around, oh, let's say late series length. Around TCC's length at shortest, and at longest, maybe even longer than TPP... but again, perhaps not. And of course this is all just speculation without any knowledge of what he's actually writing about...
As for the time frame, Handler's been planning these books for a few years alone. By the time he gets to writing them, I would imagine he'd have most things set pretty much in stone. That said, I'd still expect only a book a year, as that's about how long it took to produce the late-series books and it's also a sort of industry standard when I look at other authors. In other words, my guess would be that the new series ends in 2015.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Oct 6, 2010 16:50:24 GMT -5
Where have you heard that it's YA? I thought it was only Why We Broke Up that was being described that way. I thought I had remembered that detail from one of the articles, but if it existed I can't find it now. More wild speculation: Fall of 2012 seems like a good time for the first book to be released. Autumn is when the later books of ASOUE were published, too.
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