As you may or may not know, my brother has written several Harry Potter fan-fiction novels under the pen name “Semprini” (Monty Python in-joke), which are widely considered amongst the best published on the web. The first three novels pick up after the end of Rowlings’ The Order of the Phoenix, and go off on an alternate timeline for the sixth and seventh years (with an additional novel set five years later). Although they have a different tone than Rowling’s books, they are a close match in terms of the inventiveness and “look and feel” of the originals, so much so that I have sometimes become mixed up about what characters and events are from Rowlings’ books and which are from the alternate novels.

Personally, I like my brother’s versions a good deal better than the real deals–they seem much more reasonable in terms of how people act and how events turn out, and are much more satisfying in general. Even better, they recognize and discuss a variety of moral, ethical, and spiritual issues in a manner that is entertaining, making the stories more interesting for adults and more valuable for younger audiences. The greatest flaw with the book was the tendency to draw out some discussions about personal feelings and such, but this is a subsequent edit, in which the author did much to improve the read.

This first novel is titled The Veil of Mystery, and was finished in late 2004. I first published text and pdf versions on this blog in mid-2005, and since then, there have been about 10,000 downloads of the novel from this site. Keeping in mind that that this is not the primary source of publication–that would be fan fiction sites–that number is quite appreciable.

Even more impressive is the fact that the versions published so far are not the easiest to read–one must either print out a large stack of text, or read the book in a less-than-optimal form on a computer. Now that the iPad has come along, it seems the perfect chance to publish the novel in a form which is both attractive and easy to read.

I spent the last week or so learning how epubs are put together; on the Mac, at least, Sigil seems to be the best for creating an ebook from scratch. I was able to create an epub version with a cover image, table of contents, and nice formatting (using xhtml, so not so much of a stretch for me). This allowed for nice font selections, making the text look more like a professional publication. The primary font is Baskerville; Zapfino and Cochin are used for chapter headings; representations of hand-written notes use Snell Roundhand (for adults) and Marker Felt (for children); newspaper articles are in Futura and Optima. iBooks does the rest in making the ebook look very nice indeed. The fonts were selected because they were the best available among the iPad’s offerings; if you use another ebook reading device, the appearance may suffer if the fonts aren’t there–but try it anyway, and let me know how it works.

To read the novel using iBooks on the iPad, just download the ebook (click on the cover art below or the download button at top), decompress the archive (zipped so as to preserve the book title), and add it to iTunes (drag and drop it into your “Books” section of the Library, or in the Library itself if there is no “Books” section yet). When you connect your iPad, iTunes should upload the book automatically; if not, you can select it under the “Books” tab of your iPad’s content area, then Apply/Sync. The book will appear on your bookshelf, as pictured above.

This is just the first novel of the series; over the next few months, I hope to similarly translate the other four novels into epub format as well. Bookmark this page and/or keep an eye on this blog for additional downloads.

If you have not read this book before, then to get the proper context, read or watch Rowling’s The Order of the Phoenix (book / DVD / BluRay) first. This novel picks up where that one leaves off.

Enjoy!

click image to download