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J.K. Rowling attended the Independent Bath Literature Festival Friday night and, while there, was asked if she had any plans to write about the Marauders (James “Prongs” Potter, Sirius “Padfoot” Black, Remus “Moony” Lupin, and Peter “Wormtail” Pettigrew).  Her response was, sadly, in the negative.

“I’m never going to say never but I have no current plans. I think prequels are not generally very successful,” she said.

During the festival, she answered many fans’ questions.

She said she had her first french kiss at a disco club when she was 12-years-old with someone who was much older than her.

She says she’s become adept at writing in the front seat of a car while her three kids and dog are with her.

She was very up front when asked about the more adult content in her latest novel, The Casual Vacancy, which the BBC are adapting for television.

“I have never ever sat down and thought… ‘now is the moment to write a book with a penis or with swearing in it’. This was a book I was burning to write… I draw on my own adolescence… and on my experience of adolescents as a teacher… I see adolescence as very fragile. When I watch my two young children, who are eight and 10, they will watch shows on Nickelodeon where teenagers are wholly false.”

She did speak a bit about the current book she’s writing, stating it’s more for the age group that is younger than that of the Potter books.

“It will be shorter. I’m very bad at estimating what sort of age group will like this… I think it might be for slightly younger children.”

She admitted that by the year 2000 she would never be able to write anything like the Potter books again. She spoke of some of the struggles she had when she first started writing the Potter books, stating she would put them away for up to two months at a time.  Now she enjoys the solitude that writing provides her.

“One of my children said ‘if it was us or the books?’. I said ‘you, but I would be really grumpy’.”

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An announcement was sent out today to tell of a new contest on JK Rowling’s website where three lucky winners can win a signed copy of the English version of The Casual Vacancy.

The contest is open to visitors world wide who are aged 18 and older.  It begins today at 2:00pm GMT and will end on Monday, December 17th, at midnight GMT.

To enter the prize draw, new subscribers to her website must enter the requested details, while existing subscribers must confirm they wish to be entered into the prize draw by re-entering their details on the website. See the terms and conditions here.

Good luck to everyone!

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The BBC have signed a deal for JK Rowling’s latest book, The Casual Vacancy, to be adapted into a TV series for BBC networks.  JK Rowling will work closely with the BBC during the project.  The number and length of the episodes haven’t been decided upon yet.  This will occur once the creative process begins.

JK Rolwing seems pleased with the turn out.

“I always felt that, if it were to be adapted, this novel was best suited to television, and I think the BBC is the perfect home.”

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J.K. Rowling has announced in a new video that The Tales of Beedle the Bard is now available in e-book and that all proceeds of the e-book sales will go towards her charity, Lumos.

Lumos is a program that helps children around the world who are trapped in institutions.  The second video below has J.K. Rowling providing more information on the program.

To help support the Lumos charity and get The Tales of Beedle the Bard e-book, go to the Pottmore Shop here. Read the rest of this entry »

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We previously reported that J.K. Rowling will make only one appearance here in the US at the Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall in New York City on October 16, which is this evening, to answer fans’ questions, and do book signings for her new book, The Casual Vacancy.  According to the Hatchette Book Group’s site and Little, Brown & Company (publishers of The Casual Vacancy), a live webcast of J.K. Rowling’s appearance at the Hall will be shown at select bookstores here in the US.

The only bookstore in my state that will be broadcasting the webcast is The Bookstore in the Grove in Coconut Grove, FL.  When I spoke to a representative from the store to get details about the webcast, I was told it will be streamed onto their large television in their Cafe at 8:00pm this evening.  The publishers had sent the store an exclusive link which will be accessed when it is time for J.K. Rowling to appear on stage at the Hall.

Click here to find the booksellers who will broadcast the livestream in your area.  It may be necessary to call the store to confirm the time the webcast will be shown.

Thanks to The Bookstore in the Grove for the information!

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J.K. Rowling was in a live webcast today with Bloomsbury where she answered many questions about Harry Potter and herself.

She mainly talked about the Harry Potter books and their characters.  She also said a small bit about what she’ll write next. Here are a few of the things she discussed:

• She knew that writing wasn’t a good career but she always wanted to write.
• She said she had many teachers who helped her express yourself creatively.  She had a couple of primary teachers who allowed her to read her my work out loud which made her feel great pride. Lucy Sheppard was one of the teachers who helped her a lot  not only with writing but with life as well.
• The first and last sentences she wrote in Harry Potter series were: First – She doesn’t remember it verbatim, but it had to do with a place called Dark’s Hallow which became Godric’s Hallow. Last – she doesn’t recall as it had to do with editing Deathly Hallows.
• One of her favorite moments along the way having to do with the books include Harry receiving his wand and Luna’s first appearance. She also loves the graveyard scene in Goblet of Fire and small things like ‘stupid jingles that Peeves says.’
• She also said that her second American tour was unbelievable as she could remember traveling in a car for 1st signing and blocks of people queuing and finding out the people were for her.
• She read a read the portion of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s/Sorcerer’s Stone of Harry going into Ollivanders Wand Shop and getting his wand. She said she wrote this while under a tree in a park.
• She says that Ron is perhaps more human than Harry because Harry is the hero. Ron sticks by Harry pretty much no matter what. Hermione is all about knowing stuff, so she is someone Harry needs. She’s very clever and she knows how to find out about stuff. She learns to loosen up a lot because of Ron.
• She says that the three characters really need to learn about themselves and each other. But self-knowledge is key. The Deathly Hallows are things that are very self revealing depending on which one a person chooses and by the time the trio come along them they are really prepared to come in contact with the hallows.
• Harry isn’t the most popular in the books… he is often the bystander and the eyes unto the world and slightly detached. She says this is the part of her that is in Harry… the slightly detached part as the writer.
• Hermione is the exaggerated version of her.
• Ron’s humor is the part of her.
• She says that all of us have felt that we don’t have a sense of what’s going on especially at the age that these characters are at when the books start.
• When asked if she knew that when writing these books whether they would help other children with their own challenges, she said no. It was only later that she realized this, especially how she got letters stating that the books have helped with bullying.
• She said that the initial idea for Pottermore came about because she felt it was time to do something like this because people were asking about ebooks. And she felt it was time for them and that she finally had time for it. But she, inevitably, wanted to do more. She was excited to put a really good reading experience online. But the visitors get a lot of extra material for free.
• She says that her next book will likely be a book for younger children, but she’s not committing to that. She has to see how she feels and whether she’s ready for another children’s book.

Rapid Questions:

• Favorite color: pink
• Favorite food: sushi
• Least favorite food: tripe
• Favorite sound: the sea or husband’s snore
• Least favorite sound: husband’s snore when she wants to sleep
• Favorite sport: quidditch
• Favorite thing to do when not working: take kids out somewhere fun or draw listen to music cook and bake
• Quality you must admire in a person: bravery
• If I wasn’t a writer I would be: depressed

A replay of the webcast is now available here.

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Somehow I missed this one… J.K. Rowling will be on a live webcast today with Bloomsbury at 5pm GMT.  It will start in just over 2 hours from now.  If you’d like to be part of this webcast, head on over to Bloomsbury’s website here and enter your information in the right column.

Sorry for the late announcement.

Source: MN

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A live stream with J.K. Rowling at London’s Southbank Centre will happen tomorrow, September 27, 2012.  She’ll have a conversation with Mark Lawson discussing her new adult novel, The Casual Vacancy.  The Casual Vacancy hits shelves tomorrow!

The event begins at 7:30pm GMT.  You can watch the event on YouTube here!

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J.K. Rowling now has a page on Facebook.  You can see it here!

Make sure to like it so you can get all her updated information!

Also, there is now an official Facebook page for The Casual Vacancy.  Check it out here!

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As we lead up to the release of J.K. Rowling’s first adult novel, The Casual Vacancy, later this week on the 27th, more and more interviews with her are surfacing.  The New Yorker have posted a very long article that will be part of their October 1, 2012, edition.  In it, the author, Ian Parker, state that the book is 512 pages long.  He says that the book starts very soon with content that wouldn’t be found in the Harry Potter books as the content is definitely adult in nature, but that those who are looking for Harry Potter-like qualities will find them.  In general, they will find them with young people coming of age and with places dealing with warring factions.

But reviewers looking for echoes of the Harry Potter series will find them. “The Casual Vacancy” describes young people coming of age in a place divided by warring factions, and the deceased council member, Barry Fairbrother—who dies in the first chapter but remains the story’s moral center—had the same virtues, in his world, that Harry had in his: tolerance, constancy, a willingness to act.

“I think there is a through-line,” Rowling said. “Mortality, morality, the two things that I obsess about.”

The setting is in a rural village called Pagford and revolves around Barry Fairbrother, a council member who dies in the first chapter.  There are a lot of politics involved where different groups decide to take advantage of Fairbrother’s death and do away with some of the programs that he had

“It’s been billed, slightly, as a black comedy, but to me it’s more of a comic tragedy,” she said. If the novel had precedents, “it would be sort of nineteenth-century: the anatomy and the analysis of a very small and closed society.” A local election was “a perfect way in,” she said. “It’s the smallest possible building block of democracy—this tiny atom on which everything rests.”

“In my head, the working title for a long time was ‘Responsible,’ because for me this is a book about responsibility. In the minor sense—how responsible we are for our own personal happiness, and where we find ourselves in life—but in the macro sense also, of course: how responsible we are for the poor, the disadvantaged, other people’s misery.” Two years in, she picked up the standard British handbook for local administrators. “I needed it to check certain abstruse points. And in there I came across the phrase ‘a casual vacancy.’ Meaning, when a seat falls vacant through death or scandal. And immediately I knew that that was the title. . . . I was dealing not only with responsibility but with a bunch of characters who all have these little vacancies in their lives, these emptinesses in their lives, that they’re all filling in various ways.”

She added, with some passion, “And it’s death! The casual vacancy, the casualness with which death comes down. You expect a fanfare, you expect some sort of pathos or grandeur to it. And, you know, the first big death I ever suffered was my mother’s, and it was that that was so shocking: just gone.”

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