Harry’s still finished but do not rule out any return to the Potter world.
I have always left the door ajar because I’m not that cruel. If I had a fabulous idea that came out of that world, because I loved writing it, I would do it
Although JK Rowling’s first novel tailored for adults was released yesterday, she says her next book will likely be a children’s book, and in the future she may bring herself to pen a story related to the Harry Potter universe.
“I think it very likely that the next thing I publish will be for kids. I have a child-ren’s book that I really like, it’s for slightly younger children than the Potter books,” the successful author told the BBC in a television interview.
In one of a handful of appearances to promote The Casual Vacancy, Rowling told the BBC: “Truly, where Harry’s story is concerned, I’m done.”
Yet the 47-year-old bestselling author did not rule out a Potter spin-off, while she was adamant it would never be for commercial reasons. The Harry Potter books have sold more than 450 million copies.
“I have always left the door ajar because I’m not that cruel. If I had a fabulous idea that came out of that world, because I loved writing it, I would do it,” she told the BBC in the interview.
“But I’ve got to have a great idea, I don’t want to go mechanically into that world and pick up odds and ends and glue them together and say ‘Here we go, we can sell this’. It would make a mockery of what those books were to me.”
Were that great idea to come, she said: “I probably would do it. I’m very averse to the prequel/sequel idea. I’ve never seen it work well in either literature or film. That’s a personal preference.”
Rowling, who started her writing career as a financially-struggling single mother, said while there was clearly “an appetite for eight, nine, 10” Potter novels,she knew she only had enough plot for seven books about Harry’s magical adventures.
“To go further would have been money for old rope. Couldn’t do it. And that’s largely why I slapped on that epilogue (in the final Harry Potter novel). (It) says he’s leading a quiet life, and he’s earned it. He’s done,” she said of the boy wizard.
Rowling said she would have liked more time to work on some of the books.
“I had to write on the run and there were times when it was really tough. And I read them, and I think ‘Oh God, maybe I’ll go back and do a director’s cut’. I don’t know,” she said in the BBC interview.
“But you know what?” she added. “I’m proud I was writing under the conditions under which I was writing. No one will ever know how tough it was at times.”