Life is good for J.K. Rowling. In a new video interview with The Guardian, when asked to name something bad in her life at the moment, Rowling very nearly can’t come up with a single complaint. She finally settles on, “The very worst thing right now this second is that we’ve got no food in the fridge for dinner.”
Ahead of her new novel, The Casual Vacancy, some questions were posed about her new work. The world is familiar with the Harry Potter series, but how would she compare her writing for adults to other authors? Rowling says, “If anyone wanted to say it was like one of those 19th century quite parochial novels, a Trollope or a Dickens or something, that would be a very, very, very flattering analogy.”
When asked about what’s next, Rowling puts to rest rumors that she is working on a crime novel. She does reveal that a previously mentioned political fairytale for children is, “still on my laptop and yeah, I really like it. And I think at some point I will finish it. It’s very near completion but it’s got to take its place in the queue.” She suspects a different children’s novel may be her next published work, and then implores that we not quote her on that. After so many years of commitment, she enjoys the freedom to change her mind.
Another highlight includes Rowling confessing that she has only ever gone out once in disguise -to buy her wedding dress- and no, she won’t describe the disguise. After all, she may need it again.
The interview touches on a few other topics, including insomnia, her non-guilty guilty pleasure (Whodunnits), and why she hasn’t read Fifty Shades of Grey.
A separate article for Guardian’s Weekend magazine reveals some new background and plot information for The Casual Vacancy.
When inspiration struck, Rowling really knew she was on to something worth pursuing. “I had that totally physical response you get to an idea that you know will work,” she says. “It’s a rush of adrenaline, it’s chemical. I had it with Harry Potter and I had it with this.”
The success provided by her years of hard work on the Harry Potter series gave her the ability to write completely on her own terms. “I am the freest author in the world,” Rowling says. “My bills are paid – we all know I can pay my bills – I was under contract to no one, and the feeling of having all of these characters in my head and knowing that no one else knew a damned thing about them was amazing … Pagford was mine, just mine, for five years. I wrote this novel as exactly what I wanted to write.”
For fans anxious to read J.K. Rowling’s first post-Potter novel, the wait is nearly over. The Casual Vacancy will be available on September 27.
