Bookplanet: J. K. Rowling's inspiration

Of Death and Inspiration

J. K. Rowling orphaned Harry Potter because her own mother was dying of multiple sclerosis 15 years ago as she outlined the early versions of the novels about the boy wizard that made her rich and world famous. "My books are largely about death," Ms. Rowling told Tatler magazine in an article condensed by The Daily Telegraph and reported by Agence France-Presse. "They open with the death of Harry's parents. We're all frightened of it." Ms. Rowling, weeping, said she was "alternately a wreck and then in total denial" and never told her mother about Potter. "Barely a day goes by when I do not think of her," she said. "There would be so much to tell her, impossibly much." Ms. Rowling also said the final chapter of the seventh and final adventure in the Harry Potter series is already written and locked in her safe, and she has finished some short stories and a new children's book, described as a political fairy tale for pre-Potter audiences, that not even her publisher has been told about. As for the final Potter adventure, Ms. Rowling said only her husband, Neil Murray, an anesthetist, knows the plot, and he is unlikely to talk: "Neil is the only one I can talk to about what happens because he instantly forgets."