Author J.K Rowling poses for photos with her certificate after being presented with the Freedom of the City of London, at Mansion House, central London May 8, 2012.

NEW YORK/LONDON | Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:09pm EDT

NEW YORK/LONDON (Reuters) - Harry's still finished, but don't rule out any return to the Potter world.

Although J.K. Rowling's first novel tailored for adults is being released this week, she says her next book will likely be a children's book, and in the future she may 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 children's book that I really like, it's for slightly younger children than the Potter books," Rowling told the BBC in a television interview broadcast on Wednesday.

In one of a handful of appearances to promote "The Casual Vacancy," which hits bookstores worldwide on Thursday, Rowling told the BBC: "Truly, where Harry's story is concerned, I'm done.

Yet the 47-year-old best-selling British author did not rule out a Potter spin-off, while she was adamant it would never be for commercial reasons. The seven "Harry Potter" books have sold more than 450 million books worldwide.

"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.

"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, ten," 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.

POTTER DIRECTOR'S CUT, TEEN OCD

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 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."

In a separate interview with ABC's "Nightline", Rowling revealed that she had signs of obsessive-compulsive behavior when she was a teenager, and that one of the characters in "The Casual Vacancy" was drawn from her own experiences.

"These are things I know from the inside," she said in the interview, some of which was aired on "Good Morning America" on Wednesday. "When I was in my teens, I had issues with OCD ... checking things, it's very common, double checking, triple checking, it's an anxiety disorder."

Rowling has spoken openly in the past about dealing with depression, which she estimated she had not had to deal with for more than a decade.

She credited Harry Potter with helping. "Forget the money," she said; it gave her self-respect. "Harry gave me a job that I loved to do more than anything else," she told ABC.

(Additional reporting by Mike Collett-White in London, editing by Jill Serjeant and Gunna Dickson)

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Author J.K Rowling poses for photographers with a copy of her adult fiction book ''The Casual Vacancy'', at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London September 27, 2012.

LONDON | Thu Sep 27, 2012 7:47pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - What does the author of the most eagerly awaited book of the year do on publication day?

If you are J.K. Rowling, whose adult fiction debut "The Casual Vacancy" hit the shelves on Thursday, you watch a movie in your hotel, avoid reading newspaper reviews and later in the evening address 900 people at a question-and-answer session.

The 47-year-old read from her new novel and took questions on death, digital publishing and the Olympics opening ceremony at her first public appearance to promote The Casual Vacancy held at London's Southbank Centre (southbankcentre.co.uk).

She engaged openly with fans, at one point accepting a gift from a breathless visitor from Spain whom she embraced and kissed on stage, and later personally signed hundreds of copies of her new book.

Asked by moderator Mark Lawson how she had spent her day, she replied: "I've spent most of the day trying to avoid newspapers. I will read reviews, but I don't like to do it on a day where I've got to go out and talk about the book.

"We sat in our hotel and watched 'Men in Black 3'. I'd never seen it. It was very good".

Rowling, who received mixed reviews for her gritty tale about a small English town, added that she probably would read what critics had to say eventually, just as she did with the seventh and final Harry Potter instalment published in 2007.

"With ('Harry Potter and the) Deathly Hallows' I didn't read any of the reviews at all for ages.

"I kind of felt about Hallows the way I feel about this book. In both cases I felt well, I've done the best I can do, the book is what I want it to be, so, I don't mean it in an arrogant way, that's it. I'm done. So it doesn't really matter.

"I did later. It was months later. It takes the heat out of it if you're not reading them on publication day."

"SOCIALIST MANIFESTO"

The release of The Casual Vacancy is one of the highlights of the publishing calendar this year, with hefty sales expected for a writer whose Potter series sold 450 million copies and who went on to become the world's first billionaire author.

Rowling could not resist mentioning one review, however, which she had clearly either read or been told about.

Jan Moir wrote a scathing assessment in the Daily Mail, a newspaper considered the preserve of the middle class which Moir felt Rowling had unfairly lampooned in her book.

Moir described The Casual Vacancy as "more than 500 pages of relentless socialist manifesto masquerading as literature", a description Rowling, who was an unemployed single mother living on state benefits when she started writing the Potter books, took as a compliment.

"A 500 page socialist manifesto. I high-fived my husband!" she joked. "I thought that's all right. It made me laugh so much. Apart from Men in Black 3 that was the highlight of my day."

Rowling was asked why death was such a prominent theme throughout her work.

"Death obsesses me. What can I tell you?" she said. "I can't really understand why it doesn't obsess everyone. I think it does really, I'm just maybe a little more out about it.

"It's made me much less afraid of it," she added later. "I think things lose their mystique when you think about them a lot and you consider them a lot.

"I'm frightened of leaving my children. It's the thing I dislike most about the idea that I will die, but death itself doesn't frighten me really."

POTTER MISTAKES

She said she understood why her publishers, Little, Brown Book Group, had imposed strict conditions on allowing journalists to read the book before publication.

"The internet really has changed everything. It's the net that's done it," she explained, quoting examples of other leading writers who had seen their manuscripts end up online or proofs being auctioned on eBay.

"As a writer that is a horrible, horrible experience."

On Potter, Rowling admitted she had made mistakes, in particular a mirror belonging to the character Sirius Black in "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix", the fifth book.

The "Marauder's Map" used by Potter was also problematic.

"Half way through the series I cursed myself for giving Harry the Marauder's Map, because it was far too useful an object so I had to take it away from him and then give it back to him.

"That's the trouble. You invent these amazing objects, and then they cause you as much trouble as they solve. So quite a bit of that went on."

In a separate BBC Radio interview broadcast on Thursday, Rowling said that the world of witches and wizards "does sometimes tug at me a little bit," although she had no plans to write anything else Potter-related.

"I've always said never say never purely because I liked it and I might want to do it again, but Harry's stories I am as sure as you can be it is done."

Rowling added that two books for children "are pretty well developed" and she knew what her next one for adults would be, although it was "not very well advanced."

(Editing by Paul Casciato)

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Author J.K. Rowling and her husband Neil Murray sit on Centre Court at the Wimbledon tennis championships in London June 26, 2012.

NEW YORK | Tue Jul 31, 2012 1:57pm EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Author J.K. Rowling launched an online book club for young readers on Tuesday and will appear in a live global webcast in October from Edinburgh, Scotland, to speak with her fans about the magical world of Harry Potter.

Rowling's U.S. publisher, Scholastic, which developed the Harry Potter Reading Club website, said it will be a destination for fans of the British boy wizard and a tool for parents and teachers who want to set up book clubs to introduce children to the joys of reading.

"Scholastic has been in conversation with educators, librarians and other book lovers about ideas for bringing the Harry Potter books to new readers in exciting and different ways," Ellie Berger, president of Scholastic Trade, said in a statement announcing the club.

"The Harry Potter Reading Club is a direct response to that feedback and provides an entry point through which the thrill of these books can be shared with new generations of Harry Potter fans both within and beyond the classroom."

The live webcast with Rowling from her hometown will be presented by the club at noon EDT (0500 GMT) on October 11 at www.scholastic.com/hpreadingclub.

Scholastic, which described the webcast as a "live virtual author visit to classrooms," said it will be Rowling's first opportunity since 2007 to interact with young readers and to discuss Pottermore, www.pottermore.com, a website launched in April to help fans navigate through the tales of wizardry and witchcraft.

The Harry Potter Reading Club will include a guide for everything about the boy wizard, an overview of the series of Harry Potter books that have sold an estimated 450 million copies worldwide and were transformed into eight hit movies, and information about Rowling, the world's first author billionaire.

Scholastic said it will add activities on the site every month.

(Reporting by Patricia Reaney; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Leslie Adler)

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