![]() ![]() The “K” stands for Kathleen, my paternal grandmothers name. Then in June 1997 Bloomsbury published Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone under the name J.K. It took a year for my agent Christopher Little to find a publisher. It was honestly the best letter I had ever received in my life. Having finished the full manuscript, I sent the first three chapters to a number of literary agents, one of whom wrote back asking to see the rest of it. There I trained and taught as a French teacher but continued to write in every spare moment I had, mostly in cafés around the city, whilst Jessica slept in her pram. The marriage didn’t work out and I moved with Jessica and the first three chapters of Harry Potter in a suitcase, to Edinburgh in Scotland, where my sister lived. Within that time, my mother had died, I had moved to Portugal to teach English, got married, and had my first daughter Jessica. It took me five years to write the first book in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. ![]() Rowlingįrom the start I knew there would be seven books and I had the whole story plotted out early on. I simply knew it was something I would love to write, but that day I was pen-less for once in my life, so as I sat there on the train, I had to rely on imagining the details, most of which ended up being in the books. Harry Potter and Hogwarts came out of nowhere in the most physical rush of excitement, and ideas came teeming into my head. I studied French and Classics at University and spent a year in Paris as part of my course.Ī few years later in 1990, after moving to London, I was sitting on a delayed train back home from Manchester when suddenly I had the idea of a boy wizard who went to wizarding school. ![]() I grew up in a small village on the English/Welsh border and wrote my first story when I was six years old about a rabbit called “Rabbit” and when I was eleven, I wrote my first “novel” about seven cursed diamonds and the people who owned them. For as long as I can remember I wanted to be an author, and I am at my happiest alone in my writing room making things up. ![]()
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