JK Rowling. And where to begin? With a child living in Britain, with a sister Di, a father, and a mother. As a child, Jo liked to write stories (Jo is short for Joanne, and in booKCast episode #2, Luke makes a hilarious mistake about this.) Her fist book was about about a Rabbit called Rabbit who got the measles. She was very young and hadn't got the idea for a boy whose parents were dead and was being chased by an evil Lord, in case you're automatically comparing the two together.

When Jo was an adult, she was on a delayed train journey and she got the idea for a bespectacled boy named Harry Potter.

 

When she arrived home she immediately started writing. She wrote as an English teacher in Portugal, when she got married, when she had a baby girl, when she got divorced, when she came back to England and when her mother died. JK said that this really effected her writing. She was writing Harry Potter the moment her mother passed away.

Jo said her mother's death really effected the books. Harry's missing his parents became much deeper. JK, when she finally finished the book, had to go to lots of different publishers until a small publishing company which is now massive because it has Harry Potter named Bloomsbury. And it was a huge hit! Such a huge hit that in the US, they wanted to publish it. Scholastic got to, and they change two things that Jo didn't like. They preferred Sorcerer Stone to Philosopher Stone and they changed Mum to Mom when the Weasleys were addressing Molly Weasley.

JK was given enough money for the book that she could quit teaching and focus entirely on writing. She immediately started the second book in the series, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. Around this time, Warner Bros. bought the rights to the first Harry Potter movie.

We're currently waiting for the sixth Harry Potter movie and the seventh (and last) book came out last July.

Links:
www.mugglenet.com
www.jkrowling.com
www.harrypotter.com
www.the-leaky-cauldron.org
www.occlumencia.com
www.hplexicon.org
www.wizardnews.com
www.potterish.com
www.harrypotterrumours.com
www.harrypotterfanfic.com
www.danradcliffe.com
www.rupertgrint.com
www.danielradcliffe.com
www.emmawatson.com
www.emmawatsonfan.com
www.rupertgrint.com
www.hpana.com
www.snitchseeker.com
www.tomfelton.com
www.harrypotterfanzone.com
www.harrypotterfanzone.com
www.bloomsbury.com/harrypotter
www.scholastic.com/harrypotter
www.harrypotterfanzone.com

 

Visiting all those is a good idea of you ever get really, REALLY bored.