Rowling not ruling out another Harry Potter book

LONDON — J.K. Rowling plans to return to writing for young people — and the author says she doesn’t rule out another book set in Harry Potter’s magical world.

Rowling became the world’s most successful living writer with her seven novels about a boy who discovers that he is a wizard and is pitched into battle against the forces of evil.

Rowling’s first book for adults, “The Casual Vacancy,” is being published Thursday, five years after the release of the last volume in the Potter saga.

The 47-year-old author told the BBC that her next book would be “for slightly younger children than the Potter books.”

And she said that while “where Harry’s story is concerned, I’m done,” she was considering a new story set in the same universe.

“I don’t want to go mechanically back into that world and pick up a load of odds and ends and glue them together and say, `Here we go, we can sell this,”’ Rowling said in an interview broadcast Wednesday. “It would make a mockery of what those books were to me.

“But ... if I did have a great idea for something else, I probably would do it. I am very averse to the prequel-sequel idea. A sidestep could maybe ... well, we’ll see.”

Rowling also acknowledged that she wished she had had more time to work on a couple of the Potter novels — she did not name them — which had been written “on the run.”

“And I read them, and I think `Oh God, maybe I’ll go back and do a director’s cut,”’ Rowling said. “I don’t know.”

“The Casual Vacancy” is the story of a local election that exposes deep rivalries and dark secrets in a seemingly picture-perfect English village. It’s decidedly grown-up in theme and subject, touching on issues including drug addiction, poverty and self-harm.

Rowling — who has spoken of her own experiences of financial struggle, anxiety and depression — said she anticipated that some of her fans would not like the new book. But she is not worried.

“Harry Potter truly liberated me in the sense that there’s only one reason to write, for me — if I genuinely have something I want to say,” she said.