A ditional funding provided by these funders. And by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and Information Services worldwide captioning sponsored by Rose Communications from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. J. K. Roeling is here, if you do not know who she is, let me tell you, two decades okay she sat on a delayed train when the image of a scrawny, black haired bespectacled boy without did not know he was a wizard came to her. Her vision soon captured the imaginations of readers around the world and it began an unprecedented cultural phenomenon. Time magazine has credited Harry Potter Series with creating a fictional universe so detailed and believable that an entire generation has pretty much chose tone live there. It is the best selling book series in history, with more than 4 450 million copies sold in 67 languages. Eight movies have also been spawned and they have grossed 7. 7 billion worldwide. Now five years after laying harry pot tore rest, she has written her first book for adults. It is called the casual vacancy. Im pleased to have j. K. Rowling at this table for the first time, welcome. Thank you very much. Rose we have been waiting for you. Really, good, nice to hear. Rose how much trepidation did you have after you decided to put harry to bed. Uhhuh. Rose in deciding what you wanted to do and how to do what you inevitably wanted to do, is write another book. Uhhuh. Thats a good question. Because i had the idea for the casual vacancy right after finishing deathly hallows, you know, so i was actually pro meeting deathly hallows in the states and i had the idea in the states while in a plane. And. Rose on a plane, is khrushal. One is on a train, one is on a plane. So you need to keep me moving and then i get my ideas. Theres always trepidation. I mean i think that people might be surprised to know that i felt trepidation every time i produced a potter book. The weight of expectation there was, i wont say crushing t was extraordinary and wonderful to have that expectation but and with the expectations, laterally of millions of fans whole of whom were very invested in the story and knew what they wanted to see and i knew which was going. I had to put on mental blinkers a lot. I knew where i was going and must not be influenced by this. In a sense it was liberating to leave that weight of expectation behind and know that i could just do what i wanted to do. It was very freeing. But i must say that i spent the first two years working on its casual vacancy telling myself you dont even have to publish that, you dont even have to publish this book and that was a way of bringing down my own awareness that, you know, people t wasnt going to be what some people wanted it to be. You know, because as we both know, coy have kept writing harry potters forever, pretty much rses and why didnt you . Because i always envisaged it as a seven book ears. I had enough plot for seven books. And i always knew i would stop at 7. And i am not going to lie, it was heartbreaking in many ways. Because harry was with me through a very turbulent period of my life and it was always a place that i could go. You talk about readers always being able to go there. It was a place i was able to go. And to close the door was, it was like a death. But i knew that it was time to go. And ive not regretted it. I think it was definitely time. Rose he meant what to you other than all the obvious things, fame, wealth. It changed my life, the most obvious thing clearly, it utterly changed my life. It transformed my life, my life situation. We were in a precarious, my daughter and i were in a precarious situation for a few years. But beyond that, it connects me, harry connected me to its just been the through line through so much of my life. And so when i look at the back of the books, i can remember where i was when i wrote all these, 17 years i spent with those characters, 17 years. Rose but do you talk to them this some real sense. I mean the one that i miss the most beyond any character is dumbable doer. He was a strange character because i always say i feel like i wrote him from somewhere in the back of pie brain. We often say things i didnt know i believed but once i saw that dumbledore said then i said oh yeah, thats true. He was an interesting character and i miss him. If i could talk to any of them t would be dumbledore. This mirror gives us neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away in front of it, even gone mad. That is why tomorrow it will be moved to a new home. And i must ask you not to go looking for it again. It does not do to dwell on dreams, harry. And forget to live. Rose so you set out to write this new book. You knew it was going to be about adults. Uhhuh. Rose what else did you know after you had that inspiration on that plane. Well, the germ of the idea was a Council Election, a local Council Election that would be subverted by teenagers. Which was a device to expose certain secrets, yeah, that was the basic idea. And i was excited by that idea because it was going to give me an opportunity to explore a lot of things that are important to me. And things that obsess me, frankly. Rose like . Well, for example, i have just talked about the fact that i was in a very precarious situation. For a few year i was probably as poor as you can go without being homeless in the cut. U. K. Which is not to say that friends and family didnt help me, because they did. But you know, it was tough. Rose and you were writing a book and had to depend on the government. Well, yeah, i did. Although i was working parttime at the the law was you could earn up to a very small amount a week without forefitting housing benefit which was the thing that was keeping us homed. So i worked up to that amount. I had a clerical job in a church at one point. So, and then i was teaching. But we were still existing partly on benefits. I couldnt wholly support us. And then the miracle happened. Harry was published. And we really didnt look back after a few months t changed my life. But that period, that period of my life was a formative experience for me. And it shaped my worldview. And it always will shape my worldview. The experience of having been part of a mass of people who are very voiceless. The experience of being scape goated and stigmatized because that was the Political Climate at that time, really has coloured my worldview ever since. And i dont think i will ever lose that. Rose define you what mean. I think you know what you mean by worldview. Well n that, its a frightening experience to become a statistic to almost fall off the radar of what people think is important to discuss. And to be talked about in terms that you dont recognize. And i think that something i felt very powerfully after emerging from that situation, was people lose their individuality when they are trapped in that kind of poverty. It is a humiliating place to be. And to your life in ways that people have never been there cannot comprehend. Your choices contract. So even someone like me who had a university education, you know, i had i was an educated person bo wanted to work very much. I was really trapped. You know, with you fall beneath a certain level of poverty and without rich relatives, its very, very difficult to get out of that situation. Rose and you want us to understand these are real people. Yeah. Rose with real lives. And generosity and all these other human qualities, everybody has. Exactly right, yeah, yeah. Rose and do you want us to also understand that they feel, not only that they dont matter, but that others perhaps more fortunate have contempt for them or just dont know them . Well, i think its a mixture of both. I think that its easy to caricature. I would say that this is i feel this is not a black and white book in the sense that i do not wish to glamorize every poor character in the book nor do i. Im not suggesting that everyone who is living in poverty is heroic. But all i would say is there is probably about the same proportion of unheroic characters living in poverty as there are in other classes. Right, right. So certainly there were some very unpleasant people in this book who happen also to be poor. But the Action Centers around a 16yearold girl who has grownup in tremendously difficult circumstances. And the question for me is, and the question i hope the reader ponders is is she worth saving, who should be saving her, to what extent is this her fault. Rose this is crystal. Exactly, yeah. Rose tell me about the story. I want to come back to you, because of what you have just said, the casual vacancy has to do with the death of a councilman. Right it was initially in my head i was calling the book responsible because the theme is personal responsibility. And responsibility in a community, sense. But then i found this phrase which ive never met before t is a casual vacancy when someone occupying a political seat dice, they leave the casual vacancy. And that phrase spoke to me on so many levels. Because its characters in this book all of them, i would say, have a lack or vacancy in their lives and fill it in different ways. Rose a metaphor for everything. Yeah. Rose we mentioned teenagers several times. What is it about teenagers. I dont know. Do you think it is arrested development in me. I dont know. Rose i do know that you said that your teenage years were not that happy for you. I loved stephen king said if you enjoyed being a teenager there is something really wrong with you. And that made me, that really struck me here. I mean i. Rose so a happy teenage core not write a book like this, or like stephen king. No, no, definitely not. Well, actually, i think the urge to writeoff encomes from a wish to rearrange reality, the reality are you in, so i dont think ive ever met. Rose is it easy to make it a fantasy or make it a real village that has real people. To me there is honestly truly not much difference. And there are very different kinds of books. But for me, what obsesses me, morality, mortality, that was. Rose those two things most of all. Absolutely. You run through everything you do. They run through harry potter completely. I probably will never be able to mortality and morality. A very close friend of mine. I finished the book and the first thing they said to me was how many people die. He knows me so well. Because he knows you. To go back to the teenagers point you raise, i think that i am fascinated by people who are on the cusp of adulthood, its such an interesting time of life. I think most of us would say that we, again, its another very formative period in everyones life. Rose its rebill rebellion. But you are also very vulnerable and these characters are vulnerable. Rose and looking for edification. Absolutely. But also which is interesting about adolescence is often much more concerned with the big issues of life than the people in middle age like me who are struggling with the minute usualia of every day life. We all get bogged down in that to an extent. They are concerned with the essence of life which is relationships, love, fear. One teenage boy asks another in this book what matters. And the answer is sex and death. And then as an afterthought, music. Now none of the adults characters are having that conversation. Rose theyre worried about mundane. Worried about paying the bills. And you know they are right to worry about payinged bills that is important too. Rose you were worrying about paying the bills yet at the same time you were writing about, the fantasy of teenagers and everything else. Doing both at the same time. You had to be an adult worrying about paying the bills and at the same time being deeply inside of a life where they are not worrying about it, they are only thinking about an unimagined world of which sex, relationships yes, completely, yeah, yeah. I mean that is the life of a writer. I have to have a for want of a better term a real life, and look after my kids. And then i have this other life as all writers do where im somewhere else completely. Rose you want us to look for what happens to crystal, and who is she in this book. Yes, definitely, yes, yeah. Rose and how do we find her . Well, i think that people reading the book have had varying reactions to her. I think that if someone were to read this book and say that they couldnt find any redeeming quality in crystal and they didnt ultimately feel she was worth saving, then i might not have anything to say to that person. I mean. Rose they have missed it. I would suggest, yeah, yeah. Rose what did you think her redeeming qualities are. She has aspirations. She has grownup in a household where. Rose she has dreams. She has grownup in a household where there is no aspirations. No one has given her a model in how to succeed or live a different life. And yet crystal has this lat ent desire to succeed, to achieve. She wants to hold her family together. Shes parenting her younger brother, who is being quite egregiously neglected i will their biological mother. So i think there is a lot in crystal to love. At the same time shes pro miss coupous, foul mouthed, pretty ignorant, intermittently violent so im not glorifying crystal. This isnt olver twist, someone who has worked on hardship and come out the other side. Rose and how much of her is you . Well, i think its kind of scary when applied to me because i created something, 200 and something characters in the potter book but they say that every character is every writer. Rose but is it beyond that for crystal. I wouldnt say that crystal. Rose she drives this story, does she have to be in part you or somebody youve known. No one in this book has a living model but at the same time i have known people like everyone in this book. Rose a composite. Yes, exactly. Crystal is, i went to a school not unlike the school represented in this book. And i certainly knew girls like crystal. In the plural. There is no one single girl. And i also talked for a while, as i said earlier, i was teaching. And again i was teaching in state schools where you had a very mixed intake. And again, i met people whose backgrounds were not dissimilar to crystal and whose behavior was not dissimilar to crystal. Rose this is the small she is rooted in reality wz. Rose it is the smallest microcosm of government, city council. Exactly right. Rose is that important to foe. I think it is. A Parish Council in the u. K. Is the tinniest Building Block of democracy. And i would say that in writing about it, i became really impressed. You know what, its easy to is a tirize small town concerns but i, what i merged with was the knowledge of how much their decisions which may seem relatively small can have a huge, meaningful impact on other peoples lives. I mean im really pro, it is very easy to denigrate the political process and engineer at politicians. And ive done it myself. Rose sure. But theres no other way to get stuff done. And a lot of people, and in this book you see a great array of motivations for becoming a councillor. But the guy who died on page two or three, he was in it for the right reasons. This is someone who had left a background not quite as bad as crystals but it hadnt been great. And he had been very poor. And he wants to make a difference. And he sees that as a valid way of making a difference. Have a voice and give people who dont have a voice a voice. Rose suppose you were the same woman writing harry potter and you are. Uhhuh. Rose but are you a billion dollars later, with no serious worries. You are less hungry. And you have said you didnt have to write this book. No. Rose you didnt need to write another book. Yeah. Rose you may have needed it for your own psyche but you didnt need it for, to make money. Uhhuh. Rose you didnt need it for reputation. You didnt need it for legacy. Uhhuh. Rose would it have been different if you did need it in the same way you needed harry potter. Would i have written a different book, dow mean. Rose yeah. I think that is a really fascinating question. I dont think so. I didnt think so i think i would have written this book just the same. Rose and is it a better book, in fact, because you have had this whole journey and migration from being poor, starting in middle class with good schools, then poor, then he nor lose enormously rich. Do you understand class better than most people because youve been everywhere . Possibly. Rose possibly, yes. Yeah, possibly. Rose so what do you foe about it, that we all are alike in so many ways. Yes, completely. Rose we are all jealous and we all have rage and we all worry and we all worry about morality and mortality and sickness. A seec hero is quoted in this book, one of the families who is khrushial to the plot and the sikh hero, he said, and its just the most beautiful thing, he treated foe and friend alike on the battlefield. And when asked why he was giving aid to any wounded soldier, not just his side, he replied, i cant differentiate between them and the light of god shines from every soul. Now that to me is the post beautiful, poetic way of expressing a common humanity. Rose well, its interesting, and this is far from this book. But bill gates in terms of giving away all of the billions that he has given away, and focus on Global Health and poverty and disease. Uhhuh. Rose says that it sprang from a sense that all human life has value. Right. No, i would totally agree with that. I mean you talk about the journey and understanding those different points of view. I mean i i am exactly the same person i was then when i was struggling to write harry potter and hi no publishing deal and didnt know whether it would ever be published. And my need to write is completely unchanged. So some things dont change at all. Other things change hugely. Primarily the way you are viewed by other people. Rose dow care about that, at this stage . No, its not that its not that i care about that or worry about that, but that is the big difference. Thats the big difference. Rose how they see you is different. Suddenly people are interested in what you have got to say. Rose exactly. And no one gave a damn what i had to say at trz are you the same person. The same person and i pretty much would say the same things now. But now people want to hear it. That can be disconcerting t can be disconcerting. Yeah. Rose to have that interest. Do you ever say to yourself am i that interesting . I done give that many interviews because to be honest i just get sick of the sound of my own voice. I just think i dont have enough opinions to fill i dont know. Its you work in a hungry medium, you know. And i find it yeah, sometimes quite intimidating. Rose it is a larger point. Is writing what it is that you are happiest when you are in search of a character and where that character is going to take you. You know when im happiest is when im about twothirds of the way through a book and always at that point im flying. Always, im flying. And im just, that is the place i live to be. Twothirds of wake up in the morning, im about two thirsd of the way through, i know exactly where i am going and have the wol day to write. That to me is a perfect day. Rose and do you try to perfect each sentence or do you want to yeah, it doesnt always work out that way, but yeah you are always hoping to. Ros