Harry Potter to leave JK Rowling

The book world hasn't been rocked this week by the news that fictional schoolboy wizard Harry Potter has announced he is to leave his long-time creator JK Rowling.

"We have been close for many years," said Potter outside the premises of his new internet company, EvenmoreHarryPotter. "But I've grown up now and it's time to move on." He denied the split was due to the founding of the new company in which Rowling has no share. "EvenmoreHarryPotter is my own project. It's going to help develop me as a fictional character and give something back to my millions of fans who will pay handsomely for it."

Potter is the main character of Rowling's Harry Potter books which have netted the Edinburgh based author millions and spawned several movies. This news comes hot on the trail of unsubstantiated rumours that The Famous Five are to leave their now deceased author, Enid Blyton, to form their own internet casino, and that Hercule Poirot will leave Agatha Christie to start an online ant farm.

"I have no long term plans, but if I appear in any other Harry Potter books they will be sold through EvenmoreHarryPotter," added Potter before stubbing out a spliff. "I'm sorry it has come to this but I am a grown up now and she keeps treating me like some dumb kid wizard in a school and I want to do my own thing, innit."

A spokesman for Rowling said, "JK is not bitter, but that ungrateful little bastard owes me, I mean her, everything. Wait till this gets to court and I'll, I mean she'll, sue the arse off the little turd. He's nothing without me. Nothing. (I mean her.)"

Harry Potter is 22.

Inspiration and Other Writers

What inspires you as a writer?

I find the lives of other writers fascinating. Especially the famous ones. I recently revisited The Hours - the movie based on Michael Cunningham's novel about three women: author Virginia Woolf, whose novel Mrs Dalloway influences the lives of the other two. Virginia Woolf is played by Nicole Kidman (in a bizarre prosthetic nose) but the film is so well crafted it hardly matters. Woolf certainly suffered for her art, and that comes across loud and clear. The opening scene shows her terrible suicide in haunting detail.


Then there's Prick Up Your Ears, again a tragic tale of the life and too early death of playwright Joe Orton. Based on the excellent biography by John Lahr the film is another well crafted piece with sparklingly witty dialogue by Alan Bennett worthy of Orton himself. It charts his humble beginnings, long apprenticeship and final triumphant success and recognition cut tragically short by murder. I've watched this film many times.

Another is Sylvia, the story of poet Sylvia Plath. This isn't the best biopic I've ever seen but it does convey the passion and vulnerability of the subject. Plath's consuming love for fellow poet Ted Hughes ultimately drove her to suicide when their marriage fell apart.
Notice a recurring theme here? Sure, it could be that tragic ends are just the kind of romantic fodder Hollywood loves and not all writers live life on the edge. But there is something fascinating about the tragedy and the artist. Perhaps that's why the romantic notion persists.

Which writers have inspired you?

Would Dickens have Tweeted?

Do you tweet? It's conventional wisdom that authors must be tireless self-promoters and get on all the social networks to establish a "platform" from which they can presumably relentlessly plug their wares to the world at large. But is it a good thing to put ourselves Out There for all and sundry to scrutinise?

I know some writers who are terminally shy and hate all that self-promotion razzmatazz. I'm a bit like that myself. Like most Scots I suffer from the Tall Poppy Syndrome - we're trained from an early age to keep the head down lest it be chopped off. So boasting and shouting about how great we are doesn't come naturally.

The trouble is of course, it comes all too naturally to some, sometimes to an obnoxious degree. Be honest, how many writers have turned you off their work by their tiresome self-importance? With Twitter and Facebook there's no mystique to the author any more. Their every bowel movement of an opinion is there for all to see, and if you don't happen to agree with their rabid political outpourings you might just feel a little alienated.

So isn't the whole exercise self-defeating? Time was when we knew nothing about the authors we read, unless some doughty reporter managed to get a scoop of an interview in one of the Sunday supplements. We could fondly imagine them as anything which suited us. Non-threatening, friendly, arty: mysterious. We didn't know where they had their legs waxed and we didn't want to know. Maybe some more of that mystery would suit us better today?

The Hoax

Last night I watched The Hoax, the 2006 film starring Richard Gere. It was a fascinating film, not just because of the lovely Mr Gere. The film tells the true story of how an author called Clifford Irving tries to pull off the publishing hoax of the century by claiming to have written the biography of millionaire recluse Howard Hughes with the great man's co-operation. Somehow he manages to convince New York publishers McGraw-Hill and earns himself a million dollar advance.

I missed this film on its cinema release, but was drawn to it because it deals with selling a manuscript to a publisher. There aren't many films around which deal with this subject, at least not that I'm aware of. And it's an entertaining caper. At first you sympathise with Irving, dropped by his publisher and clearly desperate to find a deal clincher. But as his lies force him into increasingly bizarre situations - requesting McGraw Hill clear the top three floors of their building so Hughes can helicopter in for a meeting, only to have the helicopter scoot off before landing - we see how it is affecting his state of mind. Paranoid and deluded at times that he actually is Howard Hughes, Clifford's life is unravelling. Whether that much is true or not is unclear. The real Irving decried the film as being unrepresentative of his story although it was based on his own book of the same name.

In any case the truth, predictably, comes out when Hughes holds a televised phone conference denouncing Irving as a fraud.

But Gere does a very good job conveying the conflicts and frailties of this con-man. And even though the events happened in 1971, I doubt the greed represented in this corporate world has changed very much.