THE JJL ROWLING INTERWIEW

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AT ONE MINUTE PAST MIDNIGHT, THE FIFTH HARRY POTTER BOOK WILL HIT THE BOOKSHOPS. IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, J. K. ROWLING TELLS ANN TRENEMAN HOW SHE HAS FINALLY COME TO TERMS WITH CELEBRITY, AND HOW MARRIAGE AND HER CHILDREN HAVE MADE HER HAPPIER THAN SHE HAS EVER BEEN

JOANNE KATHLEEN ROWLING is a happy woman these days , and it shows. She greets me at the top of the staircase at her home, babe in arms. His name is David and he is round and soft and cooing. We all go into the front room and there, on the shelf, is the other baby in her life: a 1kg doorstop that is the fifth book in the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. "It is big. Very big," she says. "I didn't dare do a word count." So how big is big? After all, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, the fourth book, was 636 pages. Joanne peeks at the last page. "It is 766 pages. When I finished it, I thought, Oh my God it's bigger than Goblet. I knew already it was but I thought, well maybe it's slightly bigger and then I spoke to my editor at Bloomsbury and she said, 'You know how long it is, obvious - ly ?' And I said, no, I don't actually. And it was a quarter of a million words." Her voice goes almost to a whisper. "I nearly died." Don't you have an editor who cuts things, I ask rather abruptly. She laughs and takes on an actor's voice: "Don't you have an editor? Does anyone ever try to stop you!" She reverts to her normal voice. "Yeah . Of course they do. But they truly