Baby on the way for JK

JK Rowling: two pieces of good news
The Weekender

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JK Rowling, the multi-millionaire Harry Potter creator, today revealed two pieces of good news.

Firstly, she is pregnant with her second child. And the latest Harry Potter book may well be on sale in time for Christmas after all.

A spokesman for Rowling and her husband, Dr Neil Murray, said: "They are delighted to announce they are expecting a baby in the spring."

Rowling, 37, secretly wed 31-year-old Dr Murray nine months ago. She has a nine-year-old daughter, Jessica, from a previous marriage to Portuguese journalist Jorge Arantes.

The couple split up shortly after Jessica's birth, leaving Rowling a struggling single mother living on benefits of £69 a week - before the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997.

Since then the Potter books have netted her an estimated £226 million on sales and film deals.

She now owns two homes in her native Scotland: a £500,000 Highland house in Aberfeldy, Perthshire, and a 10-bedroom home in Edinburgh.

The latest instalment in the Potter saga - which will be called Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix - is now finished but is still being tidied up ahead of publication, Rowling has confirmed.

Despite rumours that she was suffering from writers' block she says that words have been flowing and the latest instalment will be as long as Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, which was huge for a children's book at 636 pages.

She also revealed that she has now plotted the sixth and seventh novels in the series - and confirmed that the seventh will definitely be the last.

Earlier this week Rowling celebrated after winning a three-year US court battle against American-Nancy Stouffer, who claimed the Scot had stolen her ideas.

Stouffer said she invented the term "muggles", used by wizards in the Harry Potter books to describe humans without magic powers. But the judge threw out Stouffer's claim, ruling that she had falsified evidence and fined her £30,000.

Rowling said: "I no longer have to worry. I'm a really happy woman today. People think that if you have been successful you are insulated from any normal feeling. I have worked on Harry Potter for 11 years. For her to claim that this was not done through 11 years of effort but through theft - it was like a punch to the stomach."

She said the case had distressed her so much that every time she wrote the word muggle she had to get up from her computer.

She even considered giving up the Harry Potter books altogether and had been left unable to sleep.

But the case has not been her only problem. An American fan who had been stalking her was deported from Britain last month and there were reports that neighbours were fiercely opposed to the high wall she built around her Victorian villa.

The second Harry Potter film, Chamber of Secrets, is out in November, and even though it will face tough competition from The Two Towers, the second Lord of the Rings' instalment, it is expected to break all box office records.

The first film, The Philosopher's Stone, was the second highest-grossing movie of all time.

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