JK Rowling has written a secret story and we'll probably never get to read it

In an interview on CNN the Harry Potter author revealed she’s written the manuscript for a work which will probably never be published.

Speaking to Christiane Amanpour in an interview broadcast on Tuesday, Rowling spoke about her children’s charity Lumos.

At the end of the interview, she revealed an ‘unpublished manuscript’. The work currently hangs in her wardrobe.

No, this isn’t one of those artistic affectations.

For her 50^th birthday celebrations Rowling threw a costume party on Halloween (despite her birthday being July) . The theme of said party was each guest’s ‘own private nightmare’.

The book in question was a fairy tale, which came from her idea of a ‘political book for children’.

I will tell you this. On my 50th -- the theme of my 50th birthday, which I held at Halloween, even though that's not really my birthday, was come as your own private nightmare. And I went as a lost manuscript. And I wrote over a dress most of that book. So that book, I don't know whether it will ever be published, but it's actually hanging in a wardrobe currently.

Rowling wrote the first Harry Potter in long form in an Edinburgh café, so the costume creation wasn’t too far from reality.

Her own ‘Worst fear’

Despite creating the lost manuscript as her ‘own private nightmare’, Rowling explained her worst fears and how it motivated her to start Lumos. The charity seeks to help children in Institutions, and replace outdated institutions with community based services. She explained the impetus for Lumos came from a news story.

The story was about an institution in the Czech Republic where this boy, among many other children with special needs, was being kept, I would say, at least 20 hours out of 24 in a cage-bed, which is exactly as it sounds. It's a cot for a baby covered in -- covered in mesh, covered in wire. And that was his existence. And from that, that's how it all began. I was just appalled and horrified.

I think my worst fear, my personal worst fear, is powerlessness and small spaces. So when you think about that little boy trapped in the cage-bed, he is totally voiceless. And nobody was speaking for him.

HT CNN

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