J.K. Rowling has been doing quite a few interviews as part of her book tour for The Casual Vacancy, which was released 2 weeks ago. Here is a quick roundup of interviews and articles on events she attended as well as some snippets:

The Telegraph:

“As the writer of Harry Potter, I’m always nervous of committing myself to another children’s book, but yes, the next thing I write will be for children,” she said. “I have a lot of things on my laptop currently, including a couple of things for children – for a slightly younger age group than Harry Potter was aimed at – which are nearly done and will, I think, be the next thing I publish. I have run them by my children and they seem to like them which is always a good sign. I also have some ideas for another book for adults but it isn’t too far on [in development].”

“We do stigmatise teens a lot and see them as scary and alien. It’s a very fragile time of life. It is more difficult to be a teenager now than when I was a teenager. The internet has been a boon and a curse for teenagers.”

“I do have a tendency to walk on the dark side sometimes. I have suffered from depression, I know how that feels, I have an innate inclination that way. Writing does help with that [depression].”

This is Gloucestershire:

Rowling also talked about the importance of staying traditional, and said: “I always planned for this book to be a hardcover. My feeling is the best publishing style is still with traditional publishing houses.”

She insisted the book was not autobiographical, but rather a reflection of “growing up in the West country and growing up in a comprehensive school”.

Spiegel:

SPIEGEL: Middle-class hypocrisy is an important theme of the book. What do you find interesting about that?
Rowling: An unpleasant tendency in human interaction is that we view each other with less and less empathy. Instead, we judge others whom we really shouldn’t be judging, because we know them far too little. The feeling that we can never sink as low as some neighbor or a person to whom we feel superior boosts our self-esteem. I believe that lack of empathy is behind many problems, and I believe that it’s disrupting our society. In Great Britain, there is a steady decline in the willingness to be truly generous, and by that I don’t mean monetary generosity, but friendship and sympathy for others.

SPIEGEL: Did you ever enjoy killing off a character?
Rowling: No, never. Although that’s not quite true. There was one exception. The only character I was happy to kill off was Bellatrix Lestrange in the last Harry Potter volume. Being able to kill her was a pleasure.