Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spent a whole weekend practicing a fake signature for her crime-writing alter-ego Robert Galbraith, she revealed Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Sales of “The Cuckoo’s Calling”, a critically-acclaimed detective novel supposedly by rookie novelist Galbraith, have rocketed since it emerged this month that the author is none other than Rowling.<\/p>\n
Writing on a website set up for Galbraith, the British author confirmed that she has just finished a sequel, which will be published under his name next year.<\/p>\n
Rowling, who has sold more than 450 million copies of the Harry Potter books, was accused of planning her own unmasking as a publicity stunt — but she insists she had wanted her identity to stay secret.<\/p>\n
“If anyone had seen the labyrinthine plans I laid to conceal my identity (or indeed my expression when I realized that the game was up!) they would realize how little I wanted to be discovered,” the 47-year-old wrote.<\/p>\n
The author described how she spent days working on Galbraith’s signature for the relatively few signed copies that are now in circulation.<\/p>\n
“My Robert Galbraith signature is distinctive and consistent; I spent a whole weekend practicing it to make sure,” she said.<\/p>\n
British legal firm Russells apologized to the mother-of-three last week after it discovered that one of its partners was the source of the leak, having told his wife’s best friend “in confidence” about Galbraith’s true identity.<\/p>\n
Sales of the book — the tale of a private detective investigating a model’s apparent suicide — have risen an astonishing 41,000 percent in the last week, according to data released by Nielsen BookScan.<\/p>\n
But Rowling said Galbraith hadn’t needed her help — his early sales compared “favorably with J.K. Rowling’s success over the equivalent period of her career”.<\/p>\n
Two television companies had also expressed an interest in adapting the novel before its true author was revealed, she added.<\/p>\n
Galbraith was originally described by the publisher as a former member of the Royal Military Police who has been working in the civilian security industry for the last decade.<\/p>\n
This backstory provided him with “a solid excuse not to appear in public or provide a photograph”, Rowling said.<\/p>\n
She revealed she had chosen the name Robert after her hero Robert F. Kennedy, the U.S. politician who was assassinated in 1968.<\/p>\n
The reason behind the surname was more random: “When I was a child, I really wanted to be called ‘Ella Galbraith’, and I’ve no idea why,” she wrote.<\/p>\n
Rowling said she wrote under a pseudonym because, as one of the world’s most famous authors, she had been yearning to “work without hype or expectation and to receive totally unvarnished feedback”.<\/p>\n
Her first novel for adults, “The Casual Vacancy”, was published last year to mixed reviews.<\/p>\n
Expectations had been high after the huge success of the seven Harry Potter books, which were made into blockbuster Hollywood movies and made Rowling a multi-millionaire.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling spent a whole weekend practicing a fake signature for her crime-writing alter-ego Robert Galbraith, she revealed Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Sales of “The Cuckoo’s Calling”, a critically-acclaimed detective novel supposedly by rookie novelist Galbraith, have rocketed since it emerged this month that the author is none other than Rowling.<\/p>\n
Writing on a website set up for Galbraith, the British author confirmed that she has just finished a sequel, which will be published under his name next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":9929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}