JK Rowling tight-lipped over pleas for Potter's life

TWO of the top authors in the United States, John Irving and Stephen King, made a plea to JK Rowling yesterday not to kill the fictional boy wizard Harry Potter in the final book of the series, but the Edinburgh-based writer made no promises.

"My fingers are crossed for Harry," Irving said at a joint news conference before a charity reading by the three writers at New York's Radio City Music Hall.

The author of The World According to Garp and a string of other bestsellers said that he and King felt like "warm-up bands" for Rowling, who is working on the seventh and final Potter book and who has said two characters will die.

Stephen King, who shot to fame in 1974 with Carrie, said he had confidence Rowling would be "fair" to her hero.

"I don't want him to go over the Reichenbach Falls," King said in a reference to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's effort to kill off Sherlock Holmes. Pressure from fans eventually led Conan Doyle to resurrect the great detective.

Rowling, whose books have sold 300 million copies worldwide, said she was well into the process of writing the final book.

"I feel quite liberated," she said. "I can resolve the story now, and it's fun in a way it wasn't before because, finally, I've reached my resolution.

"Some people will loathe it and some people will love it, but that's how it should be.

"A couple of characters I expected to survive have died and one character got a reprieve," she said, declining to elaborate.