Two More New J. K. Rowlings

Tuesday’s Guardian enthused:

Publisher claims to have found Potter successor

Editor who was first to spot the potential of JK Rowling's boy wizard tips fantasy tale about boy archaeologist as next big thing

That editor would be Barry Cunningham, now of the boutique imprint Chicken House, and he was touting Tunnels, originally self-published in the UK by Roderick Gordon and Brian Williams.

But on this side of the Atlantic another "new Rowling" was seeking to become the latest big thing in British-isles children's fantasy. Sunday's Seattle Post-Intelligencer gasped:

'The Alchemyst' could be the start of something Harry big in young-adult fantasy

Irishman Michael Scott is touring North America for The Alchemyst, the first of six books in a series he's mapped out and sold to Random House.

Meanwhile, after an anemic holiday period and several months of sales below last year's levels, the US bookselling industry gazes desperately to 14 July and the publication of the old J. K. Rowling's seventh Harry Potter novel. The clouds within that silver lining are that each book in this series has sold a larger percentage of its total during the first week or so, and that there's no eighth novel in the offing. In other words, after the end of July it's downhill for the foreseeable future.

But of course Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows won't be the last book from Rowling, given her imagination and storytelling talent. Four years ago she told the BBC that she's worked on other manuscripts that she might well publish under a pseudonym, a sentiment she repeated two years ago. Rowling wants her books judged on their own, not snapped up simply because she wrote them nor dismissed because they aren't like her Potters.

Which means that one of these days the new J. K. Rowling could turn out to be...J. K. Rowling.