Fame and fortune has a price, and for "Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling, that price is her writing. All everybody wanted with her was more stories about The Boy Who Lived, and if she ventured on to another project, expectations were quite high.
This is why Rowling decided to write under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith, and write something completely different - crime thrillers.
"I am so grateful for what happened with Harry Potter, and that needs to be said. The relationship I had with those readers, and still have with those readers, is so valuable to me," Rowling told NPR. "Having said that, there was a phenomenal amount of pressure that went with being the writer of Harry Potter, and that aspect of publishing those books I do not particularly miss. So you can probably understand the appeal of going away and creating something very different, and just letting it stand or fall on its own merits."
Rowling actually has an affinity with the character she created for her crime novels - Camaron Strike. Just like her, Camaron "has all of the drawbacks of being associated with fame and none of the advantages."
However, Rowling clarifies that the affinity is all there is to it. "It would be wrong, wholly wrong, to suggest he's an autobiographical character - he's a disabled veteran, he's a man, obviously. However, there are things that I like in him, and that I would like to feel that we share. He has a very strong work ethic. He is a tryer, in all circumstances. And at the point where we meet him in the very first book, he is absolutely on his uppers, in a way that I too have experienced, in that he is as poor as you can be without being homeless."
Rowling has already written three books under her pseudonym - "The Cuckoo's Calling," "The Silkworm," and now "Career of Evil."
Galbraith's latest novel is particularly difficult for Rowling to write, especially since she had to understand the psyche of a killer.
"I thought it was really important to understand the mindset, because some of the chapters are written from the point of view of a psychopathic killer. So what do those men say about what they feel about what they do? What do those men feel is a very interesting question, because I think their capacity to feel is very blunted. So researching all of that was simultaneously fascinating and incredibly disturbing," she said.
"This is the first time ever that a book has literally given me nightmares. And it wasn't the writing of the novel that gave me nightmares, it was the research," Rowling concluded.
