JK Rowling Regrets Not Telling Mother About Harry Potter  7/31/07

Author J.K. Rowling regrets keeping Harry Potter from her dying mother because the book idea would have given her hope that her struggling daughter was going to be OK.

Rowling started writing the first Potter book in 1990 - six months before her mother died - and promised herself she'd never tell anyone about the boy wizard and his adventures.

She says, "That's one of my biggest regrets; she never knew, I never told her."

But Rowling's mother lives on in the books - because her death turned the Potter book franchise into a study of how people deal with the end of life.

Rowling reveals, "Mum dying had a profound influence on the books because in the first draft his (Potter) parents were disposed of in quite an almost cavalier fashion. I didn't really dwell on it.

"Six months in, my mother dies and I simply can't kill a fictional mother that callously... It wasn't what it became."