What happened in 1999?
Two major events: On June 2nd, Book 2 was published in America, closely followed by Book 3 (UK and US release) on September 8th. As a result, 1999 was a frenzied year for Potter publicity.

Her American book-signing tour became an exercise in crowd control as the venues were mobbed by huge numbers of fans.

1999 also saw her first online chat, something Rowling has continued to do as her popularity forced her to increasingly limit public appearances.

Rating	1999	Title & highlights*	Links	Type
****	Jan 17	Harry's Fame Scotland on Sunday The Forest of Dean (where she grew up) was an influence on her settings. Hagrid's accent is a Chepstow specialty; he is the only character who comes specifically from the Forest of Dean area. In shape Hagrid is modelled on the Welsh chapter of Hells Angels who'd swoop down on Chepstow and hog the bar, "huge mountains of leather and hair." As she writes book 4: "Everyone's in love with the wrong person, it's brilliant."	text	interview
**	Jan 26	We are wild about Harry The Herald (Glasgow)	text	report
**	Jan 29	The spotty schoolboy and single mother taking the mantle from Roald Dahl The Independent (London)	text	report
**	Feb?	British Book Award acceptance speech The Magical World Of J K Rowling	text	speech
****	Feb 16	Who hasn't met Harry? Guardian Unlimited Harry had to be an orphan, so he had no fear of letting his parents down. Hogwarts had to be a boarding school because "half the important stuff happens at night!" Book seven will see him come of age – face his destiny.	text	interview
****	Early spring?	Magic, Mystery, and Mayhem: An Interview with J.K. Rowling Amazon.com JKR: "Most of the spells are invented, but some of them have a basis in what people used to believe worked. We owe a lot of our scientific knowledge to the alchemists!"	text	interview
*****	Mar 19	Barnes and Noble interview Barnesandnoble.com JKR: "Potter was the name of a brother and sister who I played with when I was very young. We were part of the same gang and I always liked that surname." JKR: "I spent a lot of time inventing the rules for the magical world so that I knew the limits of magic. Then I had to invent the different ways wizards could accomplish certain things. Some of the magic in the books is based on what people used to believe really worked, but most of it is my invention." In book 7, Harry will be 17, which means he will be "of age." He will become a full wizard and be able to use his magic outside school. Nobody knows where magic comes from – sometimes it is inherited, sometimes only one person in a family has it. JKR: "There is a character who does manage in desperate circumstances to do magic quite late in life, but that is very rare...."	text	interview
****	Mar 31	Of magic and single motherhood Salon JKR: "The wizards represent all that the true 'muggle' most fears: They are plainly outcasts and comfortable with being so. Nothing is more unnerving to the truly conventional than the unashamed misfit!"	text	interview
**	Apr 12	The Wizard of Hogwarts Time	text	contains interview
June 2, 1999: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets published in the U.S.
****	June 21	Interview The Rosie O'Donnell Show	text	interview
***	June 21	Fiction Drills Time Magazine	text	editorial
***	June 28	J.K. Rowling Discusses the Adventures of Harry Potter CBS News: This Morning	text	interview
****	July	Talking With ... J.K. Rowling Book Links (U.S.) The last chapter of the last book is written, and deals with what happens to the survivors afterward. Harry will, in the long term, get back at Dudley.	text	interview
***	July 3	Wizard with Words Telegraph Magazine (London)	text	interview
July 8, 1999: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban published in the U.K.
**	July 8	Just Wild About Harry The Scotsman (Edinburgh)	text	book review
**	July 9	They're Wild About 'Harry' Entertainment Weekly (U.S.)	text	report
*	July 12	Harry Potter's real life model was no sluggard on tricks The Guardian Unlimited (UK)	text	report
***	July 12	Spell Binder People Magazine (U.S.)	text	interview
**	July 26	Abracadabra! Time	text	report
**	Aug 1	James Naughtie talks to JK Rowling BBC Radio 4	text	interview
***	Aug 23	Magician for Millions Newsweek (U.S.)	text	report
***	Aug 27	Oh, to hide behind a cloak of secrecy The Herald (Glasgow)	text	interview
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban published September 8th (U.S.)
***	Sep	The Truth about Harry School Library Journal (U.S.) Are you planning to kill off Ron? JKR: "I can't let on too much." Quidditch is pronounced KWI-ditch. (Stress on the first syllable).	text	interview
****	Sep 8	Barnes & Noble chat transcript Barnesandnoble.com Hermione is pronounced "Her-MY-oh-knee". Harry's middle name is 'James.' Will Sirius ever be proven innocent? Or have you not decided yet? JKR: I have decided, but if I answer it gives away something quite important in the plot, so I'd rather not...however, Sirius will be back in future books. We will be hearing more from Crookshanks. Lupin is "one of her favorite character in all seven books." Aragog will appear in later books. We will be seeing Mr Weasley's car again. Hogwarts is in Scotland.	text	chat
***	Sep 9	Phenom Harry Potter casts a spell over his author, too USA Today	text	interview
****	Sep 12	Harry Potter Book Sales Skyrocket Around the World CBS News: 60 Minutes (U.S.)	text	interview
***	Sep 20	Wild about Harry Time Magazine (U.S.)	text	interview
*	Oct 4	Maggie's is Magic, says creator of Harry Evening News (Glasgow)	text	report
Rowling begins a 3-week book tour of the U.S.
****	Oct?	The Magical World of J K Rowling: Author of Harry Potter (video excerpt)	text video	interview
****	Oct?	Harry Potter Author Works Her Magic Family Education Snape is fun to write, because he is a "deeply horrible person." There were lilies in Kew gardens called ‘Hogwarts.'	text video	interview
*****	Oct 12	J.K. Rowling interview The Connection (WBUR Radio) Character of Harry came into her head "fully formed" and she worked backwards to create the stories. Voldemort, Malfoy, Quidditch are all invented names. Mrs. Norris [Filch's cat] comes from Jane Austen. Dumbledore "old English word meaning bumblebee. Because Albus Dumbledore is very fond of music, I always imagined him as sort of humming to himself a lot." Hagrid is "a dialect word - you'd had a bad night. Hagrid is a big drinker - he has a lot of bad nights." McGonagall was a "very, very, very bad Scottish poet." Hermione is a name from Shakespeare chosen because Hermione needed an unusual name. Hermione is a "caricature of what I was when I was 11." It took 5 years to finish the first book and to plot out the remaining 6; Book 4 was plotted when she was pregnant with Jessica. Some storylines are inspired by folklore, but most of it "comes out of my head." JKR collects names; some characters had 8 or 9 names before she found the right one. Naming is "crucial" to her. Malfoy means bad faith. Snape is loosely based on a sadistic teacher she had. JKR: "everyone should keep their eye on Snape, I'll just say that, because there's more to him than meets the eye...." JKR thinks that that the thought of Snape in love is a "very horrible idea" and is stunned that someone wonders if Snape might fall in love. We will find out why in book 7. Hagrid is a "West country" yokel, from the part of Britain where she grew up. "Harry is someone is forced for such a young person to make his own choices." [nice description of how Harry, Hermione and Ron all complement each other]. JKR admires "bravery in all forms." Neville is comical, but "actually quite a tragic figure to me as well because there's a lot of Neville in me - this feeling of just never being quite good enough." Harry is more alone than most children; he doesn't have a safety net. One of Harry's classmates ends up teaching at Hogwarts, and it is not Ron. We will find out the significant information about Harry's mother in 2 parts: books 5 and 7. Both are "very important in what Harry ends up having to do." One of the rules she has for her books is that "Magic cannot bring dead people back to life…. Once you're dead, you're dead."	text audio	interview
**	Oct 12	'Harry Potter' magic draws thousands Telegram & Gazette (Worcester, MA)	text	report
***	Oct 13	J.K. Rowling interview, All Things Considered (NPR Radio)	text audio	interview
***	Oct 13	Interview The Rosie O'Donnell Show	text video	interview
**	Oct 13	Why I Paid So Much for a Children's Book (Arthur A Levine) New York Times	text	eyewitness
???	Oct 14	interview Today Show	???	interview
***	Oct 14	Students Meet the Real Wizard Behind the Harry Potter Craze The Record (NJ)	text	interview
***	Oct 14	A wizard of words puts a spell on kids: 'Potter' author visits school in Monclair The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ)	text	contains interview
**	Oct 14	Harry Potter author defends her work Associated Press	text	report
***	Oct 16	Harry Potter's creator meets her public: Author J.K.Rowling answers questions from students at a school in Montclair The Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ) "Dursley [...] is the name of an actual town in England." In future books, JKR says she will attempt to show why "Voldemort is who he is." 10 different first chapters were written for Book 1.	text	interview
***	Oct 17	Harry Potter's Toughest Foe Sunday Herald (Glasgow)	text	report
***	Oct 17	Pottermania - Focus - Profile - J.K. Rowling The Sunday Times (UK)	text	report
****	Oct 18	All about Harry Potter from quidditch to the future of the Sorting Hat The Boston Globe The fact that Harry has his mother's eyes is very important to a future book. JKR: "There is more to the Sorting Hat than what you have read about in the first three books." Harry's role in the trio is to be their conscience.	text	interview
**	Oct 19	The Magic of Harry Potter: Series Bewitches and Bothers Newsday (NY)	text	report
***	Oct 19	Harry Potter casts spell over Washington Reuters	text	report
*****	Oct 20	National Press Club author's luncheon NPR Radio How she came up with Quidditch as a concept. The idea for the series came to her in 1990. She can't tell us if she imagines Harry growing up because it will ruin the plot of book 7 for us. She doesn't like to tell people the titles of her books until they are finished; it is a superstition of hers. Why she signs her books with her initials (J.K. instead of Joanne). Hermione's name is from Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale, but "my Hermione bears very little relation to that Hermione, but it just seemed the sort of name that a pair of professional dentists, who liked to prove how clever they were ... do you know what I mean ... gave their daughter a nice, unusual name that no-one could pronounce!" Hermione needed an unusual name because she was so swotty and annoying. "The only reason you'll ever see an eighth Harry Potter book is if I really, in ten years time, burn to do another one, but at the moment I think that's unlikely." Hagrid and Voldemort are both in their 60s. Harry will not train to be an animagus; his "energies are going to be concentrated elsewhere and he's not going to have time to do that." She won't tell us what happened to Harry's grandparents. Harry & Hermione are platonic friends, "but I won't answer for anyone else, nudge, nudge, wink, wink."	text audio	interview
***	Oct 20	Charmed, I'm Sure The Washington Post	text	interview
*****	Oct 21, re-broadcast December 24	'Harry Potter' author J.K. Rowling Diane Rehm Show (NPR) Reads the scene in Ollivander's from Book 1 JKR: "Harry has been born to shoulder a certain burden." Jo says she does a certain amount of research into creatures and magic that people used to believe in, when she is writing about them. About a third of the stuff that crops up people used to genuinely believe in, the rest is made up by Jo. JKR speaks of researching specific ghosts, implying that one or more of the ghosts in the books are based on ghosts from folklore. Most people don't care much about Hermione – in the sense that they think she is too clever and will get through it somehow. JKR: "In my world wizards come of age at 17 - age 17. So in book 7 you'll see Harry come of age, which means he's allowed to use magic outside school, and you'll see the end of that school year." Quidditch is a completely made up word – JK filled 5 pages of notebook with words beginning with Q before she hit 'quidditch' and knew it was right. In Quidditch it is possible to catch the snitch and lose the game – if the other team is more than 150 point ahead – but this happens more at higher levels where scoring is a bit higher. At school level, if you catch the snitch then, normally, if you catch the snitch, you'll win.	text audio	interview
**	Oct 21	'Harry Potter' goes to Washington Post-Gazette National Bureau (Pittsburgh)	text	report
***	Oct 21	3 Stories Done, 4 To Go Richmond Times-Dispatch	text	report
**	Oct 21	Writer's wizardry with words welcomed: Young fans mob British author at signings The Washington Times	text	report
**	Oct 22	Is Harry Potter Evil? (Judy Blume) New York Times	text	commentary
****	Oct 22	Just wild about Harry: Dedicated fans of a young wizard have Scottish scribe J.K. Rowling to thank The Atlanta Journal and Constitution	text	interview
**	Oct 22	No end in sight for Pottermania Chicago Sun-Times JKR said she couldn't answer questions about religious content until the end of the seventh book.	text	report
**	Oct 22	America's just wild about Harry's charming creator The Scotsman	text	report
**	Oct 26	Enchanted with Potter Literature: Fans line up for hours to get their books signed The Orange County Register JKR says she pronounces Voldemort "Voldemor not "Voldemort but she is the only one.	text	report
***	Oct 28	A Fantastic Success for J.K. Rowling Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)	text	interview
**	Oct 30	Harry Potter Fans Delight in Seeing Author The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa, CA)	text	interview
***	Oct 30	Harry Potter's Wizard: Creator of children's book series tours Bay Area The San Francisco Chronicle The twelfth use of Dragon's blood is oven cleaner, but JKR has "very good reason" for not telling us the rest.	text	interview
*	Nov 1	Hurry, Harry! Newsweek Harry will never become an animagus.	text	report
**	Nov 1	Keeping Up With Harry Publisher's Weekly	text	report
***	Nov 3	'Harry Potter' Author is Just a Kid at Heart Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)	text	interview
**	Nov 14	Joanne Kathleen Rowling, creator of the Harry Potter Sunday Gazette-Mail (Charleston, SC)	text	report
***	Nov 14	A Way with Wizards: Author J.K. Rowling Brings Bespectacled Harry Potter to Life Modesto Bee (Modesto, CA)	text	report
***	Nov ?	Interview of J.K. Rowling Donny & Marie Show (ABC)	text	interview
***	Dec 7	As Happy as Harry in the Cafe Society Evening News (Edinburgh)	text	interview
**	Dec 13	On the Road Again Publishers Weekly	text	report
		Diane Rehm Show, see October 21, 1999
***	Dec 31	J.K. ROWLING: The 25 Most Intriguing People Of '99 People "I constantly rewrite she says. "At the moment, the last word is 'scar.'"	text	interview
Rating	1999	Title & highlights*	Links	Type

*Article highlights created by Deborah Skinner (aka 'Madam Scoop') and Lisa Bunker

Original page date 21 September 2006; last updated 25 October, 2007

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