because Harry Potter

So, it's all over ohnotheydidnt, but Brandon was the first to show me this: Authors to Rowling: Don't kill Harry Potter

Now, copy editors (in this case the onus is on Reuters, as the headline is probably theirs) sometimes don't read stories as closely as they should, sometimes don't pay much attention because they want to go on dinner break, or may finish but look only at the top couple of graphs before slapping something that fits whatever specs they were given. As a copy editor myself, I do this on 20-inch water management district stories all the time.

However, Stephen King never said he didn't want Harry to die. He paid the highest compliment possible to a creator - that he hoped for a "fair" fate for Harry. Rock on, sir, for respecting her work like that. As to his allusion to Sherlock Holmes' watery quasi-demise, I took that to mean his clarification that should it come to death, he didn't want Harry to meet his end in a bit of authorial hissy fit of control.

I sent CNN.com a note about it. But I think saturn92103 is at the conference, so maybe she can clear things up. [EDIT: Sadly, she is instead back in my state just in time for the West Coast heat wave.] As to the rest of the story, loved King and Irving thinking of themselves as "warm-up bands," and on a personal note, JKR's willingness to kill off characters when it serves the plot is kind of awesome.

Relatedly, this time courtesy of the comm: Lloyd Webber Rues Missing Out on Harry Potter the Musical

My heart, she breaks. We could've had melodramatic crescendos about Harry's ch-ch-ch-changes!