When J.K. Rowling announced in a 2007 interview that she was working on a project for adults, everyone naturally assumed that she was referring to a compilation of Harry Potter erotica (and by "everyone," I of course mean, "perverted dorks" and "dorky perverts"). But readers' dreams of a Rowling-penned Dobby/Kreacher horizontal encounter were cruelly dashed today after publishing group Little, Brown and Company announced that Rowling has signed a deal to write her first novel for adults, which the press release says will be "very different from the Harry Potter series."
The project is Rowling's first venture with Little, Brown, marking a departure from her fifteen-year partnership with British publisher Bloomsbury, who published the Harry Potter series. But Rowling's agent Neil Blair says that she'll stay with Bloomsbury while working on this manuscript. "As her new book is for a different audience, and marks a new literary direction for her, it made sense to separate the two and for her new book to be launched by a different publisher," Blair said.
Further details about the novel, such as the title of the book and the date of its publication, will be revealed later this year, which gives Harry Potter fans a few months to make wild, unfounded speculations about the project. So get to work on that.