Rowling Preparing for Final Harry Potter Book

"Harry Potter" author J.K. Rowling has updated her official website with a note saying that she's getting ready to write the seventh and final book in the popular series.

"For 2006 will be the year when I write the final book in the Harry Potter series," she says. "I contemplate the task with mingled feelings of excitement and dread, because I can't wait to get started, to tell the final part of the story and, at last, to answer all the questions (will I ever answer all of the questions? Let's aim for most of the questions); and yet it will all be over at last and I can't quite imagine life without Harry."

Rowling adds that she's been working hard on preparing for the big project.

"I have been fine-tuning the fine-tuned plan of seven during the past few weeks so that I can really set to work in January. Reading through the plan is like contemplating the map of an unknown country in which I will soon find myself. Sometimes, even at this stage, you can see trouble looming; nearly all of the six published books have had Chapters of Doom. The quintessential, never, I hope, to be beaten Chapter That Nearly Broke My Will To Go On was chapter nine, 'Goblet of Fire' (appropriately enough, 'The Dark Mark'.)"