Rowling halted at airport security

By Karl Schneider     September 15, 2006
Source: AP

According to the Associated Press, J.K. Rowling, author of Harry Potter, said that she won an argument with airport security officials in New York to carry the manuscript of the final Potter book as carryon baggage on her flight back to London. Had security agents not relented, she said on her Web site on Sept. 13, she might not have flown.

"I don't know what I would have done if they hadn'tsailed home probably," Rowling wrote.

Rowling was in New York to take part in a book reading for charity on Aug. 1 with fellow writers Stephen King and John Irving. Security was drastically tightened after Aug. 10 when British police said they had intercepted a plot to blow up U.S.-bound airliners.

"The heightened security restrictions on the airlines made the journey back from New York interesting, as I refused to be parted from the manuscript of book seven," Rowling wrote. "A large part of it is handwritten, and there was no copy of anything I had done while in the U.S." Eventually, she added, "They let me take it on, thankfully, bound up in elastic bands."

Rowling said she was still considering two possible titles for the last of the boy wizard's adventures. "I was quite happy with one of them until the other one struck me while I was taking a shower in New York," she wrote. "They would both be appropriate, so I think I'll have to wait until I'm further into the book to decide which one works best."