Warner Brothers has sold Rowling on a return to the successful formula of the original Harry Potter film franchise: she writes wildly successful novels and Warner Brothers then adapts them for the screen.

This is third of three speculatives posts about why Rowling has ceased from tweeting on her Twitter home page, a social media platform with 14.7 million followers she had been using to share announcements from Lumos and the several Rowling, Inc., enterprises as well as airing her center-left political beliefs about Brexit, anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, and President Trump. The first speculative post was “Possibility One: Personal Problems” in which I reviewed the potential reasons Rowling wouldn’t want to make public that are keeping her from tweeting; the second was “Possibility Two: Court Ordered Silence” in which we covered the chance that she stepped back because the Sherrif (judge) in her case against a Personal Assistant ordered all litigants to be silent on social media.

If you’ve read those posts, you know that I think it is a stretch to think any of the reasons discussed in them — disease, addiction, relationship agonies, and a court order — are serious possibilities. None of them, to get right to the point, explain why Rowling’s office staff of four full-time employees and two part timers, not to mention the contractors and employees who work for her directly and indirectly at PotterMore, Bronte Studios, or The Blair Partnership, could not re-tweet announcements from Lumos, Volant Charities, Bronte Studios, Cursed Child, Hacheete Publishing, or Warner Brothers. Even a court order wouldn’t explain silence after the 4 April sentencing of the former PA.

So, we’re left with a mystery. Why would Rowling forsake the use of the largest Twitter platform of followers of any author ever? Instead of looking for causes that would apply to every other human being, which search has pretty much come up empty, it’s time to think about reasons that might apply only to J. K. Rowling, the Master of Narrative Control and Media Manipulation. Think “Hermione and The Quibbler.” Or, better, “Hermione and the ‘Bug’ in a Jar.”

Rather than wondering about the mystery of Rowling’s silence and what might have caused it to happen to the author, we should consider the possibility that the silence is intentional on her part and the effects — heightened interest in her activity (or lack of same) and the enigma of her disappearance — rather than the accidental consequence of forces outside her control are exactly her purpose.

Why would she want to do that? Here are my three guesses. [Read more…]

Rowling was ordered by a court to desist from social media posting during the trial’s final phases — and found that she liked it.

Last November I wrote a post about Rowling, Inc., taking one of Rowling’s Personal Assistants to court for “gross misconduct” and to sue for compensation to the tune of $25,000 in supposedly inappropriate and not-approved purchases as well as straight forward theft. ‘Lethal White: Personal Assistant Drama’ spells out what seemed to be an open and shut case at the time, the horrific optics of a billionaire claiming “Financial injury” and “Suffering” from what amounts to pocket change, and the echoes of this affair in the Cormoran Strike novels.

The case has been resolved and, in it, we may have an explanation for why Rowling went silent on Twitter in January. Here are links to various stories posted online about the trial and verdict: [Read more…]

Rowling or a loved one is sick, challenged by an addiction, or suffering from relationship issues. Maybe.

I have been thinking the last week about Rowling’s twitter silence, sixteen weeks today. While I think the reasons discussed on the subject in a variety of posts here at HogwartsProfessor are cogent and plausible, that is, one stop beyond merely possible, I have come to realize there are at least three other possibilities for her stepping away from her social media platform. They are personal reasons, legal order, and creating suspence, the last meaning only that the effect of her silence is intrigue and that it is reasonable to assume, given Rowling’s skill in manipulating readers through narrative, she may be as skilled in silence.

Today I want to discuss ‘personal reasons.’ What personal reasons could there be that would cause Rowling to retreat from her public persona into silence? What could be so serious that she would no longer retweet announcements from Lumos, the Cursed Child productions, Bronte Studios about the adaptations of her Strike novels, or Warnder Brothers about the Fantastic Beasts franchise? Three possibilities come to mind.

(1) Imminent Death: Anne Rowling, the author’s mother, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at age 35 and died in 1990 when only 45. MS is not a genetic disease but those with family members who suffer from the incurable illness are more likely to get the disease than those who do not as are those who smoke; Rowling was a cigarette smoker from her teen years until at least 2000 and the writing of Goblet of Fire (see all the articles that mention Rowling smoking here). If Rowling learned that she had MS or another degenerative illness, say, diabetes, cancer, heart disease, that would explain her decision to stop twittering her life away and refocus on her artistry and legacy as a story-teller. And do so privately.

At least as likely along this path is that one of Rowling’s family members, her sister Diane, her husband, her daughter Jessica from her failed first marriage or one of the two children of her second marriage is suffering from physical disease or a mental illness and in need of her attention. Rowling has been heroically protective of her family’s privacy during her second life as a global celebrity; it would be like her in this regard to step away quietly from professional commitments to include twitter in order to do the right thing, i.e., re-focus her attention on those needing her full time.

(2) Addiction and Abstinence: Rowling is an addictive personality. In addition to her history with chain smoking cigarettes, there is the record of her Minesweeper fixation, and her confession during the 2008 election that she was unable to stop reading about the American presidential primaries and the race between Barack Obama and Hilary Clinton. Her tweeting and retweeting articles this last year until January 2019 about Brexit and the need for a second referendum show the signs, too, of compulsive reading online about these subjects. [Read more…]