As the release of her first post-Potter book The Casual Vacancy approaches, Jo Rowling has begun a series of interviews and appearances with a lengthy piece in The Guardian in which she discusses her life before, during and after Harry Potter, and politics and society and how it ties into the new book. And she says that having dreamed up Harry Potter on a train, the idea for The Casual Vacancy came to her on a plane this time! She also reveals that her next book to publish will most likely be another children’s story, and that the long awaited ‘political fairytale’ is still sitting on her laptop, almost finished.

The video below summarizes the interview nicely, but you can read the whole thing over on the Guardian website. Spoiler warning: the article contains a lot of detail about the contents of The Casual Vacancy. We’ve included some highlight quotes below.