J.K. Rowling cheered by fans at New York event

Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY | USATODAY

NEW YORK — J.K. Rowling quipped Tuesday about the difference between The Casual Vacancy, her first post-Harry Potter novel for grown-ups, and another kind of adult best seller: E.L. James' erotic Fifty Shades of Grey.

"The difference is that people have sex in my book, but no one enjoys it," Rowling told 2,500 cheering fans at an event at a Manhattan theater.

Rowling also said:

— She dreaded writing several scenes in her new novel, about social and political divisions in a small English town, particularly a rape, but "it had to happen. It was there for a reason."

— Her new novel "might be appropriate for the right 14- or 15-year-old, but not any younger than that." But parents, she added, should discuss the reasons with their children that it's inappropriate.

— Her biggest challenge in moving from young readers to adults wasn't "about writing in a contemporary world, in a real world," but getting "the structure" right of a novel without a central character.

Rowling's conversation on stage with the novelist Ann Patchett (State of Wonder), who owns a bookstore in Nashville, was her first public event in the U.S. for her new novel.

It drew a screaming crowd that gave Rowling a standing ovation as she walked on stage, prompting Patchett to say, "This is like a Stones concert."

Patchett, "as a writer and bookseller," praised Rowling "for doing more for reading than anyone else in my lifetime and for single-handedly keeping an industry alive."

"No, no, no," Rowling replied. "That's way too much responsibility."

The two authors sat on a stage normally used by the New York City Ballet and often drew laughs, especially when Patchett mentioned the double meaning of "adult novel."

Both Rowling and Patchett shared they hadn't read Fifty Shades.

"Everyone tells me the writing is terrible," Patchett said.

"But that's porn," Rowling shot back to laughter. "Have you ever read The Story of O?"

"I went to Catholic school," Patchett confessed.

"You'd like it even more," Rowling replied.

The Casual Vacancy, which landed at No. 1 on USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list and dropped to No. 4 last week, has gotten mixed reviews from critics, who have called it everything from dull to brilliant. But that wasn't mentioned Tuesday.

When Rowling said she feared some readers may have missed the humor in The Casual Vacancy, Patchett said "it is a story not between evil and good, but between evil and funny."

The crowd was predominantly female, mostly between 20 and 40, the generation that grew up on the Potter series.

Among them was Catherine Warren, 19, who had come all the way from the University of Georgia, where she's a sophomore, to pay homage to the writer "who's just so great."

Warren remembered how her mother read to her the first two Potter novels "when I was in first or second grade, but then I finished them myself as the years went by."

Warren said she's 100 pages into The Casual Vacancy "and so far so good." She said she'd loved to read "more about Harry Potter's world" — which Rowling has said she won't do — then added, "I understand what's done is done."