J.K. Rowling uses literary device horror! Banging the drum for her next book, she revealed that she would kill off some main characters, a shock tactic not used since, err, her last Harry Potter book and . . . ermm . . . the one before that as well.

A coalition of surviving Harry Potter characters have now joined FIGMENT - the Federation of Imaginary Guides to the Management of Entertaining Narrative Transitions - and issued a group statement earlier this morning:

"It's intolerable. First there was Beckett who had fictional characters blurring into eachother, then B.S. Johnson who denied our pseudo-reality completely, now this Lottery of Death just to kick up some buzz for the new book. It's too much."

It appears that Rowling has critics in other quarters too. Friends of the Earth have launched a desperate plea to raise enough money to provide Bloomsbury with an editor - in order to pare down Rowling's increasingly bloated text. "Dear God," said a spokesperson, "think of the poor trees."

Rowling, who unless she has read Piers Anthony, intends on halting the Harry Potter series at just seven books would not be drawn on any specifics, or even the title of the next book which is subject to fierce speculation. "Harry Potter Gets Over the Monumental Chip On His Shoulder, Learns Some Magic And Stops Perpetually Arsing About Instead of Studying", "Harry Teenager and the Pink Nocturnal Wand" and "Books of Magic - Why I'm Lucky Neil Gaiman Is Too Much of a Gentleman to Sue Anyone Except Todd MacFarlane" have all been rumoured as the next installment in the series.

Meanwhile Matthew Reilly, author of the christknowswhy popular action books series, has been showing off his latest hobby of search engine optimisation by appearing all over Google like a bad case of herpes.