Last week, when I was busy doing other things, J.K. Rowling announced the title of her next book: Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince. I'm not sure I like the title, but I'm intrigued by the question of who the book's second title character might be: Rowling has written that this mysterious prince is neither Harry nor Voldemort. What intrigues me most, however, was this paragraph from the official Rowling site:
I was delighted to see that a hard core of super-bright fans knew that the real title was once, in the long distant past, a possibility for 'Chamber of Secrets', and from that deduced that it was genuine. Certain crucial pieces of information in book six were originally planned for 'Chamber of Secrets', but very early on (first draft of Chamber) I realised that this information's proper home was book six. I have said before now that 'Chamber' holds some very important clues to the ultimate end of the series. Not as many as six, obviously, but there is a link.