Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling is writing a little faster these days: unlike the “seemingly interminable three-year wait” between her last two Potter book, she announced yesterday that she has finished Potter VI, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. As Hillel Italie reports in an Associated Press wire story, Rowling’s American publisher Scholastic will announce the official release date today, but it should be 2005, which is “great news for booksellers, who have endured another year of slow sales.” As Italie notes, her last book “sold an astonishing 5 million copies within 24 hours of publication,” and sales for the series “have remained phenomenal even as Rowling’s books have grown longer and darker, reflecting the boy wizard’s maturation into adolescence.” Rowling has let it be known that one of the characters will perish in this book, but she hasn’t said which one.