[the_old_crowd] Jasper Fforde

[Catherine Coleman]

In message <0c2101c4a377$54cfb270$220110ac at MainComputer>, pennylin 
<pennylin at ...> writes
>Hi all --
>
>I've been extremely busy in the last few months (ever since I took on the
>job of answering the Lexicon's incoming emails to be exact!  <g> at Steve)
>and had let over 100 messages pile up in this folder of my inbox. 
>:::ouch::: 
>
>Welcome to all the new members .... I read all your intros!  Alas, no new
>Harry/Hermione shippers it would seem.  Kelley, did you rig that invite list?
>  <g>  I shall continue to skip all the Snape-related posts, btw. 
>
>I saw in Trina's intro that she just finished the last Jasper Fforde novel too
>...... wondering if others in this group are enjoying Fforde as much as I
>am? 

Yes, yes, yes, and I've been meaning to post about him for ages, when I 
saw that some people on this list were enjoying his books.  (And thank 
you to Jeralyn for first bringing him to my attention over on 
OT-Chatter).

I've been collecting his books since The Eyre Affair, and I met him at a 
reading he did recently in Norwich, on the day "Something Rotten" was 
published.  He rushed in, 20 minutes late, and then didn't draw breath 
for well over an hour.  He was amazing to listen to - people were asking 
him questions, such as how did he come up with the idea of Dodo cloning, 
and things like that, and I think he really impressed everyone with a) 
how inventive he is, and b) how well thought out everything was.

He also said that Something Rotten is not the last Thursday Next book, 
and that he could keep going with them indefinitely, but that his next 2 
books at least will not be in this series.  Instead, he is working on 
crime novels, based on Nursery Rhymes.  The first one is going to based 
upon who killed Humpty Dumpty, and the second one is based on 
Goldilocks, and is entitled "The Fourth Bear."  Apparently, although the 
books are going to be filled with Nursery Rhyme characters, he's setting 
them in Reading - no doubt doing for Reading exactly what he has done 
for Swindon.  He was also debating what the series was going to be 
called, and I think the working title at the moment is, obviously 
"Nursery Crimes." Apparently he wrote both of these books before The 
Eyre Affair, and has been waiting to get them published, but 
unfortunately, they are still going to come out at a rate of once a year 
- the first one being next summer.

One thing I love about Jasper Fforde is that he really does appreciate 
his fans.  His website is fantastic, and he has continued with the 
little gimmicks he started with when The Eyre Affair came out.  If you 
are lucky enough to pick up a copy of one of his books at a signing, it 
will come complete with a postcard, designed and printed by him.  For 
the Eyre Affair, he did this himself - went around with a polaroid and 
adulterating signposts.  I have one called "Stylish Dodo", which is a 
picture of a field with a style, and a traffic sign with a dodo on it. 
Another one has a warning sign on it saying "Bad Spelling Ahead", and on 
the road is printed SLWO.  More recently he's created postcards of "the 
Seven Wonders of Swindon."  If anyone is interested in seeing the few 
I've managed to collect, I will try and get them scanned in - they are 
quite amusing.  He has also had stamps made up for this book.  One which 
says that the book has been condemned, because of the dangerous Danish 
content, and other one advertising Toast.

Catherine, whose favourite scene so far is the Wuthering Heights Anger 
Management session, and who also saw Louis de Bernieres at the launch 
party of "Birds Without Wings"  - if anything, that was even more 
interesting.