1: Would you like living in Thursday Next's world?

2: Why did you choose such strange name for your heroin?

3: And why do you choose Jane Eyre instead of Cathy Earnshaw or Elizabeth Bennet?

4: If you could change the plot of Jane Eyre as Archeron Hades does, what would you do?

5: Thursday resemble to Jane Eyre? If yes: in what?

6: How much your writing had filched from movies?






1: Would you like living in Thursday Next's world?

Yes; I would. It sounds like a lot of fun - literarture, airships, neanderthals, dodos, mammoths - all very colourful. But best of all a wonderful simple sense of morality and justice - there are good guys and there are bad guys and not much in between. If only it were that simple in real life! In many ways I do live in this world. Writing these books is a very immersive process, so when I am writing a Thursday book, for four months I am there.

2: Why did you choose such strange name for your heroin?

It is a (now archaic) way of saying 'Next Thursday' in English. You'll find it in Romeo and Juliet:

PARIS That may be must be, love, on Thursday next.

JULIET What must be shall be.

FRIAR LAURENCE That's a certain text.

But that's not where I got it from. My mother uses the term and I borrowed it from her. It has a nice long-short-long internal rhythm, too. 'Thurs-day-next' 'dum-de-dum'. Whenever I hear a phrase that might be a name but isn't, I just pigeonhole it for later use, and 'Thursday Next' is just a really good name. Female, of course - and slightly quirky and enigmatic. In the same way, 'Bowden Cable' is actually the sleeved cable used to operate bicycle brakes, and 'Braxton Hicks' is the name given to the practice contractions that proceed real contractions during childbirth. It's a good joke, but not everyone gets it...

3: And why do you choose Jane Eyre instead of Cathy Earnshaw or Elizabeth Bennet?

She's the most well known. Because much of the jokes are about having fun with the classics, and since I never wanted the book to be unapproachable by anyone who hasn't read them, I had to use a classic that most people had heard of and knew something about even if they'd never read the book. Jane Eyre seemed the only book that truly fulfilled this. If you hadn't read the book you might have seen the film, and if you hadn't seen the film, you'd almost certainly know Jane was a romantic heroine of the Victorian era. Incidentally, Cathy gets to appear in the third in the Thursday Next series, and 'Sense and Sensibility' is featured in the second book in the series - the policing agency that Thursday gets to work with in the rest of the series has its base in the ballroom of Norland Park.

4: If you could change the plot of Jane Eyre as Archeron Hades does, what would you do?

I don't want to spoil the book - but when 'The Eyre Affair' begins, 'Jane Eyre' has a terrible ending - Jane doesn't marry Rochester but goes to India with the drippy St John Rivers. Can a state of affairs be allowed to continue? Read 'The Eyre Affair' and find out!

5: Thursday resemble to Jane Eyre? If yes: in what?

I think so. She is feisty and independent and knows her mind. I've also dropped in a few characters in my book that reflect those in 'Jane Eyre' - Her boyfriend Landen Parke-Laine whom she can't quite agree with (Mr Rochester) her workmate Bowden Cable who secretly loves her and wants her to go with him to America (St John Rivers) and even Daisy Mutlar (Blanche Ingram) who appears to be going to marry her boyfriend. There are many parallels!

6: How much your writing had filched from movies?

Yes, I am sitting on the shoulders of giants, and have flown here on borrowed wings! My books are taken from all sources - from movies, books, TV shows, comics - you name it. Mind you, all authors borrow from previous writers, but since my books are really about other books or about storytelling, it seems only right and just and true that I take from all sources. With my books I tap into the readers collective conciousness - it's as though this world were real and you can walk through it, where characters from Star Wars might rub shoulders with Tristram Shandy. Truly, I have feasted at the great table of storytelling - and made off with the scraps!





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