1: I read that you "Always think whatever my characters are saying are just different versions of me" - Does that make Jasper the writer a bit of a schizophrenic, or just an eight-year old who's enjoying his magic, imaginary friends?

2: Since you deliberately play around with 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' while writing, have Granny Next fall asleep reading The Faerie Queene, have the Jurisfiction gang policing cross-canon and cross-genre infiltration, what is your position regarding the classics, as enshrined in the Cannon?

3: The most banal/ dull moment in your life, if there has been one? (Is it the interviews or a moment when your imagination's completely blanked out on you?)

4: Intellectual Property Rights and your Swiss army knife cross-genre stories with all the cross-referencing? Do you think Carroll/ Bronte/ Shakespeare would sue you in the court of the bookworld?






1: I read that you "Always think whatever my characters are saying are just different versions of me" - Does that make Jasper the writer a bit of a schizophrenic, or just an eight-year old who's enjoying his magic, imaginary friends?

It's a comment about writing, really. Every character an authour writes has to be a different version of them; it would be impossible to write a character with a depth, or a sharpness of wit, or a complexity that the writer himself or herself doesn't possess, or hasn't learned.

2: Since you deliberately play around with 'highbrow' and 'lowbrow' while writing, have Granny Next fall asleep reading The Faerie Queene, have the Jurisfiction gang policing cross-canon and cross-genre infiltration, what is your position regarding the classics, as enshrined in the Cannon?

Pretty much the same as Thursday's and Jurisfiction - keeping them the way that the author intended. Even though much of Spenser is undeniably dull, Jurisfiction would defend the poem against anyone who tried to improve them. The sanctiotiy of the prose or poem is in the creation, and the intention of the author - witness the trouble Thursday gets into when she changes the end of 'Jane Eyre'! Mind you, I do get a bit annoyed when learned people start waxing on about the 'hidden subtext' or 'modes of alienation' within the classics - fine as a hobby and an opinion, but don't feed it undiluted to students; the distinction between literature and entertainment is only one of viewpoint. I stand firmly on the entertainment side of the wall.

3: The most banal/ dull moment in your life, if there has been one? (Is it the interviews or a moment when your imagination's completely blanked out on you?)

This is a hard one. Probably taking my youngest son to see The Pokemon movie. It was made all the worse because I managed to fall quite comfortably asleep within ten minutes only to be woken by him to tell me he was off to the toilet. Could I get back to sleep again? Could I hell. The good thing about being a writer is that you can generally daydream when you want - it's a prerequisite, actually - but there was something about Pokemon the movie that stifled all thought.

4: Intellectual Property Rights and your Swiss army knife cross-genre stories with all the cross-referencing? Do you think Carroll/ Bronte/ Shakespeare would sue you in the court of the bookworld?

Probably, although to be honest I haven't really done any of them a diservice - I know of several of my readers who have picked up 'Jane Eyre' to see what the joke was about from 'The Eyre Affair', and other people who went to see 'Hamlet' on the back of 'Something Rotten.' Perhaps I should demand a royalty from them!



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