1: The first thing readers will notice about your new book is the cover - what prompted the change?

2: Do you have a favourite book and/or author?

3: Is there any book or author you would consider 'too sacred', in a way, to parody?

4: The Thursday Next books feel almost like one long novel because the story continues from book-to-book. To what extent do you have the future of the storyline planned?

5: You said 'Four books in annual instalments', does that mean that you're planning to finish it there?

6: Do you find yourself reading books, in the hope of finding something that you can parody?

7: Was it an interest in story-telling that led you to become involved with the film industry?

8: Your next novel will not be a Thursday Next novel, but is a detective story featuring nursery rhyme characters. Do you feel you've had to adapt your writing style for the new book?

9: Is there anything you'd like to say to any readers who haven't read the books yet?






1: The first thing readers will notice about your new book is the cover - what prompted the change?

JF: This is really my first foray into hardbacks, and in the UK publishing world that's actually quite a major deal, to come out first in hardback, because what they're saying is that people are obviously going to pay a bit more to get your book, so for the hardback release they wanted to just change things slightly and give the book a make-over, I think, and re-format it a bit, re-jig it, so they decided to come up with a more eye-catching cover than the usual rather plain wrappers which it's had on the paperbacks, and this is what they came up with, and I think it's terrific, I must say - I really, really like it. When it comes out in paperback it'll have this cover, and all the backlist will have a similar sort of cover, so they'll all look like that eventually.

2: Do you have a favourite book and/or author?

JF: I think probably Lewis Carroll, which probably shows in the [Thursday Next] books. I think the interesting thing about learning to read, it's like learning to ride a bicycle or learning to drive or learning to talk - it's one of those hugely empowering things in one's life as a human-being. I remember being at a point where I could actually read fairly well, and going round my parents' very large and mostly sort of boring library, and finding a copy of Alice in Wonderland and pulling it out and reading it, so reading of my own volition. I think the books that really stay with you for your entire life are the ones you read when you're a very impressionable age - it's why we have this huge affection for old TV shows and movies we saw when we were very young, and Lewis Carroll has stayed with me my entire life, I must say, I loved it, and still do.

3: Is there any book or author you would consider 'too sacred', in a way, to parody?

JF: Not really. I often think that I really have to understand the source material pretty well before I try and subvert it to my own intentions. Some books I think it might be slightly cheesy to try and 'subvert' in the way that I do. I do tend to go more for the classics. You know, 'To Kill a Mockingbird' is such a good book - I think that one has to have a sort of reverence for extraordinarily good books like that. 'Catch 22', again, would probably be a difficult one to do. Modern classics are a bit different. I wouldn't have trouble so much with 'The Great Gatsby' or even P. G. Wodehouse, but some books are just, perhaps, too good and too serious a subject to actually have fun of at their own expense.

4: The Thursday Next books feel almost like one long novel because the story continues from book-to-book. To what extent do you have the future of the storyline planned?

JF: Very little, actually. I was very keen that the books should have a sort of interconnectedness, and the idea was really to write one large book in four annual instalments, and that has its own logistical problems because I really don't know what's happening from one book to the next. I kind of have a vague idea of where things are going, but certainly nothing specific, and I really do write very much on the hoof - I put the characters in a situation and see what comes of it, you know: put Hamlet in the real world and see what comes of that... just see what pans out in a logical sense.

5: You said 'Four books in annual instalments', does that mean that you're planning to finish it there?

JF: Well, with the fourth book, 'Something Rotten', we deal with a lot of the unresolved plotlines from the previous three books and we very much bring it through to a logical conclusion and a good sort of nice, safe place to stop and pause and take stock, so over the next couple of years I'll be getting other books out the stocks - and then we'll come back to Thursday whenever we want: either in her real world, or within the book world, but I'm not sure yet. There's plenty of adventures still to be had, I must say - plenty of characters to play with.

6: Do you find yourself reading books, in the hope of finding something that you can parody?

JF: When I'm actually working on a book, and I want to use a novel, or a character to subvert, I often read through it to find inconsistencies within the text that I can actually play with, and use, and explain that there's some skulduggery going on inside the novel that has to be explained, you know: 'this is why...' You know, it's like the three bears - why did mummy bear and daddy bear sleep in separate beds? To me, that hints at some sort of marital discord within the bear family - some sort of dynamic there that we don't know about, but could be explained, so it's all there to be used.

7: Was it an interest in story-telling that led you to become involved with the film industry?

JF: Yeah... I think so... from the age of about ten I wanted to get involved with films because that's where I saw story-telling, really. I think to my youthful mind I really just liked the idea of creating something out of nothing - the idea that, on a film set, on one side it looks like rock, and the other side it's just hardboard with a bit of 2B1, and I kinda loved that sort of magical make-believe idea, and I still do, I must say, but the big difference, of course, with working in the film industry... I can actually make films entirely on my own by writing, because I'm the director, I'm all the actors, I'm the script-writer, I build the sets, I'm the prop-man... everything... The author does the whole lot, and that's really good fun, just creating worlds out of nothing. When you're a child you're always told not to tell lies, you know - 'Mustn't tell lies!' - of course, I'm making good money out of it, now, by just telling great whoppers - you know, 100,000 word whopping great fibs, and people are buying them and saying 'I love your lies, Jasper, your lies are really good', and I'm saying 'Thank you very much', which is what it is, really, isn't it? Telling stories... porkies for cash. It's a very strange business, but that's what story-tellers do, isn't it? Make believe... make believe, pretend, and the audience know that they're lying, and enjoy it, so that's a strange thing to think about. It's interesting to think about these things, and often that's what my writing is about.

8: Your next novel will not be a Thursday Next novel, but is a detective story featuring nursery rhyme characters. Do you feel you've had to adapt your writing style for the new book?

JF: Um... no, I mean the new book was actually written first, so this was my first book that I wrote in '92/'93, which never found a publisher. What I'll be doing is I'll be going back over the book, because I've written seven books since then, and I would hope that my writing has actually got slightly better, so I'll be going through the manuscript and actually bringing it up to date, and just making it better and smoother, and hopefully a bit slicker, in light of my greater experience as a writer, since penning it for the first time.

9:Is there anything you'd like to say to any readers who haven't read the books yet?

JF: Not really... I suppose the only thing to say is that they are books for people who love reading, or for people who read books a lot. It's not necessarily a science-fiction book - although there are science-fiction elements in it, there's lots of crime, thriller and horror and romance... they're very much a sort of multi-genre rather than cross-genre books, they're a sort of celebration of writing, I suppose... I like to think that I have supped at the great table of storytelling and made of with the scraps... that's my take on my career so far.

TBD: Thank you very much

JF: No, my pleasure



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