Hilary Booth... of course!

"'I was the Cheshire Cat,' he replied with a slightly aggrieved air. 'But they moved the county boundaries, so technically speaking I'm now the Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat, but it doesn't have the same ring to it.'"

I do so love Jasper Fforde's books. Now if he'll just come out with them faster in the United States, we'd all be happier. I find this result also amusing because I submitted an "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" icon for the literary quote contest on aesthetic_icons.

( Which Thursday Next character are you? )

Updated: Yes! My local BDaltons had Well of Lost Plots. Is that where plots go to die? Maybe I can figure out where my plots disppeared to...

So today I went back to the Library of Congress for the Jasper Fforde signing, sponsored by the LC's science fiction roundtable group. The event was held in the Pickford Theater with a fairly light turnout. They had the second book for sale after the reading portion. Fforde had to cut the event a little short because he was due for an interview. He would also be doing another signing at an Olssons tonight which I didn't realize until I looked at Fforde Grand Central, his official website.

As for writer himself, Jasper Fforde qualifies very well in the dashing Brit category. Voiceslut that I am, the accent was quite *lovely* to listen to. He did not disappoint in the humor department either. Fforde is just as hilarious and zany as his books would indicate. As far as he was concerned, question wise, the stranger the tangents the better. Again my nerve completely failed me. I couldn't think of anything to ask, so I was content to get both of my books signed.

Speaking to an American audience, Fforde opted to read a scene from "Lost in a Good Book" inspired by an American writer, namely Edgar Allan Poe. Very bizarre scene which makes more sense if you know how one character ended up in "Eyre Affair". Fforde said he used to have "The Raven" memorized, even reciting it on the long commute to London on occasion. He liked the idea of having whole chunks of poetry stuck in your brian, like a memory card. (I hated to ask what it said about me that I have "Macavity: the Mystery Cat" from T.S. Eliot's "Book of Practical Cats" still memorized after so many years.)

Fforde explained there were Poe references scattered throughout his books, especially the names of various newspapers, the Mole, Toad, Owl, all culled from a Poe short story called "The Literary Life of Thimgum Bob, Esq." wherein the author unsuccessfully submitted manuscripts to those "penny dreadfuls." He also mentioned that Poe took the meter and rhyme for "the Raven" from a poem by Elizabeth Barrett.

He described with hilarious effect his earlier attempts at writing books. "The Eyre Affair", by some weird effect, was actually the third book he started, but the fifth one he finished. Apparently he had gotten stalled on using the character Jane Eyre properly in the book and wound up not really using her at all. His original plan was having her and Thursday off on adventures themselves, but that didn't seem to work.

His first two books were police procedurals based off nursery rhymes. Go ahead and blink, I had the same exact reaction. Imagine doing CSI work on the broken bits of Humpty Dumpty... entrance and exit wounds etc. The second book had something involving the Gingerbread Man. For some reason I kept remembering the interrogation scene in Shrek where he asks "Do you know the Muffin Man?"

Fforde opened the group up to questions after the reading. He was asked about World Con in Toronto, but he seemed to know that his publishers were trying to get him to tour Western Canada. I'm honestly not sure how conversant he is with sf/fantasy fandom. His books are not marketed as science fiction, rather normal mainstream fiction. His background is film work, so he isn't as thrilled with the whole idea of adapting his books for film. Unlike some new writers, he knows how the option system works and merchandising angles. Fforde likes having creative control over his world.

He was also asked about the alternate history portion of his story. The sf fan was trying to figure out where the timelines diverged from our norm, which is pretty standard in most alt history books. (What if Hitler didn't die? What if the South won the Civil War? All of those ideas can usually be pinpointed to one moment in history that changed in the books). Fforde says he was reading a book on the Crimean War at the time called "The Reason Why" and thought it would be neat to have his own Charge of the Light Brigade. Then he had a logic attack, saying "Eyre Affair" was set in 1985, which prompted the writer to shoot back that it was his world. Hence the reason why the Crimean War is still being fought over in the world of Thursday Next.

One interesting thing Fforde mentioned was that he falls squarely in the camp of the writers who don't plan and outline. He finds that most of his best ideas come "off the hoof". I should have asked how he keeps track of everything in that zany world.

Also someone asked him about his really bizarre names. Like Rowling, some of them are *really* bad puns you don't catch until you read them aloud. I didn't get Diagon Alley for instance until I heard the British way of running things together. Usually we're taught to enuciate each and every syllable, so they are two distinct words. He mentioned the example of Landen Parke Laine, Thursday's boyfriend, how for American audiences, he would have changed it to Landen Parke Boardwalk or something similar. Also said that he was concerned about going a little too over the top with his names and used Lewis Carroll as a sterling example of how to write nonsense. Personally the Goliath half-brothers are a little much, but that's half the fun.

For those getting books signed, watch for the oddball postcards. That's all I'll say on that count.