Jasper Fforde interviewed by The Independent

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There was an interview with Jasper Fforde on The Independent website, a few days ago, that I really liked, in which Fforde talks about his writing, his relationship with his readers and some of his future book characters.

I had actually contacted Fforde a couple months ago about an email interview and he had agreed, as long as I could find some questions to ask him that have not already been asked, and he directed me to a list of 500 + previously answered questions on his website. And so I went through the list of questions, and every question I could possibly think of was already there, along with many that never would have occurred to me (by the way, this is a great source for interview questions). In the end, I gave up on the interview idea but I was interested to see that in this interview Fforde does actually answer some of those questions again, such as about his relationship to Katie Fforde and which one of his book characters is his favorite. Perhaps it would have been different if I interviewed him in person. Man, I would love to do that!

I particularly loved Fforde's comment, when asked about his overabundance of puns:

"But I only use really good puns.... Having a character called Paige Turner in The Eyre Affair was a bad pun, so I made sure I never used both of her names together until the very end. Ha ha! The reader was punned by stealth!"

The interviewer also makes a special point of mentioning Fforde's cheerful disposition, or what she calls his "chirpiness" (she actually mentions this three times. I counted) which I thought was interesting because for some reason I got the impression that Fforde had a more solemn personality.

You can read the full interview at The Independent website