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Questions for Ransom Notes Magazine
November 2003. Ransom Notes is the Barnes and Noble magazine
To save time, the questions are listed below. To read the full article, question by question, click here
1: The Thursday Next series blends so many elements--humour, mystery, alternate reality, time travel, literary allusions, romance, and more. When you talk to people who haven't read the books what elements do you think are the most descriptive of the series?

2: In previous interviews you've said that finding the right publisher was tough, and freedom to take your story in virtually any direction is great fun. What do you think has been the biggest advantage, and the biggest disadvantage, for you as a writer of a cross genre work?

3: What do you like best about writing stories with a continuing main character? And what's the downside? Have you considered using the Nextian universe in projects featuring any other main character?

4: You've included many characters from literature in the series as significant secondary characters. Who is your favourite so far? Is there any character (from the public domain, of course) you'd really like to include in future books? Any character you think it wouldn't be a good idea to include? If so, why?

5: What did you like best about introducing the generics (characters in training)? What do you think they added to the book?

6: What was your favourite part about setting the bulk of this volume of the series in the Well of Lost Plots, as opposed to the primarily "real" world setting (with excursions to fictional settings) of THE EYRE AFFAIR and LOST IN A GOOD BOOK?

7: Readers are always interested in how authors decide what to write. Is there anything from your personal experiences that inspired any of your choices of settings or situations to explore in the Thursday Next series?

8: What were the greatest literary influences on you as a writer? Monty Python? Charles Dickens? Film Noir? The Brontes? Shakespeare?

9: What would you say are the biggest differences between the alternate England Thursday lives in and the one where you live? What are biggest differences readers will see between literature as she knows (and experiences) it, and what is (hopefully) familiar to us?

10: What do you like best about linking past and present, and factual and fictional elements in the series? Is it the chance to play with characters and situations from some of your favourite (or least favourite) books?

11: Since you use both, how would you compare and contrast foreshadowing and time travel as literary techniques?

12: How do you think your experience in the film industry has influenced your writing most?

13: How would you describe the role of the Goliath Corporation in the Thursday Next series? What do you think is the biggest difference between the menace of an evil corporation and an evil individual in fact and fiction?

14: The galley mentioned you're working on another Thursday Next book, coming in March 2005. Can you tell us anything more about it?

15: Would you like to hear from readers? If so, how would you like them to contact you, through your publisher, your website, or by some other method?










1: The Thursday Next series blends so many elements--humour, mystery, alternate reality, time travel, literary allusions, romance, and more. When you talk to people who haven't read the books what elements do you think are the most descriptive of the series?

It's difficult to say. Most people I find have very clear feelings on what they like to read so my opening question would be: "What sort of books do you like?" and then pretty much whatever they answer I can, as often as not, pinpoint a plot device that covers their particular interest. Romance, SF, Thriller, Crime, Horror, Classical, Juvenilia - but not Western. To deal with this woeful omission I have book four open with Thursday and Commander Bradshaw hunting the Minotaur in a 30's pulp western. I called the chapter: "A Cretan Minotaur in Nebraska." My books are very cross genre. Something for everyone. A sort of Swiss Army Book, really.

2: In previous interviews you've said that finding the right publisher was tough, and freedom to take your story in virtually any direction is great fun. What do you think has been the biggest advantage, and the biggest disadvantage, for you as a writer of a cross genre work?

Finding ANY publisher was tough! The biggest advantage, clearly, is that there are few restraints -if any- as to what my stories can contain. If I decide I want to have Thursday battle zombies or teach developing characters the meaning of subtext, then it is so. It's a very broad canvas. Disadvantages? For me, the series is very idea-hungry. The conceptual pace I have set I feel I need to continue which can be hard work and a little frustrating when the ideas aren't coming as quickly as I feel they should. Most of my books contain enough concepts (such as the neanderthals) for half-a-dozen books or more.

3: What do you like best about writing stories with a continuing main character? And what's the downside? Have you considered using the Nextian universe in projects featuring any other main character?

The upside is that I get to know the characters and they tend to write themselves. I like to string an individual's story over several novels, taking my time with them as there is no great hurry to bring everything to a neat conclusion with every book. I can also reintroduce characters from earlier books which I always enjoy. Felix8 vanished in book one but he's still out there, awaiting a possible return. There isn't really too much of a downside. I can write other books and return to Thursday when I wish. The Nextian Universe will always be there, and because the canvas is so broad, it would be relatively easy to write spin-off novels about Nextian characters - Mycroft & Polly, for instance - or Spike.

4: You've included many characters from literature in the series as significant secondary characters. Who is your favourite so far? Is there any character (from the public domain, of course) you'd really like to include in future books? Any character you think it wouldn't be a good idea to include? If so, why?

The Cheshire Cat has to rank as my favourite, although I never really penetrate his bizarre nonsequitous exterior. He's a constant reminder of the huge debt we all owe to Lewis Carroll, the Patron Saint of Nonsense. The cat's alternative title of "The Unitary Authority of Warrington Cat" (because they moved the county boundaries) and subsequently "The Cat formerly known as Cheshire" ranks as one of my favourite little idea-ettes. I'll get around to including all my favourite fictional characters eventually - Hamlet pops up in book four where he learns a little bit about conflict resolution. Characters who I wouldn't use are probably the better ones, to whom inclusion in my books might be slightly undignified - a bit like Nelson Mandela doing sherry adverts. It's not by chance that Jane Eyre in "The Eyre Affair" has so little to do and I only give her two lines - she's kinda special and should be given the respect a fictioneer in her position demands. I wouldn't use Scout Finch for the same reason, or Yossarian, Billy Pilgrim, or Alice.

5: What did you like best about introducing the generics (characters in training)? What do you think they added to the book?

ibb and obb. Yes, I liked these two. Since much of "The Well of Lost Plots" is about lifting the curtain on the story writing process, a little bit about characters-in-waiting would seem fitting. The way that writers create characters is very similar to the way that Ibb and Obb progress through the book. From un-named genderless blanks all the way through to a living, breathing person with their own failings and uncertainties. Even if a writer doesn't use a character in one book they often keep them for another. Lola and Randolph (The people Ibb and Obb become) themselves appear in an (unpublished) novel of my own entitled "Who Killed Humpty Dumpty" - a novel whose being is explained within subplots in WOLP. My books interlock quite a lot...

6: What was your favourite part about setting the bulk of this volume of the series in the Well of Lost Plots, as opposed to the primarily "real" world setting (with excursions to fictional settings) of THE EYRE AFFAIR and LOST IN A GOOD BOOK?

I love concepts. Ideas are like seams of coal - some of them are quite narrow and are mined out relatively quickly. The "Bookworld" idea was such a rich seam I thought I would devote an entire book to setting up the logic of this bizarre world. You might view it as a large digression, perhaps, but these books do trace Thursday's life, so I can always argue that the story goes where she goes. People often ask me why I do the things I do but I'm not sure there is a positive answer. I do things because I think either they're fun and I enjoy them or they just seem 'right'. Too much self-questioning can be unhealthy. I usually navigate a book through the narrative typhoon to Port Deadline with Captain Intuition at the helm.

7: Readers are always interested in how authors decide what to write. Is there anything from your personal experiences that inspired any of your choices of settings or situations to explore in the Thursday Next series?

I was always a big time day-dreamer and still am, only now I do it with ink - and get paid. My life is strongly reflected in Thursday's but only in the flavour, never the fact - which is just as well, really. Certainly the sometimes strange occurrences that happen to her reflect my sense of humour and how I see the silliness of the world about me, or how I might like to see it. I guess that's where much of the satire in the stories come from. I tend to look at politics and history and people more like live cabaret - a good form of entertainment but nothing that should be taken too seriously.

8: What were the greatest literary influences on you as a writer? Monty Python? Charles Dickens? Film Noir? The Brontes? Shakespeare?

Probably the 'Alice' books by Lewis Carroll as they were the first books I remember choosing to read of my own volition. (Important, I think; the first fifty or so dowdy reading primers are chosen for us. It is a 'learning to walk' moment when you have the power to read, and, critically, choose to do so) I must have been seven years old at the time and was swept away by Alice's madcap escapades and respectful irreverence of established nursery characters and situations.

On subsequent readings I enjoyed it even more - truly a multi-layered book from which you can either just enjoy the story or, on a deeper level, understand the subtleties of the White Knight's 'names of names' metalanguage. It is no accident that many of the characters in my books originally appear in Alice - The Cheshire Cat, the Red Queen, the King and Queen of Hearts. I think the mix of highbrow and nonsense greatly appeals to me; Lewis Carroll was an extremely intelligent man and could make humorous connections in his writings that are as fresh, full of genuine charm and as delightful now as they were in the late nineteenth century.

But for all that Grade-A nonsense there is a strong and very logical construction of Alice's world. Everything that happens is entirely reasonable given the framework that Carroll creates. Alice herself is only mildly curious about growing larger or smaller, feels only timidity meeting Humpty Dumpty and will quite happily assist Tweedledee and Tweedledum to do battle. This 'compassionate observer' of all that is weird and wonderful and unexpected is something that I try to reflect upon Thursday. There is little that surprises or fazes her - she just shrugs and gets on with the job in hand; an unflappable guide to lead us about a fantastic place.

I think it would be fair to say that I am influenced by almost everything I see and read or hear. All writers are. I just tend to take life's rich tapestry and wring it out into a bucket, distil the contents and spread it thickly on paper.

9: What would you say are the biggest differences between the alternate England Thursday lives in and the one where you live? What are biggest differences readers will see between literature as she knows (and experiences) it, and what is (hopefully) familiar to us?

Thursday's England is a satirical take on the England I know. Clearly, Thursday lives in a totalitarian regime, where almost everything is policed - from the books you buy to the clothes you wear and even the plants in your garden and the taste you display in your own homes. The thing is, no-one in Thursday's world seem to notice or make any complaint about it. It's all very much like our world, just more so. Politicians and multinationals are infinitely less subtle about what they do and equally corrupt. But for all this, Thursday's world does have benefits - for a start, almost everyone is extremely well educated and has a great love of the arts and literature. Not that it makes it any less violent, of course - Football hooliganism in our world is replaced by Elizabethan playwright hooliganism in Thursday's. Her world is arguably no better - just different.

10: What do you like best about linking past and present, and factual and fictional elements in the series? Is it the chance to play with characters and situations from some of your favourite (or least favourite) books?

The fun of playing with elements of fact and fiction is really so I can make Thursday's world recognisable. Despite the obvious fictional elements, The Nextian Universe has disturbingly familiar elements: Bureaucracy gone insane, self-serving corporations, duty on cheese, pointless secrecy, Neanderthals with no rights, political and corporate double-talk, wars fought for the purposes of weapons sales, you name it.

The inclusion of familiar plots and characters helps me to explain away some of the stranger occurrences in classical fiction. I've always wanted to know how Magwich swam from the prison hulk with a 'great iron' on his leg at the beginning of "Great Expectations", and what was the mysterious and unprecedented 'Jane, Jane, Jane!' at Jane Eyre's window that brought Jane and Rochester back together? And how did Shadow the Sheepdog miraculously regain his sight? And what was the truth about Robinson Crusoe's mysterious reappearing trousers? How did Sherlock Holmes survive the fall at Rheinbeck? And why does Hamlet dither so much? It's all good clean honest fun and assumes that all the characters in these books are real live people acting out the story for our benefit - but not without their own problems, indiscretions, foibles and adventures of their own, acted out behind the main narrative thread.

Since you use both, how would you compare and contrast foreshadowing and time travel as literary techniques?

Time travel. Hmm. Given the chance I probably wouldn't use it again, and what started as a throw-away secondary plot device suddenly became rather more important than I wanted it to. Time Travel, with its hard-wired propensity to paradox, automatically tends to change a once-neat narrative into something resembling a ball of wool a kitten has played with. I have tried to get away from the usual grammar of time-travel but even so it can get pretty complex. Foreshadowing happens in subtle ways in my books. With a bit of luck the reader won't know they are there before the denouement. Since the books are told from Thursday's perspective, I can't really foreshadow that much.

How do you think your experience in the film industry has influenced your writing most?

Quite strongly, I believe. I spent 19 years in the industry so I tend to look at things in a very visual way. My love of a large cast and multiple subplots does tend to point towards a movie format but I'm not wholly convinced they are really very different at all - after all, movies are closer to novels than novels are to poetry, and radio is closer to theatre than movies. But they are all branches of the same "Storytelling" tree which encompasses everything from jokes through poetry, songs and opera to novels, movies and theatre. Intwining its roots beneath the ground and mutually supporting one another is the "Visual Arts" tree next door in whose branches can be found painting, sculpture, dance, gardens... Moving from film to novels was not a huge leap, really.

How would you describe the role of the Goliath Corporation in the Thursday Next series? What do you think is the biggest difference between the menace of an evil corporation and an evil individual in fact and fiction?

Goliath are the omnipresent corporation whose servants cause Thursday so much grief. The useful thing for me is that rightly or wrongly a faceless multinational has an inbuilt Readers perception of the small guy's helplessness against the machine. Somehow vanquishing bureaucracy has a greater difficulty to it than just shooting it out with a bad guy. The "David and Goliath" (The name was no accident!) plot device is one of the eight main plots. It's "Jack and the Beanstalk" and "The Mighty Ducks" and "The Verdict" and "The Trial" and Lord knows what else. The fun thing about Goliath is that they are entirely shameless about what they do and in that respect are actually a great deal more honest than some corporations. Using Readers preconceived notions about subjects is a lazy writer's gift. With Goliath I really don't have to do a lot of work to make it real. In many ways this touches upon a recurrent theme in my work. I contend that reading is a far more complex process than we realise - a imaginotransference technology whereby a writer merely throws up mnemonic flags as a guide - the reader creates the images and the emotion to go with it. Once a reader has lived for twenty years or so and has experienced the basics of human needs and emotions, most of my work is already done. When a reader credits an author with a fine work, they should reserve as much credit for themselves.

The galley mentioned you're working on another Thursday Next book, coming in March 2005. Can you tell us anything more about it?

Thursday Next Four or "Something Rotten" will be released simultaneously in the UK and USA on the 1st August 2004. I don't want to give too much away but Thursday returns to England two years later to find that much has changed...

Would you like to hear from readers? If so, how would you like them to contact you, through your publisher, your website, or by some other method?

I am already receiving more emails than I can answer. I replied to all of them up until about six months ago when I found I could no longer keep up with it. I'm always on the look out for Nextian-related oddities, though...




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