I'm not usually one to grab intros off of Wikipedia, but what the heck—it begins with "Jasper Fforde was born in London on January 11, 1961, the son of John Standish Fforde, the 24th Chief Cashier for the Bank of England" ... and continues on with his rather extensive pedigree. But it doesn't exactly tell us what Jasper Fforde does... he's written a bunch of award-winning adult novels in the "comedy-SF-thriller-crime-satire" genre after spending many years in the film business. His YA debut, The Last Dragonslayer (Houghton Harcourt, 2012), kicked off the "Chronicles of Kazam" series. Now on the third title, The Eye of Zoltar, Fforde shows no signs of slowing up and in fact, plants a teaser at the close of third installment promising readers more. In Zoltar, teens are reacquainted with Jennifer Strange, new-ish proprietor of the magical House of Kazam, and the adventures that seem to follow wherever she goes. Hello Jasper, sorry for the bum's rush on doing this interview, but as you know, time travel can be tricky.  It can indeed. As I was saying to myself tomorrow, we are all time travelers—moving relentlessly through the continuum at a blistering  day per day. Of course, time travels slower depending on the circumstances. I have a theory that if we were to spend our lives in doctor's waiting rooms, airport security queues, and afternoon school detentions, we might live to be over 200. Or seem like it. Okay, time for the hard science stuff. My son is in college studying astrophysics, and I sent him this quote from The Eye of Zoltar for consideration: "The technical name for magic is variable electro-gravitational mutable sub-atomic force, ... or crackle," to which his reply was "Sounds legit to me." What's your background in science? My science is mostly as an enthusiastic observer, as it is for most of what I term 'Stuff'—the exciting smorgasbord of weird stuff that happens to us, around us, and in us. The "sounds legit" comment is actually very prescient. Some strands of theoretical physics are now so weird and outlandish that they read like nonsense. Almost anything is possible, even magic—it's just not very likely. Massive eyeroll around The Instant Camera Project and its inventor, Pola Roidenstock.... Dr. Land (who invented the instant film as we know it) was one of those true geniuses who came up with something so outLandish (pun intended) that even today to a non-chemist, it seems like magic. I was writing a list of things that appeared to be magic—bicycles not falling over, compasses always pointing north, the whorls inside sunflower heads—and Polaroid film sprang to mind. It really is magic, even today. Other than one bratty princess, pretty much all the female characters in the "Chronicles of Kazam" series are strong and have a variety of admirable traits, from actuarial to survival skills. Who are the women in your life who inform and inspire you?

Credit: Mari Fforde

The other day I bought a 1934 girl's school photograph—it has about 200 girls, and after I had circled one girl at random with 'Jasper' next to it and 'Mari' (my wife) next to another, we set about thinking who we might have liked to have been at school with—a sort of "Fantasy girl's school alumni league." So we circled random and unknown girls with new identities of women that we admire: Marie Stopes, Virginia Wolff, Angela Merkel, Christine Lagarde, Marie Curie, Diane Arbus, Emily Pankhurst, Amy Johnson, Flora Sandes, Countess Markievicz, Beryl Marham, Bessie Coleman, Josephine Baker, Ada Lovelace. Clytemnestra, Queen Zenobia of Palmyra and Miss Piggy made the grade, too—as did Lizzie Borden, to add some excitement to hockey. It was an interesting fantasy school to be in. But the point is, remarkable women seem somehow more remarkable than remarkable men, and part of them all find their way into my female characters.  And if you didn't recognize some of those names? Get onto Wikipedia. Boy, are you in for a treat.... Jennifer, our intrepid leader through the series, is an eternal optimist with a flair for making the best out of the worst situation. Even when her teen crush hits middle-age and greys before she turns 17, she puts a glow on it. As an orphan, Jennifer is well used to hardship—accepts it almost, as her lot. She is about as tough as I could make her without losing some sensitivity, but I think that she is a realist, too—that some things are bigger and more important than life itself. She would have taken Perkins's place like a shot if she could of. Love this, though I never thought about the speedometer rating—"Gossip has been clocked at 47.26 mph ... gossip is so fast, in fact, that we have no need for newspapers or a postal service." How did you come up with 47.26 mph? And, the real question—how much does gossip suck? It's a random number, obviously, but comedically precise. Gossip does move fast and always has, even before the Internet, of whose function, one could argue, would be predominantly to make gossip move four times the speed and to allow easier access to funny cats, ladybumps, and inane chitchat. Yes, gossip can suck big time but I think it's here to stay. As I commented in one of my Thursday books: "75 percent of all talk is utter twaddle and 85 percent of people's lives are spent prannying around." Ralph's Genetic Master Reset is pretty amazing. Who'd a thunk that a wizard would need to revert a human to an Australopithecine? There's a story behind this. We have a dog named Ozzy, who is a good dog but not hugely bright: one eye, three legs, half a brain. And when we go on holiday for more than about seven days, he forgets who we are. Walks past us, in fact. We refer to this as "Ozzy must have pressed his master reset button by accident" and it's things like that that lead on to the idea of an Evolutionary Master Reset for Ralph. Sometimes when I'm writing, good ideas find a natural home for themselves. Am I overreaching to say that Shandar represents the worst of capitalist society? No, that would be Enron and Bernie Madoff. (The clue was in the name.) So much to love in this book—Gabby and Addie's odds on survival, The Helping Hand™, and no-longer-rubber Colin. Any teasers for book four that you'd like to share with readers? Absolutely none—I've not thought of any of it, to be honest, except that the Princess, now a handmaiden, will have to redisguise herself as a princess, then a handmaiden again, and then princess—as long as I can, in fact. The Princess will become so confused she won't know what she is any more. And there will be trolls. And Shandar. And a happy (albeit unexpected) ending. For information on an upcoming U.S. tour, visit Fforde's website; stops include Miami, Boston, and Nashville.