Author Interview: Jasper Fforde discusses Shades of Grey (and the relevance of book bloggers)

I am super excited to welcome Jasper Fforde to Dystopian February! I reviewed the first book in his new dystopian triology earlier this month and gave it a rating of 5 Zombie Chickens - meaning I thought it was the ultimate dystopian reading experience. Not many books get a 5, so that means if you are at all interested in the genre, you want to pick this one up!

Let’s say someone loves SHADES OF GREY and wants to read other dystopian works. Which would you recommend?
You could do a lot worse than return to primary sources and visit the grandaddies of them all: 1984, Brave New World, Flatland, Fahrenheit 451, The Time Machine, Shape of things to come.

I found the idea of every person in the collective having to wear their feedback openly very amusing (a slippery slope from eBay perhaps?). What would your feedback say?
72% Positive Feedback from 521,879 reports. Opinion: Generally trustworthy

What would happen if Thursday Next from The Eyre Affair jumped into the book Shades of Grey? Now there’s a mash-up I’d love to see!
It won't happen. They are entirely separate. SoG happens in the 'Real' world and not the Nextian one. Mind you, I did reference one of my own books in SoG - sharp-eyed readers might be able to spot it!

Ah, too bad! Why do you think dystopian fiction has such a following these days? What’s the attraction?
Perhaps we are entering another cold-war type era, (Hot war era?) where apocalypse is once again alive in the zeitgeist. What will happen to us all? Will we get another chance? Can we get away from the whole 'killing one another' deal and do things better?

Are book bloggers on your radar? Do you think they are relevant in today’s publishing environment?
Hugely relevant. Blogging is very much another form of 'chatting on the bus' that publishers could never be party to. Only now the busses number several thousand, and many of them can carry upwards of half a million people on them. It's word-of-mouth Jim, but not as we know it.

Personally, I try to stay away from reviews as even though 99 can be good, it's the one that's bad that I think about. On another note, book-blogging is a matter of great concern to publishers because they can't really 'test the water' as they could in the old days by reading the dozen or so broadsheet reviews, or even know where they shouold put their publicity budget. It's a testing time for publishers everywhere.

Thank you Jasper!

Want more Jasper? Check out his fascinating thoughts on visualizing color at his website.

Also, this "very British" interview at Hipster Book Club answered a lot of my questions about Jasper's world building and the color hierarchy in SHADES OF GREY.

Photo credits: Jasper Fforde by Mari Fforde. UK Shades of Grey Cover.