The 20 years Fforde spent as a camera technician on movies such as The Saint and Entrapment meant he was never on the creative end.
"In film, I was a small cog in a very large machine," Fforde says. "The opportunities to tell stories as a filmmaker are very, very slim, so I started writing novels. All you need is pen and paper."
Indeed, his time in the industry means that we won't be seeing a Thursday Next or Jack Spratt movie any time soon.
"I know how the film industry works," Fforde says. "They say, `We love your work, we won't change a word,' and suddenly Vin Diesel is playing (the female) Thursday. Any author moaning about being maligned by the movies should be ignored. They know what happens, we all do: They like the money; they take the money."
Fforde pauses for a second. This is a topic that clearly comes up a good deal.
"Some books have a huge potential for getting it right," he says. "A John Grisham novel is a perfect example. You have to be a pretty untalented filmmaker to do a poor job. But my books ... the pitfalls are huge and multitudinous. I'd rather it wasn't made than made wrong."
These "pitfalls" seems directly related to why his fans are so devoted. Like the Thursday Next novels, where characters move through time and jump in and out of novels, Over Easy is chock-a-block with the sort of subtle details Fforde calls "Easter eggs."
"The books, they're very, very dense on ideas and concepts," he says, "and if there's a particular reference to your favorite book or character or line, then it would have that much more relevance, it would feel like this joke was written for you personally. It makes people feel very warm towards the series, that I am on the same wavelength."
This is the core of novel writing for Fforde, the part that is truly magical. "It's just you and the reader," he says. "It's this strange telepathy between you and people you don't even know, and I think this is because storytelling is fundamental to everyone.We learn by stories. Our mother says, `If you touch the oven, you will be burned and then you will be sorry.' It's a little three act tragedy. Everything is a story."
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