On Meeting Jasper Fforde

Do you see that grin, that grin right there? That there is what is referred to as my EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! grin. Because that is what I am doing, inside my head.

I had been very nervous about meeting Jasper Fforde. With some authors, their real-life persona is nothing at all like their written one; I've met writers and comic strip artists who are hilarious on the page and absolute jerks in person. However, in the case of Jasper Fforde, his voice is his voice is his voice. I think it fair to say, all hero-worship aside, that this reading/Q&A/signing was the most pleasant experience I've ever had of that sort. There were approximately a hundred people there, almost all of them with multiple things to sign, and he had something to say to all of them. I've never before encountered someone with such a genuine love of the world he's built, and an equally genuine interest in the fans who love it, too.

Someone brought him a stuffed dodo. I wondered at the time, and I find myself still wondering now, how many stuffed dodos the man owns by this point. I imagine every time he comes home from a signing tour, his wife sighs and says, "Allright, give them here," and he hands over a massive basket of stuffed dodos. She eyes them, says, "Oh, I rather like that one," about a particularly well-made dodo, then hauls them all off to what has been affectionately termed The Dodo Room.

I would like to add that I would very much like a Dodo Room.

In all honesty, I just like typing the word dodo. Dodo. Dodo. Dododododododododododo.

In any case, he signed my nametag and two books, I didn't say anything stupid, and I forgot to shake his hand and had to go scampering back. You can see from the picture that I refrained from doing anything that would have ended in me being lead out by security, like tacklehugging the man.

I did tell him that he was number one on my list of People I Want To Meet. He seemed vaguely taken aback, in a pleased sort of way.

A thing I had neglected to consider was the fact that at a Jasper Fforde signing, there are liable to be many Jasper Fforde fans. As a direct result, I had quite a number of fascinating conversations and came away from it with a small group of people willing to wander back to the Port Authority with me...to that end, hello, you peoples! How many dodos do you think Jasper Fforde has? On that note, how many dodos does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

All in all, an overwhelmingly positive experience.