Ok, this is the reply I received from June Haversham:

Hello Amy,

What you say does sound very strange, but such strange things have been happening recently that perhaps I don't really know what normal is after all!
I have never met anyone called Miss Havisham even though my name is similar to Miss Havisham, what is she like? Is she the same as the Miss Havisham in the book Great Expectations?
Can you tell me more about the book you found - how was it blank? on the outside or the inside or both? this is very strange. I will read your blog, I also have a blog! it is called http://junehaversham.wordpress.com . Perhaps the strange things that have happened in your work are related to the strange things that have happened in my work, although so far I don't see how they could be other than they have happened at the same time.

In my work I have been emailing Jasper Fforde because I work in the publishing house where his books are published. Not long after I started my placement in the Publcity and Marketing Department, I received an email from Jasper saying that he had lost all his contacts by dropping his computer on a wall. I got everyone to email him so that he had their addresses again, but he still emailed me instead.

He asked me to stop the quiz going out on time so he could check the questions and then he added a new last question and the 'scribbler' tie breaker challenge. This made the quiz late and I got in big trouble. : (

I then found out that he had made the last question of the first rounds wrong! He had put the correct answer as being that the new book is called 'The Great Samuel Pepys Fiasco' when it is of course 'First Among Sequels'! It is easy to make a little error, but he should know the name of his own book, that is a really big error!

I started to get suspicious that the writing style in his emails was so very different to the writing style of his books so I asked some nice people for their opinion and some people said they thought he was an imposter this whole time!

Now he has asked me to help him find a range of his favourite books called Dupine books, but even though it is a very simple task I'm not sure I should help him at all in any way if he has been lying to me!

So those are the strange things that have been happening at my work.

oh, and my friend peter has stopped answering my emails, but that's not too strange because he is a Narcissus. > (

Does any of this sound similar or help you at all? I know some very nice helpful people I could ask them to help you too.

june


The books that I have seen in Foyles are all Dupine. Why would Jasper Fforde want to find these books? (And do you think June should be telling us all this about Jasper Fforde?! Tee hee, she seems a little stressed and doesn't really know what to reveal and what to sit on. Good for me though.) I have emailed back asking about the dupine series. Also, I was wondering if the person (I don't think it's wise to mention names on a blog, no?) who emailed me with thoughts of a fake Jasper Fforde to help me out a bit here, or if anyone else knows about it. That's something I'm not really sure I understand.

P.S I have been given a 'scribbler' for the competition: a first and last line that I have to link with 200 words - interesting!