Swindon, England is not the sort of place to which travel guides normally devote much space. It?s just an ordinary town near London.

After English writer Jasper Fforde based his ?Thursday Next? science fiction/fantasy series there, the Swindon tourism office telephone began to ring off the hook.

The Thursday Next series chronicles the madcap adventures of Thursday Next, a literary detective in an alternate Swindon, where it is possible to jump into books and interact with the characters. Using this device, Mr. Fforde has created hilarious backstories for characters such as Jane Eyre, Heathcliff, Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle and Hamlet, among others. For example, Charles Dicken?s Mrs. Havisham has a thing for fast cars, which is unfortunate because she is a very, very bad driver. In ?Everything is Rotten? the Minotaur escapes and rampages through various Western cult classics.

Most recently, Mr. Fforde has ?The Big Over Easy? which launches his new spin-off Nursery Crimes series.

The Next and Nursery Crimes books are a huge in-joke for people who like books. While it may sound infantile the many allusions to classic literature make them pleasantly challenging reads. Books from both series? have spent time on the bestseller lists, and have an enthusiastic following.

A recent Fforde Festival held in Swindon was attended by hundreds of loyal fans who dressed up as their favourite characters ? a kind of ?Star Trek Convention? for bookworms.

?I have spoken to someone from the Swindon tourist board,? said Mr. Fforde during a telephone interview with the . ?They field calls from people who have read the book and say ?I?d like to visit Swindon. Do you do Thursday Next tours?? Sadly they don?t.

?Swindon is a growing town. I just happen to have fans in the Highway Department Council. They have named a couple of new streets in reference to the books. For example, there is a Thursday street, a Havisham Way, a Bradshaw Close, and a Pickwick Crescent.?

Mr. Fforde is currently working on the second book in the Nursery Crimes series, ?The Fourth Bear?, which will be published in 2006. The next Next novel will be published in 2007. Although ?Something Rotten? had an air of finality, this was just a literary ?illusion?.

?The series isn?t finished,? he said. ?There is still a lot that can happen. I am writing books about books. There is no end. I can always throw Thursday into some new jeopardy. The wonderful thing about writing this is that there is no idea that is too bizarre to fit into Thursday?s life. ?Something Rotten? is really a series of bizarre ideas, cloning Shakespeares and the Minotaur loose in Western fiction. All that stuff I can string together very easily. There is nowhere that Thursday can?t go.?

When asked (tongue-in-cheek) if Thursday might come to Bermuda, Mr. Fforde said, ?I would have to go there first. If someone would pay my airfare and hotel bills, I?d be there.?

Unfortunately, Next fans will have to wait until 2007 for the next instalment. Mr. Fforde is currently working on the second Nursery Crimes book, which will be released in 2006.

?I think people who are outrageously enthusiastic about Thursday Next want only Thursday Next, but I have spoken to a lot of people who have switched on to Nursery Crimes, because it is more crime. Then there are people who like both.?

?The Big Over Easy? (published by Viking Adult) is set in a world populated by nursery rhyme characters. The main character, DI Jack Sprat, a detective in the Reading Nursery Crimes Division, can?t seem to get ahead because his readership in true crime magazines is not very high. His problem is that he is rather boring. He has a wife and children, and he is not interested in having an affair with his assistant, Mary Mary.

Mr. Fforde said what makes this character appealing in real life, is that he is a good detective.

?He is very dogged and loyal and has all those good attributes,? Mr. Fforde said. ?Mr. Spratt is smart and switched on. It is his sense of duty that I like about it.?

Mr. Fforde described the series as ?Mother Goose meets Inspector Morse?.

Like his character, Jack, Mr. Fforde has also had to be dogged to achieve success and notoriety.

?I was writing for nearly ten years before I found a publisher,? he said. ?I wrote six novels before someone finally found novel number five. It takes a long time. You are out there sending begging messages and chapters to publishers. And then suddenly you hit an agent who is looking for a client.

?The Big Over Easy ? I wrote that in 1993. It was called ?Who Killed Humpty Dumpty?. The characters weren?t quite fleshed out. I had to go back to it and add what I had learned writing my other six books. I am doing that with the ?Fourth Bear? which I originally wrote it in 1994.

The Next and Nursery Crimes books are available in different editions in the United States and England.

But Mr. Fforde said not a lot has been changed between the two editions. ?It was respelled for the American edition,? he said. ?Just a few bits and pieces were changed.

?There are a few words that Americans really don?t know. The American edition of the first three books actually came out six months after the British one, so I actually had a chance to change a few things for that. So the American edition is actually better.?

Mr. Fforde writes full-time, usually a book a year, and he has been sent all over the world to promote his work.

?I always do two weeks in the United Kingdom and two weeks in the United States to promote each book,? he said. ?I have also been sent to South Africa and Poland and I did a launch in France. I went to Paris in May. Then I did a lot of festivals here in the United Kingdom. it just takes up a lot of time.?

Mr. Fforde said to do book tours in countries like Poland, he needs a translator to help him communicate with his fans. ?After awhile the interpreter knows the answers to the questions people ask, before I even tell him,? he said.

For more information about Jasper Fforde?s books, check out his website at www.jasperfforde.com .