Dear Mr. Stroud
I'll start off by sying I loved your books. I would go into great detail, but the longer i ramble the longer it takes for you to get to, and answer, my questions. So here they are:

1) Bartimaeus mentions in AoS that the person who first blows the summoning horn gets killed. Why? why is the first person different from the second person?

1.5) did you ever consider using a pen name?

2) how old is the merecenary? im kind of asking do people with resiliance live longer? Also, in GE I remember the mereanary falling down a hill. how does he not get hurt? I mean that's not magic is it? Would he get hurt if he tripped and fell?

3) how long has it been since bartimaeus has been summoned? does he know anyone living in Nathanials time? Did he know Gladstone?

4) if Farqaurl had been in bartimaeus's place (knowing Nathaniels name) would he have done anything different, maybe found a way to kill nat
Edit: nevermind i found the answer in PG

5) when bartimaeus was in the the mournful orb why didnt he just tell his interrogaters to get the tin from the bottom of the thames. thus getting rid of the only power nat had over him. was he already so fond of nat he wouldnt give him up?

5.5) why couldn't bart use nats name to stop the indefinite confinement charm?

5.5.5) or just go to the thames and get the tin then go to nats rivals and tell them if they undid the charm he would tell them nats name

6)
(A) if spirits can be male and female if one is male can he be hurt in the uncomfortable place?
(B) if so why would any spirit chose to be male?

7) in a different question you said that lesser spirits are able to find other spirits (like when nats imp found barty) but in many places bart tricks imps into thinking he's human. so if imps can find other spirits then why couldnt those imps see that barty was actually a spirit

8) i had a question but i forgot it :( i just thought of a new question (not the one that i forgot) what happens if a magician puts an indefinite confinement charm on a spirit for 2 different containers? would that kill the spirit?

8.5) if a magician put 2 spirits in 1 indefinite containment container could they fight? what stops the elementals in the sphers from fighting?

I am now on to my biggest (connected) set of questions here they are: barty says that he sees other spirits true forms on the seventh and on other planes what you see is a guise
so here are the questions

9) if his true form is shown on the seventh plane then when he was in the mournful orb his guise was changing but how was his true essence not getting burnt?

10)
(A) kind of a take off/rephrase of 9. if barty looks at an imp in pigeon disguise on the 1st plane and puts his hand above the pigeon would he feel the imps real for even thought the pgeon guise makes it seem like there should be nothing there (if he did feel something then that would be quite incovenient for the commoners to be bumping into thing they cant see)
(B) If not: if he were to then switch his looking to plane 7 would he feel something
(C) If So: if a commoner were to try to touch right under where he was touching would they feel something?
(D) if part of barts real essence is not in his guise (say his real essence has 5 arms and he only has 2 in his guise) then if he switches to the 7th plane can he hit someone?
11) Do spirits have different shadows on different planes?

12) if a huge djinni in pigeon guise was to roost above me (assuming im human) would i feel the effects of its shade? would a djinni opperating on the 7th plane?

i guess the overall question is in the title how does the spacing of different planes correlate?

ps. i read in a Q&A that you were thinking of posting on your site a (something) of collection of (something or other) about the characters on your site. are you still planning on doing that?

thats enough for now i might think of more later

now that you have read my question i can say more about your books
i really love your books (as another person said and i have the same thing) your books have a special place on my shelf with all my other favorite books. greatness in modern fantasy books should not be compared to Harry potter books. you are the only author whos fan sight i have visited. your writing is just incredible!

i hope you take time to answer my questions

-Davey

Edit: also, do you now how and where i can get a hebrew version of your books?
Edit2: are you planning on publishing another book soon (or writing one(especially a Batimaeus book))?
Edit3 How does i nexus work? i mean do the magicians use a spirit? what kind of spirit do the use? they would have to be really big wouldn't they? on a related note how do the orbs work?
Edit4: are you, the person answering these questions, Jonathan Stroud. Or just one of his assistants?
Edit5: a) why is it so hard to get a copy of buried fire? both amazon and b&n are out of stock.
b) for heroes of valley

[+] Spoiler

i dont understand what happened to the trows. did they all get killed?
while I'm asking,
c) why did Svein become evil and was it just him or all the heroes?
d) who/what was inhabiting halli's uncle?
e) why did his "uncle" expect him to hear svein? why couldn't he?
g) how was halli, a small kid, able to defeat svein who killed hundreds of trows?

Hi Davey,

Thanks for your questions! I'm sorry to have taken so long to reply. Right, to business...

1. Summoning horn: it's a very rare and valuable artefact and a mark of this is the blood price required to get it working. Mind you, I think some of the early priest-magicians just got slaves to blow it, and had them killed instead. Thereafter, it was useable by the magician him/herself.
1.5 Nope. Mind you, maybe I should have tried J A Stroud. Worked for J K Rowling, didn't it?
2. The mercenary's age is unknown, but I'd guess older than he looks. He has a very high resilience that protects him from magic, and a very high agility/physical strength, which allow him to survive minor things like falling down a hill.
3. From hints in Amulet, it's clear Bart was summoned fairly recently before Nat first called him. I don't think he knew Gladstone personally, or we'd have heard a few well chosen insults by now. Check out the Chronology on my website for all currently known Bart historical info.
4. yep, I think Faquarl would have been a tad more ruthless than Bart.
5. He was (correctly) fearful that by giving up his knowledge he'd have immediately become dispensable.
5.5. Use of the name works to counter certain fairly crude, direct magical attacks, but doesn't counter more sophisticated charms (which in this case were only potentially going to be applied to B).
5.5.5. It would probably have been tough to find: also, B isn't a huge fan of getting wet.
6. No. He's not really 'male' - it's an outward semblence. It would be no more or less painful than anywhere else.
7. It depends on the lesser spirit in question. Some are easily fooled. Others are better able to sense magical effusions and follow them to their source.
8. I should think it would, but it's not been done: such spells are hard to carry out, and no magician would be so foolhardy as to do it twice over at once.
8.5. Elemental sphere: I think they're so compressed it's hard for them to fight.
9. I think his 'true' shape was shrinking along with his guises: he's able to compress himself into a pretty small area.
10. I think the overall answer to the whole spacing issue is that no matter what the difference in SHAPE, the different guises contain the same amount of essence; or rather Bart's given essence is contained within all the different shapes on the different planes. There's something rather fluid about the inate essence of any spirit, so if Bart's a pigeon walking through a small cavity, his seventh plane 'true' shape isn't going to get wedged - it'll be able to pass through too, even though (were we to see it) it would look much larger and more tentacley. I guess there are several paradoxes here, but essence doesn't quite work in the same way our lumpen first plane bodies do. I need a mathematician to come in here to talk about fifth dimensions or something.
11. I think true 'shadows' are only first plane things.
12. Not 'shade', but you might feel a bit uncomfortable, owing to its vast, threatening aura.

Hebrew editions: Keter publishing did Hebrew editions of the first 3 Bart books.
Another Bart book: I've got plans, but I'm working on other things first.
Nexus/orbs: in general terms all magical effects are the work of spirits. The magicians always use them as their proxy.
This is J S writing.
Hmm don't know about Buried Fire. Shouldn't be out of stock. Are we talking about Uk or US here?
Heroes of the Valley:
Trows: Yes.
Svein: they were all pretty nasty: or rather, their values were old-school, and after their sacrifice they felt they rather 'owned' the valley.
The heroes had the power to bring their dead kinsmen out of their cairns to fight for them. Exactly how isn't made clear, though there's reference to Svein consorting with a witch in one of the tales.
He couldn't hear him because he wasn't dead.
It wasn't really the same Svein: i.e. instead of a living breathing tough guy hero, it was his bones and armour, his undead spirit, which - while pretty scary - was ultimately a hollow thing. Hence H and A are able to break its power and leave the valley.

Phew! Hope those answers are ok, Davey. Many thanks again - I'm glad you like the books!

All best wishes,

Jonathan

Thanks SO much for answering my questions. you really cleared up some stuff for me.

you might not see this, but Im in the U.S. and barnes and noble says that buried fire is currently unavailable (has has been that way for a while). what's going on?