Astute readers of the first Wrong Book, of which there are none, will recall that Thomas described himself in court as a stainologist. Stainology is a relatively new branch of forensic archaeology which is also known as urban archaeology. Although not officially recognized as science, despite having the ology bit, stainology does have a website that, until recently, was online. It was shut down, however, due to administrative issues in that there weren’t any actual ones. Nevertheless, Thomas is adamant that stainology is a real scientific discipline because he’s got a certificate and everything.
Stainology involves identifying stains in the urban environment and working out how and why they came to be there. Stainology can, therefore, provide clues about what happened a day ago, or even a week. For really stubborn stains, it can provide insight into what occurred years earlier. Where traditional archaeology investigates the history of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture, stainology does the same with the more recent past by peering at stained pavements and the often extraordinary collage of intrigue that is the floor of public lavatories.
As the Wrong Book series is contractually obliged to be rooted in accuracy, albeit with the sort of poetic licence that even Lord Byron would consider wildly self-indulgent, Thomas is currently undertaking an Honors in Forensic Odontology to both fulfill the aforementioned contractual obligations and to ensure there are more letters after his name than are actually used to spell it. While his Honors is underway, there will be a hiatus in writing the Dooven Books until June 2019, after which the sixth Velvet Paw of Asquith Novel, and the final in the Morigan Trilogy, will be written. In the meantime, to ensure Thomas’ already arguable sanity is not driven to the sort of comedic extremes that the fourth and fifth titles have already ravaged, the second Wrong Book will continue to be written and released as sequential audiobook episodes on Inkspired, Mixcloud and Youtube, with the Morigan Trilogy being ready for release in mid 2020.
Pandabooks Australia is hoping that this hiatus will ensure that the sixth title, To Blunt The Sharpest Claw, will be fresh and vibrant, and full of the wanton absurdity that Doovenism has become marginally renowned for. If it doesn’t, Thomas will be released from his contractual obligation and face court for serious breaches of it, which will, ironically, result in things being even more rooted in accuracy.