Posted on February 15, 2008 - by MG

JOSHUA FILES launch party!

Elaine McQuade (Scholastic), MG Harris, Elv Moody (Scholastic) and Peter Cox (Redhammer) at the launch party for THE JOSHUA FILES

So finally, we threw a party for THE JOSHUA FILES at La Perla, a Mexican restaurant/bar in London. Team Joshua from Scholastic were there, plus many other wonderful people from that company. We were joined by influential children’s booksellers and people from the children’s media. I had some brilliant conversations, although all too brief. So many people to meet!

Elaine and I gave little speeches. Luckily for me Elaine went first. While she spoke I realised that I was in severe danger of forgetting everything I’d planned to say. It was all lost behind a tequila-and-lime-flavoured fog. I had to struggle to latch onto any aspect of what I was saying. Thank goodness I’d decided to start with blaming (totally unfairly )my sister-in-law for my skiing accident. I don’t have any trouble at all talking about that day. Nope, falling onto the Eggli mountain and snapping my tibia is a path quite well etched into my neurons.

Over the next few weeks there will be plenty of opportunities to buy TJF on promotion. It will be Book of the Week in Sainsbury and Tesco, and is on discount now at WHSmith, Waterstones and Borders.

It looks as though the next stage for me will be visiting schools. I’m really looking forward to doing this. Finally hanging out with readers! Might even find a way to combine it with school governor work…asking for 30 mins with all curriculum deputies to talk about 14-19 education initiatives or something. Hmmm.

My agent Peter Cox (pictured above) has been working with designers on a super, super cool new fan site. I hope readers will love it. Should be ready by Monday…but if you are clever at searching on Google you might already be able to find it.

A prize for the first one to locate it! I don’t know what, yet, but something token…