Month: April 2008

Categories
Joshua Files zero moment

Late night blogging session

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An explosion of tulips in a neighbour’s garden, snapped by Blackberry.

While I was sick in bed, all the leaf buds on trees decided to unfurl, the apple and cherry blossoms bloomed and the tulips popped open like goblets. Walking on my usual route to Summertown for coffee one sunny morning, I suddenly noticed…

It’s good. Spring and summer in southern England are definitely something to get excited about. Winter, on the other hand…gah. I swear if it wasn’t for the kids schools I’d consider spending winters in Australia…

I’m almost 4500 words into Joshua book 3 and I’m already a little overwhelmed by the grip Josh’s psyche has on me. If Josh begins book 2 with a big emotional load, it’s even more intense with book 3. Now that I know the age of some of the readers -including my six-year old daughter – I wonder what they will make of these complex emotions.

Don’t read book 3 until you are at least 10, kids!

Josh has choices and problems that would flumox an adult, but has to deal with them with the experience of a teenage boy. In this one he’s so far above his head that he’s ill-equipped to even debate the issue. Actually that makes it easier. There’s almost no dialectic going on; Josh knows exactly what he wants – from his gut.

Ah but cruel author. Josh can never have what he wants. Or can he…?

Categories
nostalgia science

The immune system kicks a**

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Antigen presentation – the central tenet of immunology. Didn’t make any sense to me until I saw the crystal structures of MHC I, and the T-Cell receptor.

I emerged into the outside world today full the kind of renewed energy that only a post-viral recovery gives you.

The immune system is an amazing thing. Even moreso when you have some knowledge of how it works. I remember when they published the crystal structure of the Major Histocompatibility Complex I protein bound to a peptide antigen. Luckily for me this was the year that I took biochemistry finals at Oxford. I’d never understood the scientific evidence for molecular immunology properly until I actually saw those molecules interacting.

I’m just not good enough of an abstract thinker. The cellular evidence just befuddled me. I had to see something in 3D before I could catch on.

Immune system, amazing, hence I have made a whole load of antibodies and cytotoxic T-cells and other cell and molecular weapons and totally kicked that viruses ass and cleared it out of my system. And if anything like that comes round again, my B-cells will give it what for…

Oxford was warm and filled with shoppers, students and tourists. I heard some Brazilians speaking Portuguese and it cheered the part of me that still wants to be in Sao Miguel do Gostoso. I dropped into Waterstones and was relieved to see that ‘Invisible City’ survived the recent cull of children’s books on display in the window. Still on display and in the 3-for-2! Lots of books for older readers have been put aside to make way for picture books and other things for younger kiddies. Finally I share a window display with the wonderful Axel Scheffler!

Categories
Joshua Files science zero moment

Report from my sick-bed

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I should be in bed in bed but I’ve been there most of the day fighting off dengue fever. Okay it probably isn’t dengue fever but it’s plenty unpleasant enough and I brought it from Brazil. It’s my fifth day so I’m feeling a bit pathetic.

“How come you aren’t better yet, Mummy,” my six-year old asked. And then paused before adding, “Cos Daddy’s better. He got better right away. He’s been doin’ shoppin’ and cookin’ and other good things.”

It’s always got to be a competition, hasn’t it…?

I managed to rouse myself to beginning Joshua Book 3 today. Hurray! Only other writers can appreciate how big an achievement that is. I haven’t written for six months, astonishingly lazy underachiever that I am.

And before you cry ‘false modesty’ – University academic friends of mine are expected to write scholarly tomes whilst holding down a full-time college fellowship and University lectureships. Last year one of these friends, with four kids mind, published a book and also ended up delivering a speech at the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony. Another – who has two kids – was voted Woman Of the Year.

So – I know what I am. Lightweight and proud of it!

Gosh my head hurts. I only started this post really to alert you a recent issue of New Scientist, which I have been trying to read between bouts of languishing feebly. It could have been written for me! Articles about the possible collapse of civilisation, the real-life possible existence of time-travel and telepathy and a groovy little thing about an upcoming innovation in social networking Websites that neatly solves a plot problem for me.

Anyway. I’ve tried non-pharmaceutical remedies all day – cold compresses, cooling gel patches, Tiger Balm. Nothing. So I’m going to cave and take some proper medicine.

Ah. Sweet oblivion of an anti-histamine mild sedative combined with OTC analgesics.

That’s me out for at least 12 hours.

Categories
brazil zero moment

Thoughts turn to Book 3

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I’m not trying to make anyone feel jealous. I just want a nice image to look at.

I usually try to avoid going on holiday to hot countries whilst it’s miserable and cold at home – inevitably you return home to spend three weeks going around looking at the grey drabness in disbelief and thinking ‘Why do I have to live here, again?’

I can see I’m going to have to make my list of Great Things About Living In Oxford, England.

Or I can pretend I don’t, continue in denial and write another book set somewhere warm.

Warm and inevitably, rather threatening.

I lay awake in bed at some very late hour this morning thinking about book 3 of Joshua, I had forgotten that in my bedside notebook I’d once written an idea to use a certain song as a symbol (a sort of literary synecdoche, if you want to get clever) for a certain character in the book. But in the work of constructing the plot, I forgot.

Screenwriters often use a visual image – or colour as a symbol. Oranges in “The Godfather” symbolise death; fallen leaves in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Great Expectations” – and also “Y Tu Mama Tambien” symbolize encroaching chaos. The main symbol in ‘Joshua Files’ is the natural body of water – it spells mortal danger for Josh. And characters in Josh’s family are sometimes referred to via a song.

So I’d had this idea to use a song like that…and then totally forgotten. But just as my subconscious mind used to kindly wake me at 3am after a long day in the lab with the reminder that I’d actually thrown my experiment in the bin instead of the freezer…this morning it woke me with this great suggestion for book 3.

I was dreaming about this fox in a garden that suddenly started being very friendly, and then saw it’s cub, even cuter…meanwhile music was playing and I recognised the song as ‘Dream A Little Dream Of Me’. And I remembered that I’d had this idea to use it in book 3, but hadn’t been able to decide how.

Well, the dream gave me the idea…from that came a way to develop what will be probably the most important subplot in the last 3 Joshua books.

When it strikes really full-on like that, inspiration can be very fruitful.

I think I have dengue fever, by the way. I have a slight temperature, headache in an unsual part of my head, and a disastrous stomach…

Categories
brazil

One Last Caipirinha

One Last CaipirinhaOriginally uploaded by mgharrisWell it’s come to this…As Ali and I down one last caipirinha we contemplate what a terrific place North Eastern Brazil is for a holiday. None of the insane commercialism and sheer dedication to tourism that you find in Mexico’s premier resorts, but a warm and well-organised welcome in all the hotels…big and fancy or titchy and family-run.

Lots of great activities to do; but the rough-and-ready type that make use of natural beauty without bending it to the will of the tourism magnates. So it’s sand-dune buggy rides, zipwire into a lake, snorkeling off a platform into a coral reef, all the tasty seafood you can eat washed down with any lime-based cocktail you like; caipirinha (cachaca), caipiroska (vodka), caipirissima (rum).

Ooh…there was an aqua theme park…is it the thin end of the wedge?

I’ll miss the coconut, cashew and mango trees, the bareback horse-riders and the cheerful buguieros (buggy drivers).

And I’ll miss the limey afterburn of endless caipirinhas…
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