Month: June 2008

Categories
cuba salsa

Charanga Habanera in London

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Charanga Habanera in London

Ah, the lovely boys of Charanga’s front line. Cuba’s finest, playing for free in Southwark Park.

We missed them by two days in Havana…and also in Cancun. Well worth the wait…rumour has it they’ll be at the afterparty later tonight at the Colosseum in Vauxhall. This is where it really would be an advantage to be JK Rowling. People in their 20s adore her…they grew up on her books. Bet she’d get to dance with anyone from Charanga she likes.
Well I’ll still try my luck…
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appearances getting published Joshua Files readers

Author Tour Report 3: Gorgeous Thing – the cover of ‘Invisible City’

Author Tour Report 3: Gorgeous Thing – the cover of ‘Invisible City’Originally uploaded by mgharris
My editor Elv said it best, I believe…it is a gorgeous thing. And nothing to do with me…except very indirectly as the author of the story which inspired this artistic vision of Andrew Briscombe from Scholastic.I’ve visited a school every day for the past three days of my author tour…photos to follow when I get home. A big talking point is always the cover, which the young readers adore, but also teachers including one Headteacher and an award-winning librarian…Now a couple of reviewers have been a bit sniffy about the cover, whilst being perfectly lovely about the novel itself. That’s okay…its success in attracting readers might lend the impression that it’s what such reviewers have decided is simply a ‘marketing gimmick’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…to quote a famous Seinfeld episode…

But in fact, as I’ve discussed with almost 400 school students in the past three days…the jacket of Joshua Files is a genius tactile intrepretation of some key facets of the story.

Allow me, Umberto Eco-like, to offer a semiotic analysis of this remarkable piece of packaging:

1. ‘Invisible City’ features a mysterious ancient Mayan book whose cover is deadly to touch…hence the removable cover in dangerous-looking neon orange.
2. The J symbol denotes the Maya…in a highly subtle way. Mayan ruins impress immediately with their terraced temples of stone rising from the jungle…the parallel lines of architecture. Hence the lines of the J symbol. And when you slide the slipcover across the J, white lines appear next to the black ones…steps in shade and light.
3. The J also represents hieroglyphic writing. It is in fact a glyph – symbolizing Josh.
Umberto would have had said something much cleverer and brought in some eclectic references from art history and maybe quoted Deleuze…but, yanno.

At a school in Romiley, Stockport today, a year 11 boy showed me up for the slow-witted, former Rubiks wannabe I am. He finished the cube 60 seconds before me, in true Rubiks-kid fashion, hardly even glancing at the cube as he whooshed the pieces into place. By comparison I was staring at the cube, slowly turning it much as a caveman might handle a one-for-all TV remote.

Nice going pal, but as we say in Mexico…’Como me ves, te veras.’ (as I am, you one day will be)
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Categories
appearances getting published Joshua Files readers

Author Tour Report 2: School Visits

Author Tour Report 2: School VisitsOriginally uploaded by mgharris

Copies of “Invisible City” on display in a school in Dulwich. Check out the groovy Mexican masks on the wall behind!

I’ve been doing school visits in Dulwich Hamlet Primary, St Joseph’s Primary in Headington and later today, Manchester. Before I spoke to any audiences of young readers, I wondered how I was going to modify my speaking style. Years of addressing scientists and business people might not be ideal preparation, after all. The BBC staff at go4it were really great with the kids, had them laughing and joking. And I’m conscious of the fact that I’m used to bring rather direct and serious…

I used to try to get a laugh from scientists etc. At least one, to get things going. Science humour, yanno… So anyway, I decided basically to talk to the kids as I did the scientists but without the jokes and with a bit of gentle quizzing.

Yes that’s probably a bit teacherish but they sure seem to enjoy getting the answers right and BOY are they smart. The mix of archaeology, personal journey and 2012 eschatology does seem to fascinate them, thank goodness. And out of over 500 kids seen to date, no-one has ever asked me the one question that everybody said I’d be asked…how much money do I make?

I think it’s brilliant that they aren’t asking. Not that there’s anything wrong with the question but if young people are interested in making money I’d rather point them in a stack of other directions…like starting a business.

This emailed from a train passing through Stoke-on-Trent.

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Categories
ice shock readers writing zero moment

Editing ICE SHOCK, getting deeper into Joshua book 3

Editor and I have almost finished working on the manuscript for ICE SHOCK.

We lost a couple of chapters but gained a new opening – a scene I’ve been wanting to write for ages. Benicio visits Josh in Oxford and takes him for an early morning spin in a Muwan, over the dreaming spires of Oxford and out to Josh’s school…yes you’ll finally find out which school Josh attends.

Meanwhile I’m getting deeper into book 3. When I visit kids in schools and libraries, I’m often asked about working titles so I might as well own up that the working title of book 3 is TIGER KIDNAP. I hope it sounds cool, action packed and intrigiung… But it also means something.

Go ahead…Google it…

Today I wrote one of the most difficult scenes I’ve ever written. It wasn’t an action scene – they aren’t particularly easy but that’s about being focused, visualising the action and expressing it in some non-tedious, non-repetitive, ideally thrilling sort of way. No; I was writing a scene where Josh experiences some new and rather teenage emotions. One emotion piles on top of another, sometimes conflicting with each other. Getting that across without wallowing, whilst showing not telling, staying in character as Josh, I find pretty hard.

In terms of what was happening, it was sort of a childish (and for that read very non-adult) version of the brilliant scene of the newlywed’s devastating row at the end of Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach”. In McEwan’s story, two newlyweds have a row which effectively ends their marriage on the night of their wedding. McEwan’s male protagonist has been – although unintentionally – badly hurt by his wife. In revenge, he lashes out in an orgy of of self-stoked, self-justifying anger. Even as he says the words which he knows will end things, he simultaneously enjoys whilst also horrified by his own actions.

I thought McEwan did an amazing job of conveying how lovers can simultaneously enjoy and suffer the process of hurting and tearing down what was between them. Not a nice fact of life but very true.

On a small scale that’s what Josh does in the scene I wrote today, which also takes place on a beach. Josh is unintentionally emotionally wounded by someone…and so he hurts them in return. He’d rather be angry than sad. So he stokes his own anger.

But what I learned from McEwan is that it’s at this point that you lose sympathy for the male character. Self-pitying, self-justifying rage – not too attractive as it turns out!

So I didn’t let Josh enjoy it. Instead, he is shocked to the point of numbness about making this person cry.

 Ah but who…?

That would be telling.

Categories
appearances getting published

Author Tour Report 1: Obviously, I’m a philistine…

Author Tour Report 1: Obviously, I’m a philistine…Originally uploaded by mgharris


…because today was my first time at the British Museum.

My lovely publishers always out me up at a boutique hotel in Bloomsbury when I’m doing author stuff in London. It’s right next to the British Museum but until today I’d not taken the time to visit.

Quite awe-inspiring stuff actually. Mind you, all the big London museums are.

The striking thing is that unlike the huge museums of Mexico City (and I believe, Cairo), they aren’t dedicated to indigenous culture. London’s museums reflect a fascination with every other part of the world.

Is it hubris on the part of Mexico and Egypt, compared with generous interest on the part of the Brits?

Or does it simply reflect the success of Britain’s plunder and conquest of ancient treasues? And modern Mexico and Egypt’s lack of conquest over anything except a dead indigenous civilisation?

The people who think the Elgin marbles should be returned to the Greeks might argue it’s the latter.

While I was writing this blog post, two American tourists from Minnesota -father Lars and 12-year old Leif – sat down near me to enjoy some yummy-looking chocolate cake and Coke. We started chatting about this and that and the Maya.

The museum is light on Mexican exhibits, but the little they have is nicely displayed. An excellent lintel from Yaxchilan shows a Mayan queen performing the blood-letting ceremony.

Anyway. An amazing day followed…brilliant visit to the quite fab Eltham Centre library to meet a class of year 6s from a local primary school. Then a sumptuous afternoon tea with my publishers. Then champagne cocktails and canapes at Waterstones Piccadilly as we watched a Sotheby’s auctioneer sell off handwritten short stories by famous authors (read the BBC news report here…)

Luckily for me they hadn’t asked Murakami or Vargas Llosa so I wasn’t in danger of losing my head and getting into a bidding war. One of my publishers was a bit miffed at being beaten to the Doris Lessing. And we all felt that the 800 word Harry Potter went cheaply at around £25,000. But the auctioneer was taking absentee bids. The whole room could sense that Mystery Bidder was prepared to go to daft numbers. So everyone chickened out. Afterwards we all felt daft. Because you could probably have doubled your money at least even on eBay. Later I asked one of the Bloomsbury team why they hadn’t bid to push up the price. She pointed out that even JKR’s agent hadn’t bid. And from what I heard about who was there…he was probably the richest person in the room.

It would have been public-spirited to have kept Mystery Bidder going to what would probably have been silly money. But it seems no-one wanted to risk that tricky conversation at home. ‘Honey, I seem to have spent fifty grand on a bit of a story…’

Then Scholastic kindly took Axel Scheffler and I to dinner at the Criterion. His lovely Gruffalo story was the fourth most expensive at the auction.

Ee. See what a fabulously glamorous author life I’m having just now? Today doing a bunch of bookshop signings and then playing the biggest room I’ve done as an author – 180 years 5 and 6 in Dulwich.

Better get up then…
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