Author Archive

Posted on July 29, 2010 - by MG

I talk about mobile phones vs book for kids, and swoon at Avon from Blake’s 7

Some book publicity events are planned months in advance…and some spring up on you all surprising, like.

Last Thursday I’d planned to be in London to renew my Mexican passport at the embassy, after a bit of a saga as you might know if you follow me on Twitter. Suddenly a little new story broke, about some research collated on behalf of Scholastic Children’s Books UK, that in the UK more under 16s own a mobile phone than own a book.

The research was based on a survey of 17,000 under-16s in the UK. Apparently almost 9 in 10 young people in the UK own a mobile, whilst fewer than 3/4 (73%) own a book. 80% of children who read above the expected level for the age have books of their own. This drops by 22% for those that read below the expected reading level (58%).

It was the last day of term for most maintained schools in the UK, so what better chance to stir up some interest in summer reading for kids?

Scholastic wanted one of their authors to be available for comment, so I was invited to stay over until Friday and do some radio interviews. Sixteen, actually, some live, some pre-recorded.

One interview was at my local radio station, JackFM of Oxford. It’s just down the road from me actually, so Sophie Bruce had a bit of fun teasing me about being in London in a recording studio, when I could have just popped in. And guess who does the in-betweeny-voice bits for JackFM? It’s Paul Darrow, aka Avon, the sexy heart-throb star of BBC TV’s Blake’s 7.

Now if you’ve read my bio, you know that I heart Blake’s 7 but I specially heart Avon, spent most of my teenage years (ahem and a bit longer too) dreaming about being a crew member on the Liberator and having my wicked way becoming really good chums with Avon.

Paul Darrow, a charming and very lovely guy, was always most kind to his fans. Once for his 40th birthday I got all my school friends to sign a card to Paul. He replied with a signed photo for every girl in the class, how cool is that? And a letter addressed to the Ladies of Fallowfield.

Sophie of JackFM asked me if I’d like her to get Paul to record a message for me, and I said that I’d like to know that he remembered the Ladies of Fallowfield. Who are now the dowagers of Fallowfield, but never mind.

Paul, being full of awesome and everything, did just that. Ladies, listen to this without swooning, if you can.

Posted on July 21, 2010 - by MG

Summer 2010 newsletter – Joshua giveaways and contests

If you haven’t finished school yet – hang in there! It can’t be much longer. I did my last school visits of 2009/10 academic year a week ago. Great to meet readers of all ages! Now I need to crack on and write for a bit…

Here’s the summer Joshua Files news:

1. Mere DAYS remain for the big contest to DESIGN A MAP OF EK NAAB – the ‘invisible city’.
The contest closes on 31st July. Great prizes for runners-up, plus the winner gets their design printed in DARK PARALLEL – Joshua #4.

For HINTS and TIPS read this post on the BookBabbler’s website:
http://bookbabblers.co.uk/2010/07/the-joshua-files-mg-harris/

2. Joshua book and goodie-bag giveaway on BOOKBABBLERS.
There’s an easy contest running on BookBabblers, winner gets a set of Joshua books and a goodie bag of Joshua stuff.
http://bookbabblers.co.uk/2010/07/the-joshua-files-mg-harris/

3. The Joshua Insiders exclusive group of dedicated fans is growing. Still a few places left!
How to join the Joshua Insiders.

4. I have finally finished DARK PARALLEL!
Now Scholastic Children’s Books are deciding how to give the book a really cool, dark cover…

5. INVISIBLE CITY finally published in the USA by Walker Books for Young Readers.

Also in Turkish! It’s always great to see a foreign editions of Joshua. But with another in English, hopefully we’ll soon be able to welcome a bunch of new members from the USA and Canada.

YOU CAN HELP INVISIBLE CITY SUCCEED IN THE USA!

Why not tell your friends and relatives in the USA about Joshua Files via Twitter and FaceBook?

OK everyone, have a great summer, and if you haven’t already I hope you get a chance to read Josh’s latest adventure over your summer holidays. Meanwhile I will get on with Ultra Secret New Project…

very best wishes,
MG
x

Posted on July 16, 2010 - by MG

River Song, the Time Traveler’s Wife, Borges and The Joshua Files

Posted on June 25, 2010 - by MG

On Crosby Beach

On Crosby Beach

Originally uploaded by mgharris

Lovely day in Crosby with Tony Higginson, bookseller extraordinaire from Pritchards Formby. After visiting Merchant Taylor’s Boys and Sacred Heart schools and signing lots of books for Year 8 kids, Tony and I drove to the beach to see Anthony Gormley’s ‘iron man’ statues and grab an ice cream cone. You can see them in the background, staring out into the Mersey.
Sand! Sea! Sun! A rare treat for a landlocked Oxford girl.
More photos will follow on Flickr. Soonish.
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

Posted on June 15, 2010 - by MG

Dreaming up a bestseller

At a story-building workshop I was running at Southend Girls High School recently, a student asked me if I believed that Stephenie Meyer really did write Twilight because of a dream of a sparkly vampire.

I didn’t get to answer the question in depth because we were under pressure to finish the story before the lesson period ended, so I simply said that yes, I believed it. What I didn’t say was that there’s nothing quite like a dream to power a story.

Dreams dredge up thoughts and feelings from the deepest, darkest parts of our psyche. They speak to us in the language of symbols. Most people don’t understand the significance of these symbols. It’s hard even for a psychoanalyst to interpret the symbols, without first understanding the particular viewpoint or mental landscape of the dreamer.

So a sparkly, beautiful male vampire means something to Stephenie, something that it might not mean to anyone else. That image thrown up by a dream, which became incorporated into the first Twilight novel, had a hold on her. I’m no expert on psychoanalysis so I don’t know what it meant within her own context.
But we can guess that it meant something pretty deep. It drove an author through a series of gripping novels that captured the imagination of millions, which suggests that it was powerful stuff.

The wider question is this: where do writers’ ideas come from? The answer seems to be that some, you work for whilst others, like the (day?) dreams of Edward Cullen or Harry Potter, pop into your head.

The pop-in idea is a frequent visitor to the writer of fiction, the trick may be an ability to recognise which ones come from somewhere deep enough to sustain a novel or book series.

The deeper the better, really. Like the sludge of a riverbed, the depths of a writer’s psyche are the richest in story-building nutrients.

At another school visit to Larkmead School in Abingdon, a boy asked me why I’d written a book series about code-cracking. It was an understandable question given that I’d just led a code-cracking workshop with about 90 year 12-14 year olds. I told him that I’d realised whilst reading The Da Vinci Code in 2004 that having the hero a puzzle to solve was one good way to drive the narrative. Especially for readers who aren’t so keen, or less able to accessing the emotional drive of the story.So that’s why, rather than write a simple coming-of-age story, which is what  essentially is, I thought to throw in some puzzles.

In fact the central idea for Joshua came from a fear that strongly coloured my own teenage years: a fear of apocalypse – nuclear holocaust. It was the 1980s, the Cold War was still very much in play: we lived quite consciously in the shadow of the 4-minute warning of doom.

I didn’t need a dream to dredge this up. It was something that was obvious to me at the time and long into my 20s.  So when it occurred to me to write an adventure story about a teenager trying to prevent a global catastrophe at the end of 2012, I knew well what fertile personal territory I was tackling.

Graham Greene once said that a writer’s experience of life by the age of 20 will provide all the necessary material for their writing. So maybe we’re all writing from our youthful feelings and memories. But a subject worthy of a children’s book should also be something that was important to us as children and not merely as adults remembering.

A dream can be like a beacon showing us the way back to the hopes and fears of our youth. Any writer lucky enough to have such a dream should definitely take notice.