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Posted on July 21, 2010 - by MG

Summer 2010 newsletter – Joshua giveaways and contests

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

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

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

Yeah that’s right. I can use all those things in a sentence. Because all four have used one very lovely device of the time-traveling story genre:

Two time-traveling characters who meet up with each other across different time-streams.

The earliest story that does this than Richard Matheson’s Bid Time Return, which was the basis for the adorable time-travel romance starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour; Somewhere In Time. (You haven’t seen it? Rent it now! For more about Richard Matheson and time-travel romances, see the comments below.)

The Time-Traveler’s Wife takes the concept further, criss-crossing ages and stages of the characters as they share a sort of life together across decades. I watched the amazing Doctor Who episode Silence In the Library for the first time last week – and finally saw the story which introduces Professor River Song. Is she our own time-traveler’s wife?

Yeah…maybe! But was she always his friend? Maybe not. Maybe when she first meets the Doctor, they are enemies.

Because he has an inkling of who she’ll become, it’s more interesting.

Anyway, we’ll see. I’m just guessing.

Jorge Luis Borges wrote a short story where a young Borges finds himself next to an old Borges, asking the older one about life. They don’t understand each other too well.

And in The Joshua Files?

Well, by the end of Joshua Files #3, Zero Moment, lovers and time-travelers have already crossed paths. There’s more to come in Joshua #4, Dark Parallel. Beady-eyed readers might have guessed it was happening.

Everyone else will have to wait until 2012 and Joshua #5 to know for sure…

As River Song would say…Spoilers!


Posted on September 1, 2009 - by MG

Delivery Cupcakes for Joshua Files 4

Delivery Cupcakes for Joshua Files 4
You can tinker with a manuscript forever, but eventually you have to let go, let that first person read it. In my case it’s my husband and then my editor. And so far, for a good 9 months after I’ve delivered the ms, no-one else.

It’s kind of nice, actually. As an author, you totally own the story until people start reading it. It exists only in your mind. And eventually, to be read (hopefully, if you’re lucky!) Most of us write to be read, so that’s a really exciting point too. It will certainly improve with editing, will become more readable and more people will be able to enjoy it. But there’s also something special about the time during which the story is belongs only to the author.

To celebrate sending off the manuscript for Joshua 4, I made Red Velvet cupcakes from a recipe in my new Hummingbird Bakery Cookbook (from the famous Hummingbird American bakery on Portbobello Road in London). Amazing! So little butter and eggs! Such a lot of icing sugar! And I can haz incredible cupcakes freshly baked in my own home!

Now for the quick-witted among you I am going to give some Joshua 4 spoilers.

And tomorrow I will remove them right after my shower!

Google’s cache will still have it for a while but by the time anyone looks for Joshua 4 spoilers near to 2011, it will be long gone…

BIG SPOILERS WERE HERE UNTIL 10AM ON 1ST SEP BUT NOW ARE GONE!

Now – forget everything you just read!!!

MG Harris

Emailed from my BlackBerry®


Posted on August 21, 2009 - by MG

My bloggy friends

Oh the pressure of finding a photo for a blog post.

This is a photo of the volcano Popocatepetl, taken from the balcony of my uncle Xavier’s late lamented Tocame bar in Atlixco. It was a fine thing, that bar. Great views of the volcano, too. Known to locals as Don Goyo, the mountain smoulders away, threatening to get pyroclastic on everyone, never actually doing it.

Why a smoking volcano. Well, because while finishing Joshua 4, smoking volcanos were on my mind a fair bit…

Anyway. My blog-buddy and German translator of Joshua, Frank Boehmert recently mentioned on his blog that I don’t update as much as I used to. He rightly guessed that business and Twitter are why I’m not so active here any longer.

It’s also because I’ve started spending free moments (when I’m not busy with Twitter and Facebook) reading other blogs. Here’s some recent faves:

Meanwhile I’m off to Switzerland for the birthday week, from Sunday. Mountains and walks, and birthday cake almost every day! A great environment in which to complete the polish on Joshua 4 in time to hand it over to Editor Polly by September.

ZERO MOMENT is coming along very nicely. I’ve seen a colour mockup of the cover and Polly and I have been working on the jacket copy. Will post both on themgharris.com as soon as blurb is finalised…


Posted on August 2, 2009 - by MG

Joshua 4 finished…! (well, a draft)

Where in the world is Josh Garcia?

Yeahhh! I finished the last page of Joshua 4 on Friday. Just in time to take August off for holidays and researching Quite Secret New Project.

I’d hoped to post a photo of the proof pages for ZERO MOMENT with the laptop with Joshua 4 in the background…

But I’ve finished Joshua 4 a little early, to give myself time to work on Quite Secret Project. It’s not top secret or anything, if you’ve been following me on Twitter or if you’re my FaceBook friend (and if you don’t and aren’t, hey, c’mon & join in!) then you might have an inkling of what I’ve got planned,

I even asked 20 young readers who are FaceBook friends to help me come up with a name for my new hero…I might post a poll here, when I’m ready to let you know more.

Anyway, because Joshua 4 isn’t out until 2011, I don’t want to tease too much about the plot. Sheesh, you don’t even know what ZERO MOMENT is about yet…more on that when the proofs are ready and checked. I’ll see about getting an excerpt online.

Let’s just say that in Joshua 4 the Bracelet of Itzamna is finally going to be put to the use for which it was originally intended…

Title – I have one. But I’m NOT TELLING! Ha! Only people who turn up at my events and wheedle at me. Then I’ll probably ‘fess up good ‘n fast. I tried to resist telling a bunch of young readers at a Quest Seekers event in Stoke Newington library last week. In the end, I totally caved.

The only hint I’m giving to what happens in Joshua 4 is the photo above. Who can tell me where it is?

Meanwhile I’m hatching a plan to make some Joshua Files-themed giveaways to specially keen fans on themgharris.com Drawstring bags, pencil cases and a groovy pen-torch, probably.

What kind of things should I award them for?


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