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Posted on January 8, 2011 - by

A 2011 Round-Up

A 2011 Round-Up
The Joshua Files - Dark Parallel proofs

The Joshua Files - Dark Parallel proofs

I know, the New Year ’round-up’ should refer to the previous year. But I’m exhausted just thinking about it. In general, I’m starting the year tired. “Why do we have New Year?” my Teenage Daughter asked me. “How is it a ‘new beginning’? If you commit a crime on Dec 31st 2010, you’d still be punished in 2011.”

So it is with seasonal illness. If you spend the Christmas/New Year period suffering repeated attacks from viruses and secondary sinus infections, you start the year exhausted.

Lots happened last year and mostly very good, luckily for me. But with a diary that is getting packed out, I’d rather look ahead. So here are my forward-looking highlights of 2011.

  1. My sister’s wedding. Little Sister is getting married in Melbourne, Australia, giving me a lovely excuse to visit.
  2. First ever visit to school in Europe (outside of UK). Looking forward to meeting the students of College Leman in Geneva!
  3. Publication of Joshua Files book 4 – DARK PARALLEL. The photo shows the stack I’ll be sending off today to winners of the New year’s prize draw and to some book bloggers who have expressed special enthusiam for Joshua.
  4. A decision about After Joshua, What Next? If you follow this blog you may have heard me refer to Ultra Secret New Project. Well, New Editor has now read the manuscript and given me some pointers about how to improve it. So it won’t be much longer before I find out… (AL Kennedy saved me the bother of writing about what it’s like waiting for an editorial report over Christmas in her blog post Waiting for book ‘go’… Basically – what she said.)
  5. Teenage Daughter’s UCAS application is in. Will there be offers? Will she get the grades? Is this the year when my Firstborn Leaves Home?
  6. My first London Book Fair. Big trade fairs make me dizzy, as I learned when running an IT business. Without a stand to focus on or a conference speech to make, I get terribly baffled and have to go and lie down. So I’d foresworn never to attend a Book Fair unless invited as a speaker. I’ll be talking alongside Francesca Simon (author of Horrid Henry) about school libraries, in an event run by the School Libraries Association.
  7. Book deals! My fingers are tightly crossed for two ridiculously talented friends of mine from very long ago. Sarah Hilary (crime writer) and Christian David (author of a rollicking historical biography-fiction) are both writers who secured literary agents last year. They are now working on edits prior to the big submission process – to editors! I won’t be happy until they are recognized for the huge literary talents that they are.

It’s a particularly lovely set of events. No lurking gremlins as yet. However, I find it easier not to look too far into the future. The plots of my own stories almost always involve calamity striking the minute everything seems to have gone calm. Not that I enjoy such a rollercoaster in my own life. I try to make lemonade when served lemons. Nevertheless, it gets increasingly tiring, all that lemonade-making. That’s what they don’t tell you about getting older. Yes, you get wiser and more experienced, so lots of things are easier. But your energy levels diminish.

No wonder people turn to magic beans and nutrional supplements and exotic exercise regimes. If only all it took was Berocca.

However, I am still aching pleasantly from the weights I did at the gym a few days ago. I will change nothing! Maybe lose a little weight to look good in the Diane Von Furstenberg dresses.

Happy New Year!

If you haven’t seen it yet – here’s the draw for the advance review copies of DARK PARALLEL. Once again I’m assisted by Matt Barnard from Summertown Starbucks.


Posted on July 21, 2010 - by

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

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

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

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…


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