Archive for the ‘joshua files’ Category

Posted on February 20, 2011 - by MG

Author Visits 2011. C’mon in, sit a spell.

The school visit season began this month. Like many fellow authors I’ve been privileged to be invited into the halls, libraries and classrooms of schools and meet teenage readers. So far I’ve met Yr7 and 8 students in Hounslow, Ealing, Bath, and enjoyed judging a poetry recital competition at Christ Church Cathedral School.

Like most authors I try to vary my ‘author talk’ every year, in fact mine evolves through a few versions each year, especially if people are kind enough to let me know what kind of thing they’d like more of. This year I’ve been making use of the Japanese jacket art for Joshua Files, which features illustrations of all the main characters. (An example of Josh Garcia in the ginga stance is to the right.)

Despite the need to travel and to take time away from the writing schedule, I never get tired of meeting readers. Schools are such fun and vital places to be, filled with so much energy. The enthusiasm of readers who have read and enjoyed a book you have written is a real gift to any author.

Last week I visited via Skype with a group of students in Kingswood School in Bath.It wasn’t my first time doing a virtual author visit (Scottish Book Trust and I used the GLOW Scotland network to visit over 500 pupils interactively in 2009). It WAS the first time that I’d done a virtual visit from the comfort of my own home. (Well, at least, from my husband’s garden office.) A pretty cosy way to visit! Especially as I am so deeply entrenched in writing Joshua 5 right now. It meant I talk to readers with only a brief break from my writing!

Kingswood students have been reading INVISIBLE CITY as a group. Led by their talented librarian, Nicola McNee, they’ve enhanced their reading experience by creating an incident board to follow and solve all the mysteries (shown below). And an Animoto video displaying all their favourite elements of INVISIBLE CITY!

Posted on January 28, 2011 - by MG

Dark Parallel trailer is here!

Josh and Ixchel have travelled back in time, but it might not be so easy to get home again. They’ve landed in the Mayan era, when the prophecy about the world ending in 2012 was first foretold. And they cannot believe who they have found there. Clearly Josh isn’t the only person to have cracked the secret of time travel. But a bigger surprise awaits the pair when they return to the 21st century. Nothing is quite as they remember it – and it’s up to them to work out why.

Thanks to Jamie McIntyre and Paty Simon for the live action sequence, to Dan O’Neill and Jonny Vegas for photography and to Joshua Insider Josh Balfour for help with the editing!

Posted on January 26, 2011 - by MG

Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 1 of 2)

It’s all over the Internet and the news – to save money, local governments plan to close down some libraries. In Oxfordshire, 20 of 43 local libraries are threatened with closure. The communities are protesting, demonstrating, writing letters. This is the moment to persuade the county councils to change their minds!

I’m involved with the Save the Kennington Library Campaign. I’ve written before about this lovely village library and the Kennington Free Literary Festival that the community organises to support their library.

Local primary school children who use the Kennington Library have written letters to Cllr Keith Mitchell, who leads the Oxfordshire County Council. The Save the Library campaigners have written to Cllr Mitchell and to local MP, Nicola Blackwood, inviting them both to tea with the kids on February 7th, and to receive the letters of petition.

I’ll be joining with Korky Paul, an Oxford neighbour and illustrator of many wonderful children’s books (including Winnie the Witch), to read to the Kennington children.

Local media have also been invited to record the event. We’re very much hoping that Cllr Mitchell will turn up!

Here’s an excerpt of a letter I wrote to both.

The Government proposes to radically overhaul education, which I support. In that instance, it isn’t proposing to close schools and let natural selection take over! Libraries deserve the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

Please – consult with stakeholders, ask for proposals and bring in examples of best practice.

Don’t just cut a hole in the heart of the community. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because some people don’t personally use a service, they don’t have an interest in its existence. Where would we be if we took that approach with every publicly-funded institution?

Libraries and civilisation go hand in hand. What do we rightly regard with horror as one of the existential crises in Western civilisation? The burning of the Library of Alexandria!

Please use your influence and act to serve the community who elected you.

Please show that this matters to you!

I’m involved in the Campaign to Save the Kennington Library. This is a perfect example of a local library that should be supported. It is the Big Society in action. The community run a Free Literary Festival (see attached article from The Oxford Times), which raises awareness and funds for the Kennington Library. The library is used regularly by local primary schools, in effect providing an extension of their own library provision. Without that library people for whom mobility is an issue will have difficulty getting to town.

So…roll on February 7th…! I will post a report from the event, right here on the blog.

UPDATE: To see how it all turned out, see Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 2 of 2)

Posted on January 8, 2011 - by MG

A 2011 Round-Up

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 November 22, 2010 - by MG

A night of KLQ and Booked Up fun

More excitement on the Kids Lit Quiz and Booked Up front. Last week I joined the author’s team at the Oxfordshire & Berkshire heat of the Kids Lit Quiz, only to miss an historic finale because I had to swoosh off to That London for a Booked Up launch party.

(I love the swooshing to That London. It sounds very glam and so it is! Whizzing off on a train to some distant part of the capital to drink wine, eat canapes and meet lovely children’s authors and the movers and shakers in the Book Trust, who do so much for kids literacy in the UK that it’s not funny to imagine life without them.)

Anyway, the author team starred the inimitable Lucy Coats, the adorable Mark Robson, the quietly brilliant Susie Day, the Next Big Thing in teen historical fiction, Marie-Louise Jensen (yep, the former editorial director at Scholastic told me that), and a new friend, Joanne Kenrick, who I know from FaceBook and the kids lit world, but met for the first time that night.

Normally the combined intellect of Susie, Mark and Lucy alone would be fine to win the heat, beat all the kids, pah, see THAT?!

But not that night. It was an historic night, destined to bring the highest number of teams ever to participate in a heat (42), as well as the highest ever score in the KLQ (97.5).

The author’s did not get the highest score, nope. The winners did – Oxford High, those brilliant girls. Joshua Files fans too, good on ‘em!

(ahem – added belatedly. Apparently I’m wrong, the author’s team did win, by half a point. But their score flashed past in a moment onscreen and we never mention it when the authors win…)

However, the photo shows not the winning team (who for my money may go on to win the UK Championship next week). Instead, it shows the 3rd placed team from St Gregory the Great – the school of which I’m a governor. It’s only the second time we’ve fielded a team, and these guys had to beat former heat winners Cherwell in a tie-break for the 3rd position.

So three cheers for the Saints! And what an achievement by Oxford High – 1st and 2nd place, as well as a record-breaking score!

I missed all the excitement, alas. Still, I had big fun in London, met the lovely people on the selection panel who so kindly included Invisible City in the Booked Up list for 2010. Met Chris Priestly, whose amazing Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror helped me to give our daughter such a great Halloween. And Steve Cole, author of so many hit kids titles (Astrosaurs and Z-Rex, to name only two) that he makes me feel like a slacker.

Turns out that Steve Cole and I share a teenage passion for Blake’s 7. Oh the geekiness in the air as we quoted favourite episodes… Then I had to rush off to catch a train. I didn’t get round to telling Steve Cole how much Blake’s 7 fan fiction I’d written. Just as well. Sometimes I get all silly and start pressing it on fellow B7 fans. Never wise…

Steve Cole blogged about the Booked Up party too. And I may have mentioned Blake’s 7 before.