Archive for the ‘translations’ Category

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 May 30, 2010 - by MG

Invisible City – new artwork and trailer for US & Canada readers

The Joshua Files finally reaches North America in July, with the publication of Invisible City by Walker Books for Young Readers.
We’re planning a few things to celebrate – a competition exclusively for new readers in the USA&Canada. But also, here finally is the book trailer featuring the Walker edition artwork.
I love all the foreign editions of Joshua, but this one is very special. It’s the first cover that reflects my own ideas of how the cover art might look, when I was first writing Invisible City (or as it was called back then, Todd Garcia: Boy Archaelogist – The Lost City).

The artwork may be more traditional ‘adventure-style’ than the amazing, ground-breaking, innovative, deadly-neon-slipcover of the UK, French, Spanish, Catalan, German and Hungarian editions. It draws on the style of influential artist Frederick Catherwood, who back in the 1840s visited the ruins with traveler John Lloyd Stephens and created those first, memorable images of the ruined Mayan cities, which were to stun readers in the developed world.

My friend Chris Maslanka, an eminent puzzlist (who devises fiendish puzzles for The Guardian and The Oxford Times – watch Chris and his evil twin Mikhail show readers how to crack the codes in the first three Joshua books) brought me four copies of the Polish edition of Invisible City, Archivum Josha – Niewidzialne Miasto, which I’ve been meaning to give to various Polish friends in Oxford. It made me very happy to hold these foreign editions in my hands, to know that readers in so many countries are reading them. An amazing thing really, doesn’t feel like it’s anything to do with me either. Rather wonderful!

Posted on February 16, 2009 - by MG

Geheimakte Joshua Audiobook auf Deutsch!

I realise that I keep getting all excited about seeing new versions of the book…but what can I say? It’s VERY exciting – to see something you’ve written in print, in different languages and now as an audio production in German. WOW.

I opened it right away and listened to the first ten minutes. It’s been a very long time since I listened to so much German and been able to understand so well!

Sadly it’s not a measure of how good my German is.

Still, now I know that so long as people say exactly what I know what they’re going to say…I’ll be fine.

You can hear an excerpt of the German audiobook here.

Meanwhile, preparations continue for the launch of ICE SHOCK. I have just added another date to my events page…thrilled to be speaking to the Oxford University Mexican Society on 25th Feb. Saludos paisanos!

Posted on January 30, 2009 - by MG

Joshua Files in French and German

A very happy day for me, to see my book in the French (Operation Joshua: Dossier Confidential – La Prophetie Maya) and German (Geheimakte Joshua: Die Unsichtbare Stadt) editions.

I like the French title very much although they have missed out on the Calvino reference. Aha, you may come to regret that come Joshua 3, mes cheres amis.

I know I have gone on and on about the pyramid point-of-sales materials but LOOK! It’s so pretty!

There are bookmarks and posters too.

I can give away one poster and some bookmarks, if anyone wants to play another quiz.

OR…you could just promise to write a review of ICE SHOCK on Amazon when it comes out. Doesn’t have to be long. And please – only if you like the book! I’m not nearly famous or well-liked enough to be able to afford bad reviews there…

Joshua Files has now sold in 14 languages: French, German, Spanish, Catalan, Japanese, Polish, Romanian, Slovakian, Czech, Hungarian, Turkish, Greek, Indonesian, Vietnamese.

I have to say that just seeing it in three languages is blowing my mind quite a bit. Fourteen is just…BOGGLE.

Well done to the translators, Frank Boehmert (Deutsch), Amelie Sam (Francais), Ivan Stefanek (Slovak). I have been looking through Frank’s version and marvelling at how some things translate. In fact I think my very rusty German would benefit enormously from reading it.

Posted on January 19, 2009 - by MG

A Joshua-themed writing competition for schools

Very happy today for several reasons.

One is that Scholastic have launched a writing competition for schools, in the magazine Junior Education Plus.

On the website and in the magazine you’ll find the first 600 words of a short story – written by me.

To enter the contest, you then write the ending of the story – in 200 words.

The winner gets a signed copy of INVISIBLE CITY (or I guess you could ask for ICE SHOCK if the winner has it already), plus £150 of books for their school.

The story is brilliantly illustrated by Dave Neale and the online interactive version includes turning pages and cool sound effects!

The story is called ‘Stars Fell On Campeche’ and features Josh when he was younger, playing football at some ancient Mayan ruins where his father worked. It was originally one of four prologues I wrote for the opening of INVISIBLE CITY. (In the end we went with the newspaper article about the strange incident at the museum…) 

And the other reason I’m happy is that the German (Frank Boehmert) and Slovakian (Ivan Stefanek) translators of Joshua are reading ICE SHOCK now, getting ready to translate it. Frank even blogged about ICE SHOCK (vielen Dank, Frank!).

Still reading the brilliant “Black Swan” book by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. I wrote him a fan email yesterday and he replied right away! (I told him that one day, a character in Joshua will quote him…he wrote back that he’s very intrigued…)