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

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!

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!

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.

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…)

I’ve been waiting with great excitement to let you all see the coolness that is in store from the German publisher of “Joshua Files” – Cecile Dressler Verlag.

Number one is this awesome Webplayer for “Geheimakte Joshua“. Btw the German title is actually cooler than the English one – because ‘Geheimakte’ translates as ‘secret files’ not just ‘files’. Oooh, mysterious – good choice, Frank! See the advantages of a fusional language?

The ‘Geheimakte Joshua’ webplayer features an interview with me – dubbed by me auf Deutsch (someone else translated the words), a sample chapter and a terrific little book trailer. I show this to kids when I do book visits – they love it!

The second thing is a lovely little online tool you can use to customise a bookmark of ‘Geheimakte Joshua’ and print it out!

Here’s a bookmark I made earlier - with a little message from me and the Ek Naab hieroglyph stamp.

Finally, if you are seriously keen – the Dressler autumn 2008 catalogue, Joshua themed and with four pages devoted to our little book.

Crumbs I’m excited.

So without further ado, here they are…

If you know anyone who runs a bookstore in a German-speaking country, they can order these from the publisher (Dressler):

http://meta.verlagsgruppe-oetinger.de/index.php?id=3391 (scroll down to Geheimakte Joshua)

Also – very exciting – here’s an excerpt of Frank Böhmert’s translation of Joshua Files.

And below is an example of the Tyler fact card. Aintitcool?

Firstly, I have always suspected that Germans might enjoy Joshua’s adventures slightly more than British. Not to say that I’m not getting lovely feedback from British readers!

But there’s no doubt that many Germans seem to share my fascination with exotic adventure stories, going all the way back to that famous adventure writer, Karl May. And when I’ve visited the ruins in Mexico I’ve hardly ever met any British people, but mainly Germans and French. (And other North Americans of course).

If you follow this blog you may have seen that the German translator of Joshua Files, Frank Boehmert, occasionally posts a comment. (Hi Frank!).

Well all today I’ve been working with a translation of the brief video interview I recorded in the offices of Scholastic. I’ve dubbed myself into German and recut the video…I’m sending this to the media company in Germany who are going to add graphics etc to produce a book trailer for the German book trade. (Hence the long bit of title page at the end).

Here it is. What do you think? I have another day to improve it, if it’s really too bad…