Archive for the ‘zero moment’ Category

Posted on January 18, 2010 - by MG

Cupcakes, waiting and writing Secret New Things

Two weeks to go until ZERO MOMENT is officially published.

Except that, as several readers have already pointed out to me, ZERO MOMENT is now being sold on Amazon.co.uk, Tesco, and Waterstones (in the stores too). Some readers have already bought it, read it and sent me lovely comments – thank you!

(Would be nice if you would put nice comments on Amazon too, that would be RIGHT lovely.)

Meanwhile what does an author do in the run-up period?

1. Plan a ZERO MOMENT launch party. It’s back to Blackwell’s in Oxford, but with more guests and more cakes. I am planning a marathon cupcakes making session, and am choosing four different types to make. Might do a poll, heh heh.

2. Gloatathon! Tracking the progress of Joshua as it starts getting published around the world. The Vietnamese edition of INVISIBLE CITY made their top ten paperback list, according to one blog. Nice reviews are appearing on blogs about the Indonesian and Spanish editions. Lovely, kind bloggers!

ICE SHOCK, which isn’t yet published in the USA, made a Top 12 Young Adult Books of 2009 on a US book blog, Semicolon. (And was also nominated for a Cybil – Middle Grade Fiction Award.)

I have exactly the same attitude to gloating about nice reviews as I once had to good results with my lab experiments. Celebrate them while you can! One day the reviews (or results) will not be so good…

3. Plan the Krispy Kreme FaceBook party. You need to be on the Joshua Files FaceBook Group to come to this, but it would be lovely to see some of the Oxford-based Joshua readers.

4. Meet Lovely Editor to discuss her notes for the manuscript of Joshua #4, DARK PARALLEL. Yes! It’s written and I am now poised, poised I tell you, to move to a second draft.

5. Pitch Quite Secret New Thing (hereafter QSNT) and Top Secret New Thing That I Only Just Thought Of In December But Which Is A Sort Of Major Rewrite Of Jaguar’s Realm (hereafter Top Secret New Thing or TSNT for short). Where am I on this? I have the opening chapters of QSNT which I am rewriting with suggestions from Mr Agent and today I wrote chapter 3 of TSNT.

I don’t know what I will write next! The new MD of Scholastic Children’s Book’s will soon hear both ideas…and decide: which one is best? Or at least, which one is best, next.

So as you see I have been busy. Don’t forget to join the Joshua Files FaceBook Group!

Posted on January 1, 2010 - by MG

Happy New Decade! And the winners are…

Did you enter the contests to win an advance copy of ZERO MOMENT at themgharris.com or the Joshua Files FaceBook group? Watch the video above to see if you won…

Winners will receive an email/FaceBook message from me soon to ask for a posting address.

For everyone else, Feb 1st isn’t too far away! Meanwhile, I hope this first ever review of ZERO MOMENT whets your appetite…over at the excellent book blog, BookZone4Boys.

Meanwhile, wow, another year. Another decade! I lay in bed last night thinking about things that happened 10, 20 years ago. Once you have kids life does neatly bisect into your pre-kids and post-kids life and I find I rarely think about the pre-kids life, apart from childhood memories. (Like all childrens’ authors I spend a fair amount of time reliving those, it’s kind of necessary.)

So last night I was remembering a visit to Madeira in the early 1990s. A neighbour had come over and talked about spending a couple of months somewhere warm in spring and we started telling him about how Madeira would be ideal. It had been a long time since I thought about that holiday, or the year in which we took it. I could remember a couple of things from work around that time, but mainly the year blurred into the scientific research I was doing at the time and that holiday to Madeira. It was a wonderful time, I could remember the colour of the sea when we swam off the side of a boat, my 3-year old and I, I remembered the moon-like vista of the top of the island, a steak barbeque we enjoyed in the middle of a wood, amidst wild lavender and bees….all that and a great deal more.

For one whole year of my life I remember probably parts of 20 days, no more. Wow. There are ways to dredge up more, I know, but WOW. Once, I could remember everything that happened to me beyond the age of consciousness. Now, well, if I didn’t blog it, I’m not sure I’d remember it!

Then again, it helps to forget bad things. So our leaky minds help us out there.

The moral? Record your thoughts via blog or vlog. But only nice things. Let the hoover of amnesia suck up your sadness – it may be for the best.

Posted on December 11, 2009 - by MG

The Big ZERO MOMENT Signing

What an amazing few weeks.
There was the British Museum gig, which will rank as one of the highlights of my authorly life, I’m sure. Then my TV interview with LJ Rich of BBC TV’s Click - I’ll do a dedicated post about that once I’ve edited the little video I made of LJ and I, and LJ bumping into her long-lost pal Barney Harwood (of BBC Radio 4′s late, lamented go4it).
There were also a couple of lovely meetings with Team Joshua to discuss all the fun we can have telling everyone about ZERO MOMENT when it comes out in Feb 2010.
Finally a couple of days ago, members of Scholastic Children’s Book’s Team Joshua (and a few kind extras from SCB) came along to Bookmarque printers to help me sign the entire, limited edition neon-sleeved run of the UK edition of THE JOSHUA FILES: ZERO MOMENT.
That’s 4700 copies ONLY! So be sure to snap one up from Feb 1 2010!
We also had the great excitement of watching the brand new green paperback edition of ZERO MOMENT being bound. My book on the production line! Seriously cool.
Oh yes and…I have a couple of brand new copies of ZM to give away as prizes.
Hmmm. What task shall I set? Comment and suggest!

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:

• Frank’s happy day of receiving a finished copy of ICE SHOCK in German.
• My dear friend Martin Bonfil’s popular science blog La Ciencia por Gusto  (in English it’s Science for Pleasure)
• Tracey Anne Baines kidlit blog Tall Tales and Short Stories fetauring interviews with literary agents (including my own agent Peter Cox) and children’s and YA authors (including me!)
• Liz de Jager’s awesome YA book review blog My Favourite Books
• Looking forward to The Spectator’s new Cappuccino Culture – The Arts Blog on Monday

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)

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?