Archive for the ‘writing’ Category

Posted on March 6, 2010 - by MG

World Book Week Diary

Last year, we launched ICE SHOCK on World Book Day, at St Gregory the Great School in Oxford. This year I set off to do a mini-tour of schools in the South of England.

World Book Day is the one thing guaranteed to get us lazy authors out of bed early. Even Robert Muchamore tweeted in (mock) anguish “School event in High Wycombe tomorrow. I’ve got to get up at 7am. The HORROR!”

Started off at D’Overbroecks College in Oxford, speaking to the sixth-form English Lit and Communication& Culture students. After spending the afternoon tailoring my author presentation to their sophisticated 6th form ears, I accidentally ran the normal Powerpoint. Somehow we still ended up talking about Aristotle.

The next day, a launch party at Blackwell’s Oxford for my friend Tim Pears’s new novel, Landed, which has already had bags of terrific reviews.

For the last part of the week it was on to Canterbury and then Worcester to visit two more schools. Lots of fun at Simon Langton Grammar in Canterbury talking to hundreds of boys about Joshua Files. And a special privilege of spending time with the school’s writer’s group, including three young men who’ve written a 108,000 word dark fantasy novel. Very impressive INDEED.

At Christopher Whitehead Language College in Worcester I hung out over lunch with the student librarians and we talked about how to construct a story. Brilliant suggestions from the kids who created a thrilling storyline for a supernatural adventure about a girl who has to rescue her mother…from Hell!

A special thanks to the kids who patiently posed with me for the photographer from the Worcester Gazette!

And to the wonderful librarians Teresa (Simon Langton Grammar, Canterbury) and Liane and Clare (Christopher Whitehead, Worcester) for all their work to encourage and develop readers and for inviting me to your schools!

Finally, a big thanks to the lovely Punjabi students that I met on the train to Canterbury. I left my coat-belt on the train, after enjoying a nice chat with the boys. On the train back to London at the end of the day, the guys were there again. When they heard I’d lost my belt, one of them insisted on giving me his. Then spent the rest of the trip determinedly making a hole in the thick leather so that it would fit me. Thank goodness for the belt or I’d have frozen solid on the walk home!

Best question of the week: Is fiction getting too ‘fast’ and are we losing something valuable in the drive to make story openings vault us directly into action.

Posted on February 27, 2010 - by MG

Castaway!

With lovely Sylvia Vetta in the Summertown Wine Cafe.

I first met Sylvia last year at an event I did for the Oxford Literary Festival Fringe, a writer’s workshop at Blackwells (where most of the lit fest fringe events run). Sylvia is a local journalist and the former owner of The Jam Factory, an antiques centre that had cult status in Oxford for most of my years here, but which closed a few years ago when the neighbourhood was yuppified.

Sylvia writes the monthly ‘Castaway’ article in the Oxford Times limited edition magazine, a glossy special. She interviews local authors, artists, businesspeople, academics etc, through questioning them about their favourite art, antiquarian books and antiques.

And in June, Sylvia’s article will feature me!

I don’t think of myself as an art lover, or collector of antiques etc. Frankly I’m too broke, what with the exorbitant cost of visiting all the foreign lands to research Joshua, as well as my exotically foreign family. (I’m referring to the ones who live in Australia and Switzerland by choice, not the Mexicans…)

Luckily Sylvia allows you any object you desire, since it’s mere fantasy. Even the Elgin Marbles, if I wanted them, hah take that, British Museum! In fact, I did lust after one object in the BM…

When the article is published I’ll let you know. The interview, which we did in the Summertown Wine cafe, is accompanied by images from a photoshoot that is yet to be arranged. I’ve asked to be photographed in an huge leather-upholstered Jakobsen Egg chair in St Catz, reading an Uncle Scrooge McDuck comic.

MG Harris at the Kennington Free Literary festival

If you’re Oxfordshire-based and would like the chance to see me or other local authors talk in a mini literary festival, Sylvia also runs the Kennington Free Literary festival in Kennington, Oxon, on Saturday 24th April. Tickets are free, with a £2 booking charge if you want to guarantee a seat. But even booking is free for children - so come on down to listen to the MG Harris author talk!

Booking form for Kennington Free Literary festival.

Full colour brochure for Kenningtom Free Literary festival.

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 September 27, 2009 - by MG

Quite Secret New Thing

As neglectful of this blog that I’ve been, I hope you’ll forgive me. The usual excuses apply.

In the past few weeks I’ve launched a new website, Mayan Mysteries of 2012 - a Young Person’s Guide, as well as two new trailers, for The Joshua Files series (2010 version) and for Joshua Files 3: ZERO MOMENT.

And very exciting, I’ve been working with the Walker Books for Young Readers (part of Bloomsbury USA) the US publisher of Joshua Files on their version of INVISIBLE CITY.

As well as putting the finishing touches to the proofs of ZERO MOMENT. It’s starting to feel like a pretty full-on job, this author lark. (I’m joking, it always was, now there’s just more pressure.)

But FINALLY I can start to devote some real thought to Quite Secret New Thing.

We have a title, for one thing. I’m not going to tell you the title just now, sorry to be a tease. I feel like it might jinx things, so lets wait until I’ve got going with the writing, n’kay?

Titles often come last, after you’ve written the darn thing at least. (And I have yet to write a SINGLE page of Quite Secret New Thing.) But for some reason I needed to know I had a good title. We (Agent, Editor and I) had been referring to QSNT as (harumph) For Kids where (harumph) is a stupendously famous and successful novel for adults which hasn’t yet been kid-ified.

I’m not going to say what (harumph) is obviously…

The thing is, there is a very sound reason, or seventy, why (harumph) hasn’t yet been kid-ified, in fact the whole project began with me musing whether it could even be done. So for the past year I’ve been thinking about why (harumph) doesn’t work for young readers, what is the essence of (harumph) which makes it exciting and what needs to be done to provide young readers with the equivalent reading experience.

Thinking, however, is one thing.

Writing is another. Ha. Many an idea sounds good until you commit it to paper.

So on Friday I drafted the plot, the plot of Quite Secret New Thing aka (harumph) For Kids aka (censored).

And immediately I saw the first flaw.

The nature of the genre of QSNT is such that the protagonist is thrown into a maelstrom of a very complex, very alien adult world. He does not cause the story to happen; the story happens around him.

Which is Very Not Good. As literary agent Rachelle Gardner reminded her readers recently, the protagaonist must be pro-active.

Or at least, ideally.

Sometimes though, you have to have quite a lot of stuff happening to the protagonist or around the protagonist, before they take action.

Think of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Harry is passive, the things that happen to him happen in spite of what he does or wants to do (being abused by the Dursleys, which he puts up with, being sent to Hogwarts). Until his friend Hermione suggests that they investigate the forbidden corridors of Hogwarts, in true Famous Five fashion, and stumble upon the mystery of the Philosopher’s Stone.

In detective stories, the protagonist, the detective often is a passive observer of events, remaining somewhat outside of the action (crime, generally). Until they engage with the mystery. (I watched a MARPLE show last week, Murder Is Easy, in which Miss Marple merely flashed her gimlet blue eyes at all manner of suspects, murderer and victims, but did not a thing to stop the carnage of murder, until she was good and ready. She did not really alter the trajectory of the story until right at the end.)

But whatever the allowances of the genre, Rachelle Gardner is quite right. The protagonist should be pro-active. It makes for a better story. So even in detective fiction, the author should go back to the plot and make as much of the action happen because of the actions of the protagonist.

It really helps, at this stage, to have written the plot down. Or if you’re a jump-in-and-write type of writer, to have written about 20,000 words.

So I’d better get down to it.

Posted on August 24, 2009 - by MG

Open shark house

Open shark house
It’s a landmark of Headington, the cause of tut-tutting as well as mini-thrills on the bus route as you pass the street that houses this extraordinary sculpture by John Buckley. Bill Heine’s shark house!
This weekend Bill opened up the recently refurbished house as an exhibition centre for local artists including renowned children’s illustrator Korky Paul. I’d just bought ‘The Dog Who Could Dig for my nephew and niece’s birthday. What fun to find one of Korky’s original illustrations from that book as well as Winnie the Witch on display!
Well anyway, meanwhile we’re in Switzerland for the birthday week…mine,my brothers, sister-in-law, nephew and niece. I have just suggested cocktails and chocolate fondue for my birthday. Oh. My. Goodness.
MG Harris

Originally uploaded by mgharris

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