The best gift that a writer can bestow is the triggering of insight in another mind. That, surely, is one of the main reasons for reading? NNT’s book ‘The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable” has had me thinking hard all week.

Today I was struck by the relevance on the section about the “silent, invisible cemetery” of casualties in any field, the ones you don’t hear about, the ones who make ‘Black Swans’ (i.e. random, highly unpredictable events) seem all the more remarkable.

NNT points out how routinely we ignore the failed entrepeneurs (who also displayed exactly the same character attributes as those who succeeded big time), the failed authors (who attended the same creative writing workshops, read the same books or writing, wrote as many words as those who succeeded), the failed gamblers (who didn’t start out lucky so gave up and therefore never figured in the apparently true statistic that gamblers have beginners luck).

There IS a silent cemetery of failed endeavour. But our mind edits it out. We prefer nice patterns where one thing preditably leads to anther. Where the game of life has rules.

As a scientist, I am part of the cemetery. Many enter the game of scientific research and many leave before they even get counted as jobbing scientists who you’ll never hear of (as opposed to the very successful ones you HAVE heard of.)

This whole subject particularly interests me because I know full well that ‘The Joshua Files’ is a Black Swan event. Yes; I can thread a nice narrative through the factors which led up to its writing and publication, and you might believe that it was always going to happen.

But no.

In fact, just as significant were a series of TOTAL coincidences that could not have been predicted.

1. I broke my leg, thus interfering with my work schedule.

2. In my resultant isolation, I was finally able to think deeply enough about writing and to practice it, to get better pretty fast.

3. I found an agent who under normal circumstances would have ignored my submission, because he usually doesn’t bother with the slushpile. But because of a coincidental and tenuous link between me and his most successful client (we both studied biochemistry at Oxford), I was able to grab his attention. 

4. This agent saw that my manuscript was promising but flawed. Unlike another agent who was initially very interested, this agent believed that I could write a publishable version.

And yet…he told me himself that he’d met with many authors at a similar stage and had a similar discussion. Failure…at that stage, was still the most likely outcome. My agent knew all about the cemetery – he’d seen authors wind up there. I didn’t.

Had I known that I would probably not have submitted a manuscript to him. Even though this is normal…most slushpile material does not succeed big-time, whoever the agent!

But since we mainly ignore the fallen in the invisible cemetery, I didn’t think of that…

5. This agent told me something about writing that was as astonishing to me as some rare fact about the life of an inhabitant of Mars. No I’m not going to tell you what that was! If you want to have the benefit of this guy’s advice, join Litopia! That piece of information enabled me to totally shift the focus of my writing.

6. I happened at that exact time to be devouring the works of Haruki Murakami. That single fact helped me to see immediately that my agent was right. Otherwise I might have doubted. But perhaps more importantly, I rapidly had a template for how to achieve what the agent wanted.

7. By sheer chance, no-one was sending in thrillers-for-children based around the Mayan 2012 thing. Not that year. US literary agent Nathan Bransford complained last year that Maya/2012 manuscripts were tediously common. But in 2006 thankfully, in the UK, they weren’t. So at the time, the Joshua Files concept was deemed highly original. (That year it was all magic schools and faeries, I was told.)

Friends and others have told me that it was hard work, perserverance and preparation that got me a great book deal. Oh yes and my self belief. Hmmmm. The evidence would suggest otherwise.

‘Self-belief’? Not really. I was equally convinced that my efforts would lead to failure. 

As a scientist you need to believe simultaneously in the positive result that will vindicate months of work, and the negative result that will mean it was good for nothing better than red-herring-avoidance for other researchers.

Maybe I would have got something published eventually, maybe. But not ‘The Joshua Files’.

Let’s face it, it’s a ‘Black Swan’ event. Had any one of the coincidences above not happened, it would not exist.

To me, it’s all the sweeter for its unpredictableness and rarity. Like being in the middle of a storm of good fortune.

Well, what do you suppose a newly launched debut author does in the first week after her book is out…?

About a year ago I imagined I’d be walking around rather light-headed, visiting bookshops and placing my book somewhere more prominent… And the rest of the time sort of basking in a glow of happiness.

Well, guess what?

I actually AM doing quite a bit of that! (Although they’ve done really well with the book placement – it’s on tables and face out everywhere that I’ve seen. Yay!)

But my hard-working agent is also seeing to it that I’m not entirely frittering away my time eating cream scones, bagels and ice-cream and watching TV. He’s had me thinking of and writing articles for the super-whizzy new fan site that he’s developed at www.themgharris.com

Why did we call it that? Cos mgharris.com is taken and there is more than one MG Harris…

(although I bet there isn’t another Maria Guadalupe Harris but, yanno…drat, I just checked and there ARE!)

So check it out and maybe even join up!

In other news, in Cuba Fidel Castro has ‘resigned’ as El Presidente For Life, Glorious Dictator and Supreme Revolutionary Commandante (or some such overblown title). I guess we’ll have to wait until he checks in by phone with one of his best buddies like French movie actor Gerard Depardieu, to find out if he’s really still alive at all.

He’s put his brother Raul Castro in charge. Cubans have been waiting a long time to see Fidel die or stand down. They have a lot of patience, those people.

Elaine McQuade (Scholastic), MG Harris, Elv Moody (Scholastic) and Peter Cox (Redhammer) at the launch party for THE JOSHUA FILES

So finally, we threw a party for THE JOSHUA FILES at La Perla, a Mexican restaurant/bar in London. Team Joshua from Scholastic were there, plus many other wonderful people from that company. We were joined by influential children’s booksellers and people from the children’s media. I had some brilliant conversations, although all too brief. So many people to meet!

Elaine and I gave little speeches. Luckily for me Elaine went first. While she spoke I realised that I was in severe danger of forgetting everything I’d planned to say. It was all lost behind a tequila-and-lime-flavoured fog. I had to struggle to latch onto any aspect of what I was saying. Thank goodness I’d decided to start with blaming (totally unfairly )my sister-in-law for my skiing accident. I don’t have any trouble at all talking about that day. Nope, falling onto the Eggli mountain and snapping my tibia is a path quite well etched into my neurons.

Over the next few weeks there will be plenty of opportunities to buy TJF on promotion. It will be Book of the Week in Sainsbury and Tesco, and is on discount now at WHSmith, Waterstones and Borders.

It looks as though the next stage for me will be visiting schools. I’m really looking forward to doing this. Finally hanging out with readers! Might even find a way to combine it with school governor work…asking for 30 mins with all curriculum deputies to talk about 14-19 education initiatives or something. Hmmm.

My agent Peter Cox (pictured above) has been working with designers on a super, super cool new fan site. I hope readers will love it. Should be ready by Monday…but if you are clever at searching on Google you might already be able to find it.

A prize for the first one to locate it! I don’t know what, yet, but something token…

So naturally, I’ve been having a bit of a play…

Heh heh. That was fun…

Here’s another remix. This is just experimental…I may well sign up for the full $30 per year to get unlimited videos of longer than 30 secs.

The music is ‘Invisible City’ by Beight, on the album File In Rhythm purchased from Magnatune.

Yesterday I met at the Scholastic offices with Agent Cox and Editor Elv to discuss Exciting Top-Secret-For-Now New Online Strategy To Promote “The Joshua Files”. Yes indeed, not content with breaking new ground with the most innovative book cover you’ll see all year, Scholastic’s whizz MD Elaine McQuade has decided to promote this series title online in a Whole New Way. Agent Cox and I are in on the whole idea, which will take readers of the book into a whole new dimension of the world of “The Joshua Files”.

At the start of the meeting, Editor Elv surprised us both by producing a shiny new advance copy of “The Joshua Files – Invisible City” (the only one so far, it was the one sent for final approval by the publishers).

I snapped a photo of the book with some of the doughnuts we were using to fuel the meeting (which was about developing online content so we had doughnuts and coffee like the ‘net geeks we aspire to be).

Here’s a video of Agent Cox and Elv looking at the book…

(If you have a Facebook account you can see the video here.)

I didn’t invent it, Miss Snark may have. Miss Snark is a literary agent whose blog provides snarky advice to aspiring writers. I am a fan of Miss Snark. There, I’ve said it.

About two weeks ago I received an email from my agent, Peter. Could I come to London to meet some publishers?

I hadn’t let my hopes get up. I didn’t realise that Peter had only recently gone out with it – he’d been waiting for the right moment.

So when Peter began with all the phone calls, I didn’t take it too seriously. I was deeply into my new project – working title – ‘Realm of the Jaguar’.

Monday rolled around. I met Peter at his club and we chatted for half-an-hour, mostly about a certain press story involving him and a well-loved celebrity, which had caused Peter to be chased by paparazzi.

Then I started to meet publishers. One in particular had some excellent ideas about how to improve the book. Peter sat by and said very little. Later he told me that I’d been a tad too business-like. “It’s not a business meeting,” he said.

We jumped into a taxi and drove to yet another publisher, where I had one of the major surprises of my life. As we sat down with the editor, I was presented with a suede-covered box, on which a sticker decorated with Mayan glyphs pronounced something about a prophecy from a codex… Inside was another sheet, continuing the story…

(I’m honestly too embarrassed to write the contents of those sheets, but in short, it said that in 2008 they would like to launch my book.)

There was a marketing proposal stuck onto papyrus, and a separate sheet (folded concertina-fashion, like a Mayan codex!) with the ‘Offer’, which I passed straight to my agent. Everything was gift-wrapped and tied with a bow. There was a box of Maya Gold chocolates on the table, I realised. I frankly could hardly believe my eyes. It was one of those situations where there’s a two-second gap between perception and reaction. “Wow,” I said, nodding, struggling to comprehend what I was seeing. I was banking on ‘wow’ being the appropriate reaction, but I wasn’t exactly sure.

Then I met the rest of the team. They told me how much they liked my book, asked me some questions about what inspired it and where the story was going…

Well, I used to tell anyone (who’d listen) anything I could about my books, but for the past year I haven’t. Guess I’ve realised that unless you’ve read and love a book, it’s no fun to hear about one. And sometimes even then…yanno. So to suddenly have a crowd of people being so fascinated, was pretty overwhelming. As we left their office, I had the sense of being slowly disconnected from reality. What the hell is going on? I thought.

Back at Peter’s club, we met even more publishers. One carried a large aluminium tube decorated with stickers made up in black and red, with the book title in a logo. This ‘offer’ came gift-wrapped with six bars of Maya Gold chocolate, toys that tied-in with the book and the financial and marketing proposal printed on glossy, “Joshua Files” logo-headed paper. They’d actually knocked up a logo! More enthusiastic chat about the book, favourite films and TV shows, writers, influences, things in the story pipeline, plans for how to sell and launch the book.

I simply didn’t know this kind of thing happened. “I need to take a moment,” I told Peter after they’d left. “This is a little overwhelming.”I wasn’t kidding. I worried that I might actually burst into tears…I was having a pretty unprecedented experience. The last time I remember feeling anything close to it was when I was interviewed for a place at Oxford and my soon-to-be-tutor put me out of my misery and told me that he would be offering me a place.

Peter was sympathetic. When I told him that it was beyond my wildest dreams, he said, “This is just the beginning.”

So…that’s how it begins. Who knew?

Finally, he emailed me to suggest we arrange a catch-up session. I was planning to be in London anyway for a thing at the Oratory so we decided to meet yesterday.

First good news – he loved the sample of the new novel I’m writing. Not the plot-less character story – I’ve shelved that until I think up a cure. This is another story; essentially an escape-and-chase story. Gosh I love those, so I thought I’d try to write one. Working title is ‘Jaguar’s Realm’. After a week of so drafting a trial plot, I started to write. It was fun – I didn’t have to wring out every page, as with the coming-of-age character story!

We discussed Mr. Agent’s criticisms. There were many! It’s back to the plotting for me.

Second good news. “We’re starting to see some interest from publishers in ‘The Joshua Files’. No offers, but interest.”

Now you’re talking, pal.

I’m not going to post anything about the new novel yet. Pretty sure my friends and family are fed up with hearing about my unpublishable novels.

So, let’s wait until the jury’s back with a verdict before I bore you again.I’ve been working on some new ideas. Got 20,000 words into a coming-of-age novel for older teens, before realising that there was no proper plot. I wanted to see if I could write a story with no gadgets, chases, mystery, no adventure at all in fact, just characters and relationships. Crumbs, it was hard work.

Then my kind friend Alison read it and said politely “The writing is good…the sentences are good…but there doesn’t seem to be a story”. Yikes – she was right. I was concentrating so hard on, yanno, the characters and the descriptions, that I forgot to put in a hardcore structured story! So it’s back to the drawing board.

I was relieved to find that Mr Agent loved it. He sent me an email saying ‘This is REALLY good’ and then we spoke by phone, wherein he said lots of very nice things and then perhaps sensing the dangers of praising an author too much, he stopped saying, “I could go on but I’d start burbling”.

Still doesn’t mean there’ll be a book deal, even if there is doesn’t mean the book will sell.But I’d say this is as good as result I could hope for up to this stage. I’m happy with the draft, he’s happy. Could be a lot worse!