Archive for the ‘getting published’ Category

Posted on February 4, 2008 - by MG

What time is it? It’s JOSHUA time!

Friends from the Official Joshua Files Facebook group at Krispy Kreme on Day One

Forgive me bigging up my own novel but today is the day!

I’ve been receiving lovely emails from all my friends who are finally reading ‘The Joshua Files: Invisible City’. They’ve been very positive so far. The former Chair of Governors of the school where I’m a governor sent me a lovely email this morning, saying that he would read it by Friday and give me his opinion then…’Ok so far’ he wrote. Ooer…

Most of the events the publishers have organised will take place over the year, starting next Tuesday with the fab launch party in London’s La Perla Mexican restaurant and bar. (We loved Mestizo but needed a more central location).

But this week we do have a few things coming up:

1. Party at Krispy Kreme in Oxford (4pm-5.30pm)
The doughnuts are on me! Bring along your copy of TJF for me to sign! This has been organised via the Official JOSHUA FILES Facebook Group.

2. Wed 6th 4pm-7pm BBC Radio Oxford – I’m the co-host on Bill Heine’s drivetime show.
Bill and I are meeting first at Costa where the secrets of doing his show will be explained to me in about 20 mins…
You can listen via the Web http://www.bbc.co.uk/oxford/local_radio/

3. Saturday 9th 3-4pm Blackwell’s Oxford
Yay, my first book signing. For goodness sake, if you live in shouting distance of Oxford please come along to this! Or it’ll just be me and a stack of books… Afterwards we can all go out for afternoon tea. Sound good? C’MON!

Posted on November 9, 2007 - by MG

I’ve seen it and it’s brill…

Do people still say ‘brill’? Probably showing my age. It’s standard, okay? It’s safe.

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.)

Posted on September 24, 2007 - by MG

Ah, the things I wish I could tell you…

Well blog readers, I’ve had a fun few days. I wish I could tell you everything but because we want to keep some things as a cool surprise I can’t.

I popped by the Scholastic offices on Friday to meet up before going to a fancy dinner-n-awards evening with the publishers and some of their guests. Spying some mock-ups of “Invisible City” sitting on a pile of new books, I snapped some photos with my BlackBerry. It’s not the final version yet but it was soooooo cool to see it. This book package truly is totally innovative! And splashproof too – perfect for taking the book down to the beach or pool.

But I don’t think I’m allowed to post these photos on my blog, sorry…

I was an hour late to another meeting today, because of what the bus driver from Oxford referred to as an ‘RTA’. What’s wrong with the word ‘accident’? Why must we always be decoding TLAs? (three letter acronyms) But my agent coped without me and successfully pitched our proposal to the publishers, leaving me to walk in on the good atmosphere.

The way “The Joshua Files” will be promoted online should now be pretty innovative too. Something new for the world of books, borrowing from something they use to promote some…

But soft! Ere I say too much…

Posted on September 16, 2007 - by MG

Introspective, moi?

I don’t usually turn to introspection on this blog because well, basically, it’s not very fun is it? It gets awfully close to that writer’s angst I try to avoid.

But today, just now in fact I had a moment of clarity in which I realised that being a published author is going to make me not more interesting as my teenage daughter imagines, but less.

(My teenage daughter observed recently, “I’m looking forward to your book being published. Then maybe your life will finally become interesting. And you’ll have things to tell me. Instead of it being the other way round.”)

I read an article about something, can’t remember what, and was just starting to form a theory, synthesize a thought, who knows it might even have been interesting…when a very strict part of my brain cut in and said NO.

NO. You can’t think about that. It might be interesting but NO. It’s not relevant to the books you write. It’s potentially too interesting to think about as a leisure activity. It’s not comforting enough to justify as a daydream. So: simply NO.

That strict part of my brain has a propensity to let me think all I like about the stuff that it deems relevant to my job and hardly at all about anything else. There were times when I was a scientist that I literally turned up at parties unable to speak. I forgot how to make small talk. I didn’t want to talk about anything but molecular biology, and no-one at the party wanted to hear about that so…I said nothing.

So I can imagine that what will happen in the next few years is that I will think more and more about my books. At the moment I can count on the fingers of a hand the number of people who have ever wanted to have any discussion with me about my books that goes beyond “You’re writing a book, really, what’s it about?”…my reply and then, end of discussion.

What if it were lots of people, though? What if that becomes all people ever want to talk to me about?

Then I’ll be back where I was in the old days, when I was mad keen to talk about subcloning DNA or whatever part of my research I was up to…and good for little else. Except now the only thing I’ll be capable of talking about is a bunch of stuff I made up once.

I’ll be back to being a nerd.

Actually I’m being daft. I could right now make a list of 10 friends who will NEVER want to hear about my books. They should help to save me from becoming a total bore.

Posted on September 12, 2007 - by MG

Joshua 1 all finished…I hope!

Well, I think I’ve finally done my bit and now it’s all over to the publishers. I sent the corrected proofs back last week. Much relief. Now I’m looking forward to seeing the final product, complete with secretly embedded code of a puzzle wot I wrote, which readers can solve to win a prize (an iPod, I believe…)…and the much-awaited, totally innovative jacket.

About which I’m going to say only this – you will be able to see the book all the way across the store! And, no, I’ll say another thing. You know how they say ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ and such-like? Well, in this case, couldja?

Now Agent Pete and I are working on a cunning plan; an online treat for readers of the book. Top secret!