Archive for the ‘writers’ Category

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 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

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

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 July 17, 2009 - by MG

Author visits and the (self) importance of being offended

My pal Richard Howse, one half of the LiToon satirical cartoon partnership has honoured me by including me in a topical funny about the whole vetting of authors hoo-hah.

Meanwhile, without me having so much as sign up to any kind of trade union of authors, for the second time I find that a cadre of established, successful children’s authors have again taken it upon themselves to speak for me.

Last time the message was that we didn’t want consumers to be given any help choosing which books might be suitable to buy for children of which age. To a new author like me who is glad to have any extra people encouraged to buy my books, the subliminal message coming from this celebrity-studded group sounded rather like – I think you’ll find that I’m famous! That’s all the information you need to buy my book for your child!

This time the message is that we authors won’t be doing school visits anymore, not if we have to register with the Independent Safeguarding Authority, how very dare you!

Hmm, well not all authors are thrilled to watch the self-appointed group of spokesmen in action again. @RobertMuchamore, author of the mega-popular urban teen spy series CHERUB tweeted, “Irritated at another round of whinging by the usual grey haired mafia of ‘renowned’ kids authors”

Luckily Anthony Browne the new children’s laureate and Gillian Cross are showing more level heads.

This one, I’m in two minds over. As a school governor I’ll have to register anyway and the fee is waived. School governors aren’t complaining but then school governors tend to be community -minded volunteers who give hundreds of hours of their time to help run schools. School governors are motivated by the desire to make our schools as safe and effective as possible. This legislation probably will make it easier to protect children in schools. So we don’t complain at the imagined affront to our integrity. Mainly, we don’t even imagine one.

Authors should no more be offended at being asked to register than teachers, governors or parent volunteers.

It’s true that authors aren’t left alone with children, not often. Especially not famous authors who address hundreds of children at a time. But occasionally I’ve been left alone with small groups of children, both as an author and as a governor. It does happen. Life is so much easier for teachers if they can walk away for a few minutes now and again. Don’t we want to help teachers?

I suspect that these handful of celebrity authors are no more seeking to represent fellow children’s authors, nor are they claiming that authors are automatically morally superior to, let’s say, school governors.

They are reacting naturally and with dismay to something that has quietly been happening in state schools for years, which is a fairly radical change in the culture.

You can no longer be automatically trusted to be alone with children just because you are a respected adult, a famous author, a Head Teacher. The hard lesson that’s been learnt from the few horrible cases of unsuitable adults gaining access to children in schools is that you can’t easily tell who might pose a threat.

No-one is above suspicion, so everybody is checked. To leave certain people out implies a value judgement. A teacher is not above suspicion but a parent is? A governor may be dodgy but all authors are fine? Such judgements will inevitably cause a ruckus, which is why the ISA has opted to register everyone.

Child protection is a serious issue, the most serious one for governors. Governors have always agreed to the CRB checks and will sign up to the ISA.

The authors who’ve complained are right to point out that this says something sad about society. Simply put it says that we acknowledge that we live in a world where kids are abused and we have to do everything in our power to prevent such abuse.

But refusing to acknowledge that truth is also pretty naïve and can have dire consequences. It’s like pretending there’s no such thing as death.

We all live in the midst of pathology. The police, doctors, prison wardens and countless other grown-up professions deal with the daily consequences of this truth. You don’t hear them gripe.

Authors spend huge amounts of time in fictional fantasy worlds where kids endure some fairly horrible dangers. How ironic it is that some authors should be the last to accept such a grisly truth.

Posted on June 7, 2009 - by MG

MG and the Twitter posse at the Guillermo del Toro signing

My turn to tell this oft-told story…a bunch of Twitter-aquainted folk got together to collectively fangirl/boy the superstar Mexican movie director, Guillermo del Toro of Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy fame. His new book, part 1 of a vampire thriller series title ‘The Strain’, was launched and we just HAD to have a signed copy.

Did I mention that Guillermo is from Mexico, like me? I thought he might like to read The Joshua Files: Invisible City, what with it being a high-octane adventure set in Mexico lindo y querido (that’s a quote from a very popular song – about dear, lovely Mexico). Fellow children’s author Alexander Gordon Smith, one of the posse, thought Guillermo might enjoy his young-adult horror series Furnace: Lockdown.

Here’s a photo of Gordon and I and the books we prepared to sign over to Senor del Toro. (In fact he’s probably grand enough to refer to as Don Guillermo.)

It had nothing to do with fantasies that, as Gordon puts it on his blog, Don Guillermo might “read it on the plane home and think ‘I’m going to make Furnace into a film”. (or indeed Joshua Files). Of course not!

Anyway, we had such a good time chatting in the queue, manfully manned by Liz and Mark from My Favourite Books, that we couldn’t bear to part, so we reconvened at a West End Mexican restaurant, Wahaca for burritos, tacos and enchiladas.

I had a wonderful time meeting everyone and we really must do it again.

Finally, here’s a photo of the dude himself.

You can read other accounts of this fun day out at the other bloggers sites.

Liz from My Favourite Books on meeting Guillermo del Toro

Alexander Gordon Smith on meeting Guillermo del Toro

Sharon from Dark Fiction Review on meeting Guillermo del Toro (which includes a nicely grabbed shot of me shaking hands with my fellow and most distinguished paisano, Don Guillermo).

See also Teen Librarian, The Book Smugglers and Nextread.