Archive for the ‘writers’ Category

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.

Posted on May 29, 2009 - by MG

MG – highlights from Hay-on-Wye 2009

Spent the latter half of this week at the Hay-on-Wye literary festival, the UK’s biggest celebration of books.

Highlights:

1. Lovely as ever to meet readers young and old, and to interest new people to the world of Joshua. I had to rush the signing slightly because pretty much everyone wanted to see Anthony Horowitz next. One day I will do a signings in a leisurely way and chat to everyone…

2. Saw terrific author events with Robert Muchamore (funny and frank), Anthony Horowitz (funny and hyper), and Andy Stanton (funny and MAD. 6-9 year olds go crazy for Andy and his books!). Andy is a former standup comedian and described by the Guardian as ‘one of the best performers on the children’s literary circuit’. (I’d agree)

It made me wonder if I should attempt to be funny but yanno what? No. I’m a girl, not a blokey boy like those three guys. Hard for girls to be funny unless you have way more energy than me. So you’ll be getting the laconic archaeology lecture for a bit longer until I can get away with telling childhood anecdotes.

I have already lined up the anecdotes, will save that for another post. First will search for photographic evidence, muahaha.

3. Andy Stanton and I hung out at the Kind of Blue jazz concert. Jimmy Cobb, former drummer with Miles Davis, played on that hugely influential album and now leads a very tight band of tenor sax, alto sax, trumpet, bass and piano. Oh man. Imagine hearing that music…then seeing Jimmy at breakfast at the Swan Hotel in hay next morning! I mentioned to him that Kind of Blue is an important reference for Josh in ‘Joshua Files’. ‘Very interesting’ nodded Jimmy. ‘Write the name of the book down so I can find it…’.

Yeah. Cool, huh?

4. Also chatted with Julia Eccleshare and her charming son George. Good luck with the exams, George. Hope you make those 3 As!

5. Ate much cake and wine with the fab Sir Philip of Ardagh, who agonised about leaving the party atmosphere at Hay for the genteel spa-town charms of Cheltenham. ‘I want to stay here and hang with my homies’ he complained.

6. Philip, Andy and Anthony are soon to be our little daughter’s new favourite authors. I don’t believe a child should live on Roald Dahl and nothing else. Weaning started tonight, with Anthony’s ‘The Switch’.

7. Mr Horowitz gave me a discarded page from his first draft of the new Alex Rider, signed over to my niece and nephew in Oz who LOOOOVE him. I gave Anthony an Invisible City postcard. Anthony swiftly moved to deciphering the code without a single key word!

Code crackers, watch and learn…

Posted on April 27, 2009 - by MG

The Wondrous Oscar Wao

There may be a new writer for me to swoon over. Haruki Murakami may be given a run for his money.

Here’s a book I’d been waiting to read until it came out in paperback and I had a really good stretch of uninterrupted time to enjoy it. Now I know I don’t usually blog about new books, because well, there are so many brilliant book review blogs, I’d rather leave that to them.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (by Junot Diaz) though, was a crystal-exploding-in-my-cortex type of book. You know when you feel like a book was written specially for you?

This one won the Pulitzer Prize, too. So it must be good.

Reading Oscar Wao felt to me like reading a funky hip take on Gabriel Garcia Marquez/Mario Vargas Llosa, set to a reggaeton rhythm…but about a character whose references were straight out of my own young-adulthood; Dungeons and Dragons, Blake’s 7 and Doctor Who, Watchmen, Lord of the Rings.

To my young blog readers – this is probably one to save until you are an adult. I would NOT want you to tell your parents I recommended this book. Like many works of Latin American literature, especially those set in brutal dicatorships, there are tales of violent atrocities and some extremely ‘adult’ situations.

To the old fogeys among you, READ THIS! It’s probably unlike any book you’ve ever read. It’s unlike any book I’ve ever read but then I can’t imagine there being another book like it.

Here’s the story: Oscar is a fat nerdy boy growing up in New Jersey. He adores comic books, fantasy role-playing games and sci-fi, he also falls hopelessly in love with girls all over the place but to no avail. Oh the shame of it, because he for all his geekery he is still a Dominican (from the Dominican Republic – it’s the Spanish part of the island of Hispaniola, the other half is French/African Haiti).

Dominican men are meant to be super-macho! They’re akin to Afo-Cubans – part African, part Spanish – 100% macho. Oscar’s mum nods with approval when aged 7 he dates two little girls at once. Once they dump him, Oscar’s romantic life is effectively over. Until much later, when fate returns him to the island of his heritage – and final destiny.

The story of Oscar is narrated with dispassionate energy by Yunior, a close friend. It’s not just Oscar’s tale but the island story of his mother and grandfather, just two of the many, many victims of the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo. Hideous horrible violent and utterly unjust things happen to his mother and her family. It’s all described by Yunior with the pitiless yet sympathetic omniscience that is similar to the sweeping narratives of Garcia Marquez and Vargas Llosa. More minimalism though, which I like. Which I admire, too.

Historical footnotes provide more information – and it’s here that the voice becomes irreverently venomous. The DR sure was a total rathole (putting it VERY mildly) during Trujillo’s reign, a nightmare totalitarian state where justice ceased to exist and fear ruled supreme.

In common with other Great Writers, it’s not just the power of the story but the evidence of wisdom, shrewd observations of depths of human truths which mark out this author. Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

Note to authors. Set your story in a totalitarian state and watch as plot just falls out. When every single person might legitimately be a liar who is about to feed your hero to a torture machine, the streets are paved with pure High Drama.