LJ asked me to go on the show to talk about the emerging phenomenon of self-publishing, mainly fueled by the print-on-demand revolution. You can see what  I thought two years ago. My how things have changed, in only two years. Note how little we talk about ebooks! That’s where the action is nowadays.

Maybe I should go on Click again to update LJ on my opinion now… because as some beady-eyed members of the Joshua Files Facebook group may have spotted, I myself will be testing the waters in the brave new world of publishing and putting out an indie-published techno-thriller for older readers, set in the fictional world of The Joshua Files around May 2012…

LJ meanwhile has been developing her talents as a musician. Her latest album features her own gorgeous arrangements of traditional Christmas music, performed by LJ herself. Very tasteful and classically inspired, with a touch of gospel. I think my favourite is “I Saw Three Ships”. Perfect background music for a Christmas drinks party or the long drive to visit family, I’d say.

You can preview or download here at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ljrich3

Josh and Ixchel have travelled back in time, but it might not be so easy to get home again. They’ve landed in the Mayan era, when the prophecy about the world ending in 2012 was first foretold. And they cannot believe who they have found there. Clearly Josh isn’t the only person to have cracked the secret of time travel. But a bigger surprise awaits the pair when they return to the 21st century. Nothing is quite as they remember it – and it’s up to them to work out why.

Thanks to Jamie McIntyre and Paty Simon for the live action sequence, to Dan O’Neill and Jonny Vegas for photography and to Joshua Insider Josh Balfour for help with the editing!

With Duncan Wright and Kevin Sheehan, winners of the School Librarian of the Year Award 2010

From festivals – to prizes!

Last week was off to a cracking start when I was lucky enough to be the guest speaker at the School Librarian of the Year Awards for 2010.

If you watch this video from Teacher’s TV you’ll see my shock and delight that I was able to announce TWO winners. And that’s from a very strong shortlist! It was a joy to be able to see the work that all the honour list of librarians has put into the ‘Learning Resource Centres’ in their schools. I quite envied the kids at Kevin Sheehan’s school in Offerton, Stockport, who got to enjoy, amongst many other activities, a Doctor Who theme day.

Then it was on to St. Gregory the Great School, Oxford, where a House competition was run to find the best school poet for National Poetry Day. Four talented young poets stood up to represent their houses before a packed hall at lunchtime. The brilliant Raymond Pelakamoyo won for Benedict House with a poem about Home that brough the house down. (You can watch the video of Raymond Pelakamoyo below or on Youtube)

Then…back home to hear two exciting announcements – the fabulous news that fellow Redhammer client, author Michelle Paver had won the Guardian Children’s Book Prize. And that one of my favourite authors, Mario Vargas Llosa, novelist and former Peruvian presidential candidate had finally won the greatest prize in Literature, the Nobel Prize.

• FT reports Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize
• Time reports Mario Vargas Llosa wins Nobel Prize

Huzzah and thank goodness! For those of us who carry resentment that Jorge Luis Borges and Graham Greene were never given their due recognition by the Nobel Committee, Mario Vargas Llosa was another thorn in our side. Now he’s won! Now he is officially the literary equal of his former friend and subject of his doctoral thesis (until he punched him in the face in Mexico City), Gabriel Garcia Marquez!

MG fangirls Mario Vargas Llosa at Oxford Literary Festival 2009

I’ll confess that I have yet to finish the two books that are considered to be Vargas Llosa’s greatest contributions to the American Novel.

• The Green House
• The Feast of the Goat

And I haven’t yet read Conversations in the Cathedral, which Vargas Llosa told an audience at the 2009 Oxford Literary festival, was his own favourite. Or The War at the End of the World.

But! I have read and loved The Time of the Hero, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, Captain Pantoja and the Special Service, Who Killed Palomino Molero, The Storyteller, The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta and The Bad Girl.

Readers who know their onions are now nodding and thinking, yes, she’s a lightweight, only read the shorter, more entertaining novels. That’s what makes Vargas Llosa such a genius and such a worthy winner! Unlike most Nobel winners he can write dense politico historical epics, comedy, thrillers and murder mysteries. As the guy who announced the Nobel said, Vargas Llosa is a STORYTELLER.

He can write ANYTHING and make it awesome.

If you haven’t read anything by him, start with Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter. And yet again, thanks to Alan Hoyle, former boyfriend of my mother’s for giving me this book for honeymoon reading over 20 years ago and introducing me to your literary hero and now mine.

Three cheers for Vargitas and Peru!

Did you enter the contests to win an advance copy of ZERO MOMENT at themgharris.com or the Joshua Files FaceBook group? Watch the video above to see if you won…

Winners will receive an email/FaceBook message from me soon to ask for a posting address.

For everyone else, Feb 1st isn’t too far away! Meanwhile, I hope this first ever review of ZERO MOMENT whets your appetite…over at the excellent book blog, BookZone4Boys.

Meanwhile, wow, another year. Another decade! I lay in bed last night thinking about things that happened 10, 20 years ago. Once you have kids life does neatly bisect into your pre-kids and post-kids life and I find I rarely think about the pre-kids life, apart from childhood memories. (Like all childrens’ authors I spend a fair amount of time reliving those, it’s kind of necessary.)

So last night I was remembering a visit to Madeira in the early 1990s. A neighbour had come over and talked about spending a couple of months somewhere warm in spring and we started telling him about how Madeira would be ideal. It had been a long time since I thought about that holiday, or the year in which we took it. I could remember a couple of things from work around that time, but mainly the year blurred into the scientific research I was doing at the time and that holiday to Madeira. It was a wonderful time, I could remember the colour of the sea when we swam off the side of a boat, my 3-year old and I, I remembered the moon-like vista of the top of the island, a steak barbeque we enjoyed in the middle of a wood, amidst wild lavender and bees….all that and a great deal more.

For one whole year of my life I remember probably parts of 20 days, no more. Wow. There are ways to dredge up more, I know, but WOW. Once, I could remember everything that happened to me beyond the age of consciousness. Now, well, if I didn’t blog it, I’m not sure I’d remember it!

Then again, it helps to forget bad things. So our leaky minds help us out there.

The moral? Record your thoughts via blog or vlog. But only nice things. Let the hoover of amnesia suck up your sadness – it may be for the best.

Yes indeed, Christmas begun in earnest for me last night with the annual Physics Department Carol service about which I have previously blogged. The music included one of my favourites, Victoria’s O Magnum Mysterium, and the Coventry Carol, which the sopranos sat out on, deferring the top part to the altos.

During the mince pie and wine party afterwards I managed to possibly find a new trumpet teacher for Little Daughter (whose previous teacher Rob Stevens of the local jazz outfit The Mad Hatters, sadly and unexpectedly died recently). And to discover why the writer and presenter of the brilliant BBC TV series The History Of Christianity looked so familiar…turns out that he too has sung in the choir for years! My pal Becs and I had a nice chat with Diarmaid McCulloch about the show, which if you haven’t watched it and you have an interest in history, watch it now on iplayer! Or wait for the BBC2 rerun.

Apparently Diarmaid’s book on Christianity has sold as many copies as ICE SHOCK! Wow! And that’s hardback at £35, thank-you-very-much, unlike my books’ bargain price entertainment of £6.99.

I emerged into snow, for the first time in 20 years. Like in Dickens! A quick change at home into suitably elegant attire and down to St Hilda’s College for our IT company’s Christmas party. A really lovely evening, and nice to see the boys in black tie. Especially our co-founder Mark who only owns one suit!

Charlie from Inlight and I chatted over the merits of various Disney rides. I mentioned to him that I wrote the first ever review of Space Mountain in Disneyland Paris.

I may have had some wine. I can’t exactly remember…

Here’s their acoustic version of Icarus, which features on the new Joshua Files series trailer.

 Inlight’s frontman Charlie also moonlights for the IT support/networking company that I co-founded back in 1997. We’re having the company Christmas party tomorrow (Monday), a formal affair with tuxedos and fine wines.  I’ll be checking in with the guys…

Meanwhile foreign editions of Joshua continue to be posted into my house, *glee*. I have now assigned all my advance copies of ZERO MOMENT, with a extra copy for surprise ONE runner-up in the Christmas 2009 ZERO MOMENT competition.

Oh and according to a Vietnamese blog article, Invisible City is on the Top 10 Bestseller List there! Can it be true?

I had a chat with a really smart guy the other day, at a party, I was only a tiny bit tipsy from the rum and coke and we were kind of shouting above the music, but even so, this young graduate student, a very clever guy  (yeah man, you know who you are if you’re reading this), was holding forth about Aztec Codices and books that had been written about them, and the disgrace, the understandable yet upsetting disgrace of the fact that the ancient knowledge of Mexico now mainly resides outside of Mexico.

Well, I felt the gaps in my knowledge, I did. I know a bit about Mayan stuff, not much really, but I have neglected the Aztecs. I felt I should go away right then and read about them.

But instead, I spent my free time on YouTube. You’ll be glad I did. I’ve compiled a little playlist of some of my favourite funny stuff, not too long. If you’re a keen YouTuber you’ll have seen these before.

Diary stuff…in case you aren’t a FaceBook friend or linked to me via Twitter http://www.twitter.com/mgharris).

I joined with some fellow children’s authors to compete against kids from Yrs 7&8 in the 2009 Kids Lit Quiz. The teams I was on were beaten in the London and Oxford rounds. At least the team from Wheatley Park School who beat us in Oxford went on to win the UK National finals!

I met with my agent to discuss the first 10,000 words of Quite Secret New Project but then had to change the agenda for our meeting at the last minute because a New And Possibly Ace Idea occurred to me and I didn’t want to break my concentration. It takes a lot to nurture a new idea to a certain stage.

What will I write next? Not Joshua 5 – I need to do something different in between or it’s three Joshua books in a row, which isn’t the best way for me to write. I like to refresh the palate with something different in between!

The next few weeks will be decisive.

However, I have been hard at work putting together two new video trailers for Joshua – a series trailer and a trailer for Joshua 3 – ZERO MOMENT. (And a new Joshua-related website, more on that in another post…)

Here it is. Hope you enjoy it. (if you do, please rate highly!) The ZERO MOMENT trailer will follow next week. If you are a member of the Official Joshua Files Facebook Group you can view both videos now.

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…

Cos sometimes it can be a right downer, getting back to the everyday disorder of life. And I live with people who have decided to torture me on a daily basis with their flagrant disregard for my OCD. Everywhere I look in my house I see things which make me sad.

I do have a choice, obviously – I can give up all notion of doing anything else with my life other than cleaning and tidying after my children. Or I can try to ignore it by writing stories.

(Btw you wouldn’t know I have OCD-levels of tidiness tendencies to look at my house, you’d think ‘what a family of slobs.’)

That’s why I don’t invite people to my house. (A Stygian stables of housework or stories. Can’t manage both.)

Luckily I have a job I totally love – I write children’s books and I’ve just started a new one. A few nice literary festivals coming up – Stratford, Hay-on-Wye, West End Festival in Glasgow.

Joshua 3 (ZERO MOMENT) to revise. Joshua 4 (title under wraps) to write. I met Editor Polly for coffee and cake in Oxford yesterday. We chatted about what needs doing on ZERO MOMENT and then I told her The Entire Plot Of Joshua 4.

That’s right. Someone apart from me now knows what is going to happen in the next two Joshua books.

Ahhh but. I know that some of you are watching this blog for any hints of what is going to happen. Well there’s a lot I won’t reveal because it’s part of the Puzzly Twisty Mysterious side of the story. But maybe I can let spill that the Sweet Lurve side of the story is going to develop over the next two books. And mostly it will be agony for Josh. I’ve been listening to a lot of songs about boys in love with girls they can’t have. heh heh.

Frank (German translator of Joshua) says I am ‘evil’. Or was it ‘cruel’? It’s true. I am. But what am I gonna do? Unrequited love is the only romantic kind.

Been watching lots of YouTube too. Seinfeld, salsa dancing. I hear there’s a bigscreen version of this where the shows go on for ages! Must investigate.

Here’s a YouTube clip of cute Northerner, Anthony Hill, a student who is also a singer-songwriter. Does a lovely line in covers of other songs too. Sings while playing guitar, sitting on his bed.

This is his version of Scouting for Girls ‘She’s So Lovely’. All about a guy in love with a girl – who has a boyfriend. “She’s so lovely…” he sings and wonders, “I don’t know how we’ll make it through this…”

Yep. That’s Josh in the next two books. *evil laff* Can you guess who the girl is?

If you enjoy this, be sure to watch some of Anthony’s own songs. My new favourite is Ode to Sangria.