Last week I emerged from the self-imposed semi-hermitage of finishing a manuscript, to drive up north to Wakefield and the Riveting Reads Awards. The lovely kids of Wakefield had picked APOCALYPSE MOON to be on the shortlist, and presentations of each author’s books were promised, so I was keen to go.
With South Parade pupils at Riveting Reads 2013
The Yr5s of South Parade School had made artwork around the APOCALYPSE MOON jacket, with different textures and using materials including papier mache, chalk, oil pastels and paint. Lovely! They very kindly gave it to me at the end, so when I can find some wall-space (on a non-rainy day!) I’ll take a photo for the blog. My first time seeing artwork based on the final dark book – before it’s usually been Invisible City.
A group of Yr7s from Ossett Academy did something else I’ve never seen – they acted out a scene from the book! The scene was set in the ‘Muwan’ – the advanced aircraft flown by the Sky Guardians of Ek Naab. The kids had made a control panel from a keyboard and some painted cups, and of course – tin foil. Four kids held the Muwan scenery in place around the actors, who played Josh and Tyler. Two boys did Josh’s inner voice (nice! I hadn’t ever really thought about the dramatic possibilities of that!). I wish I’d videoed them, they were all so great!
Ossett Academy Yr7s and their Muwan control panel stage scenery.
The chose to dramatize the section where Josh shows alt-Tyler (from the parallel future) the Muwan. This Tyler hasn’t ever seen it, is only just now beginning to accept that maybe Josh is telling the truth about time travelling from June 2012. He gives a speech (inspired by Kurtz’s famous speech from Apocalypse Now). I really enjoyed watching it and talking to the students afterwards about why they picked that particular piece. I’ll admit, I’m happy that a scene that I hoped would resonate, had an effect on these readers. Tyler, in a very toned down way, of course, is the Colonel Kurtz character of this story. The one who’s had his innocence ripped away by living through the horrors.
Often the difference in making a story work for young people lies simply in which end of the story you choose to tell. Tyler’s story would be a lot darker and grittier than Josh’s. Josh leads a charmed life, by comparison. But hopefully, that makes him easier to relate to.
I was delighted to thank all the kids who made artwork or presented the drama, a package of Joshua Files goodies, the gym bag, enamel badge and wristband. Lots of happy faces!
Ah but – the book didn’t win the award! That honour went to the impossibly youthful-looking Ciaran Murtagh with GENIE IN TRAINING. Congrats!
Guesting today on the blog it’s none other than Josh Garcia. Delivered this late, after staying up all night at some crazy party in Ek Naab. But I’ll let Josh tell you in his own words.
Best. Night. Ever.
I woke late on the day that was supposed to be the end of the world. I had a little smile to myself looking at Twitter at all the Mayan Doomsday posts, laughing it up. Well, sure, why not? The way we know we succeeded is that no-one outside of Ek Naab knew much about what was going on. The space scientists knew, but you have to expect that…
The preparations for the party were already under way. Benicio and some of the Sky Guardians were going to let people onto their training machine, the virtual reality simulator. It’s a piece of kit that took Carlos Montoyo into negotiations with one of NASA’s major suppliers to get hold of. This was back when the NRO had only the vaguest idea that in the skies of southern Mexico, something strange might just be going on. He pretended that the owners of the plantation above Ek Naab were planning to open a multi-billion dollar theme park and that the simulator was going to be like, our Mission Orange. But that’s another story.
Anyway, Benicio was in the main plaza, setting up the simulator. I grabbed a breakfast burrito and helped out with the guys who were setting up the rolling stage. There was going to be a concert there until two am. There aren’t many musicians in EK Naab so the twenty of us had to take turns playing different sets, each playing two sets, three hours apart. My band’s been together for only three months so we’re not that great, firstly. But worse – we don’t have more than 25 minutes of music we can play! I wanted us to play originals but Leonora, our lead singer, refused. I don’t know why because it’s not as though people in Ek Naab really listen to music but ever since Mum and I arrived, I have to admit, the interest in rock music has increased A LOT.
Ixchel rolled up at around 2 in the afternoon. She had a twinkly look in her eye that I took the wrong way completely. I was all set to finish up, get some lunch and head over to her place until I realised that she had something else in mind. Mum or Montoyo must have tipped her off because it turned out that they’d cooked up a plan to fly out to Tlacotalpan. Now that is also another BIG story but I have been instructed not to write about what happened in Tlacotalpan because of SPOILERS.
So we went off to Tlacotalpan, Mum, Montoyo, Ixchel and me. And amazing, wonderful stuff happened and it was very cool and also kind of romantic, in more than one way, but I’m getting into spoilerish territory there.
When we got back to Ek Naab it was one in the morning. I’d promised Leonora that I’d join in with the band if they waited until the end for me, and amazingly, without hardly any fuss at all, they did.
We played that Gotye song that everyone is mad about (even here) and also a couple of Green Day classics (Holiday and Good Riddance) and Muse (Supermassive Black Hole) and then specially for Leonora, Fast Car (which she sings really well) and Poker Face (less impressive but then I think that song is less difficult to sing, I mean, even I can do an OK job of that. :)). It’s kind of a weird set, but that’s because we’re mashing up all the different band members’ musical tastes. I guess mainly we’re just going to have to be happy as a cover band. 😛
And then we got off the stage and all the kids in Ek Naab all got on stage and did Ek Naab Style. Which is exactly what it sounds like. Yes I videoed it but no, I’m not allowed to put in on Youtube.
Gangnam Style – one crazy end to 2012. Believe me, back when I first found the Ix Codex, I did NOT see that coming.
Well, I was too tired to join in, just exhausted from the long day. I put my arms around Ixchel and finally, headed home with her.
For today’s special Mayan apocalypse-themed post, I’ll be posing a dilemma faced by one of the characters in APOCALYPSE MOON.
(I won’t say which character, in case you haven’t read the book yet because it’s very spoiler-ish.)
When making a dash from their home to a doomsday-prepped retreat in the hills, this character brings certain books. But along the way they are robbed, have to bargain their way out of trouble etc. Sometimes books are traded for their burn value. In the end , only THREE books can be saved. In APOCALYPSE MOON, those three books turn out to be highly significant to the story.
I put that question to Anthony Horowitz, Michael Grant and Junot Diaz, three authors whose books I admire, and who’ve written (or are writing) novels featuring post-apocalyptic mayhem.
Junot Diaz replied with a charmingly mis-typed message from the Dominican Republic: Pita. In dr. No email. Typing tid on cel phone. Have to skip. Please forgive.
Duly forgiven!
So I’m stepping in as the third author to add my selections to Anthony’s and Michael’s. The only rule was this – the books you choose to save must be in your house right now.
Michael Grant
In case you’ve been living on another planet for the past few years, Michael’s fantastic GONE series features a thrilling, paranoid world in which everyone over the age of 15 has simply GONE. The kids of Perdido Beach, CA are left to duke it out amongst themselves. But the phenomenon that spirits away everyone over their 15th birthday has made its impact elsewhere too. Mayhem, action, politics and romance are only part of the result. Think Lord of the Flies meets X-Men.
Hmmm. Okay. Has to be a book currently in my house. I have a lot of my own books, but I’d burn them — they’re available digitally, plus I’ve already them. There are also a lot of my wife’s books, and I would want to be very careful about saying I’d burn any of them. Very careful. My choices are mostly about books that have taught me something and whose particular strengths I cannot match in my own writing. But the three I would absolutely not burn.
Terribly cliche answer, but TheLord Of The Rings. It’s not that the prose is particularly wonderful, it’s not. It’s pretty bad in parts. It’s the world-building. No one before, and very few after, touched Tolkien’s deep, erudite, devoted world-building.
Post Captain – Patrick O’Brian. As with Tolkien, I admire the erudition, the level of knowledge. But O’Brian is a much better writer of prose than Tolkien. This is the second in what became a 21 book series, and I learned from O’Brian that there were different ways to bring a satisfying ending to a particular series book. His characters are absolutely indelible.
The City and the City – China Miéville. I have a pretty good imagination, if I may be immodest. But Miéville made me take a step back and say, “Whoa.” He’s not much for character development, but he’s a good writer with a really first class imagination.
Of course on any given week I’d have a different list.
Thank you Michael! We’re looking forward to the finale of the GONE series: LIGHT, out March 2013.
Anthony Horowitz
Again, for those currently living in the International Space Station, Anthony’s POWER OF FIVE series is a modern-day epic fantasy in which an ancient threat that once dominated the Earth now looms on our horizon. Only five teenagers – the reincarnation of ancient guardians who once banished the evil Old Ones – stand between us and oblivion. But what’s this? – the final book is titled OBLIVION. Which I guess tells us that the Power of Five needs that extra final push. I’ve been saving this one to read over the Christmas/New Year break.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich – William Schirer. This is the best history of the rise and fall of Hitler and the Nazis that I’ve ever read and a vital lesson to future generations. It’s an extraordinary examination of the nature of evil and one we all have to understand if we’re not going to repeat it.
The Oxford Book of Poetry (2008). I suppose this is a bit obvious but I love reading poetry and this one book contains so much genius, so many great poets. If you want to read what humans were like – what they loved, what they thought – before the apocalypse, read their poetry.
Great Expectations– Charles Dickens. I’d save the complete Dickens if I could but if you’re only going to allow me a measly three books, I’ll keep this one, the greatest novel ever written (in my opinion).
Thanks Anthony!
Finally – my own choices.
One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Would be my own candidate for the best novel ever written except for the fact that it doesn’t tell the story of one main character but rather of a whole village. I usually admit that this is my favourite book when asked and have written more about it here.
Labyrinths– Jorge Luis Borges. A collection of amazing short stories that has influenced authors including Thomas Pynchon, Umberto Eco and me. There’s more plot in many of these than in many novels, which is one reason I’d save them. Each story or essay takes the reader into a world of erudition, imagination and wonder.
The Arabian Nights – translated by Sir Richard Burton, Easton Press edition. One of several books my father let me choose from his library of leather-bound Easton Press books. (Oh the woe of not being able to save them all!) The tale of Scheherazade and her incredibly story-telling skills has always been one of my favourites. Surely the best short story collection ever?!
HOWEVER! If I also owned my father’s leather-bound collection of Carl Barks Uncle Scrooge stories, however, one of the three books above would not be coming along for the apocalypse. My sister Adriana is going to have to save that one for posterity.
Continuing the series of posts running down to the day after the Mayan apocalypse (because that’s how optimistic I am that we’ll live to see it) – it’s time for Tyler and Ixchel to take your questions.
IXCHEL
Do people often have trouble pronouncing your name? (from Tasmina Khanom)
Yes! Also Josh did it, at first. People from Anglo- backgrounds tend to call me Icks-shel. When I first met Josh he had a pretty strong British accent speaking Spanish. It’s better (much) now that he’s been living in Ek Naab, although people always want to practice their English with him so often times they don’t talk to him in Spanish.
Do you still wanna leave? Or do you love Josh enough to stay? (from Kaelyn Cook)
I still want to leave! But with Josh – of course! We’ve both been offered a place from next October at Oxford University, if we get the points we need in our exams next summer. Josh got accepted at Aquinas College (obviously he was going to apply to his father’s college) and I was accepted at Lady Margaret Hall. We’re also applying to Princeton and Harvard. One way or another, Kaelyn, I’m getting out of Ek Naab! Those couple of months I spent waitressing in Veracruz were tough but I really enjoyed the freedom to just hang out in a normal place.
What do you want to become when you grow up, since you study all those subjects? (from Jeremy Mallia)
I want to keep going on the ancient languages thing. I’d like to learn a few more, and then get into a doctorate program. I’ve been looking at Linear A, and a couple of other languages that haven’t yet been deciphered. But I guess what I really want, long term, is to find about more about the Erinsi. Maybe we can find some more remains and find out more about them? It’s such a shame that we had so little time with Ninbanda, But there are hours and hours of recording the NRO made of her talking about the Erinsi civilisation. So – that’s the answer: I want to be the world expert on the Erinsi.
What do you find most complex about Josh? (from Henry Deferrars)
Ha – I have to say, my first reaction was to laugh at this! He’s not that complex. Is he? I guess I find his musical side the most interesting thing about him because it’s something I didn’t see much of for a long time. But the more I got to know him the more I realised that music is what he really loves. He did so many things when he was a little boy, and I think it took him a long time to work out what he enjoys most. I mean, he’s so good with the capoeira and the pilot stuff. So I guess that’s it – when we first got together he was all running around and wanting to be fighting and riding motorbikes and then flying the Muwan. Yet deep down he was just wanting to be this boy with his guitar, writing songs.I think he learned how to do the other stuff just because he’s a Bakab, and he knew he needs to be strong and able to defend himself, etc.
Have you ever watched Toy Story 2, like Josh once suggested? And if so – what do you think of it? and have you watched any other Disney films? (from Chloe Smith)
Yes, we watched it together when he was in Ek Naab for that first Christmas in 2010. It’s amazing! But actually I like Toy Story 3 even better. It’s not quite such a fun story as the second movie, but Toy Story 3 made me cry and for some reason made me think of my mother (who died when I was a little girl, and I never really played with my toys the same way after that.) Josh still thinks that the second movie is the best one. Those Toy Story movies are the best Disney films, I think. But since you asked, I have now also watched, and really love, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,Aladdin, The Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, Up, Alice in Wonderland. It’s too bad I didn’t watch those when I was a little girl!
Is there any chance of you and Josh being together? (from Gabriel Spence)
I guess you’re asking if we’re going to stay together? 🙂 I Hope so! I kind of got used to having the boy around. OK, I really like Josh a LOT. And now that I’m pretty sure he’s not Arcadio, well, that makes me feel a lot better.
Did you know all this was going to happen? (from Cory Richards)
Did I? No! How could I? There were times when I was terrified that one day Montoyo would come to me and say that Josh had gone off on some crazy mission and that he wasn’t coming back. You can’t imagine what his mother went through each time she knew he was away doing something risky. That’s actually why Josh didn’t want to tell her, most of the time. So you can guess how relieved I am that things seem to have settled down!
Thank you for your questions! Winner of the Best Question in this round is Henry Deferrars.
TYLER
Do you still pursue
Capoeira? (from Henry Deferrars)
Totally! It’s like, my main thing. I want to be a Mestre (Capoeira Master) some day soon. I’m going to help set up the new school that our Mestre is starting in South Africa. And in my gap year I’m going to Salvador in Brazil for five months to work on a local community project, and also be studying capoeira. That should get me my red belt (the first belt where you are a Master). I’ve already been teaching kids to play capoeira, so I’ll keep doing that and keep going!
Do you wish you had the ability to go back or forward in time like Josh and visit an alternate reality? (from Jeremy Mallia)
Between you and me, I have a hard time believing that Josh actually did that stuff. OK I guess there’s proof – how could he have got out of that pharmaceutical company in Switzerland and how could he have gone to those other realities and all… But I can’t bring myself to believe it. Josh told me all about other-Tyler, too, but it’s just so unreal. To me at least. I mean like, what’s that all about? Come on. It’s properly mad. It bends my head! So would I like to try it? I dunno. It’s kind of freaky. There’s nowhere that I’d rather be than where I am right now. That’s been true my whole life. Which – I guess – means I’m a lucky boy. Hmm. I’m still thinking. But no, I wouldn’t want to risk ending up somewhere worse than here, cos here is pretty great for me.
Feel a bit of a cop-out now. 😛
Do you ever wish you could go back, before you got tangled up with Josh? (from Kaelyn Cook)
No way! Some of the time it was mental and scary and I’m not gonna lie to you, getting shot in the hip was blatantly the worst thing that has ever happened to me. If you’d asked me within six months of that happening I’d have said yeah, I wish I’d not bothered to go round to his house that day. But now that I think back, some of it was a laugh. Like when we dressed up like Batman and Robin to sneak into that party, and that nonce Simon Madison was there dressed like Batman, too. Or the time my and Ollie saved Josh from drowning in the Caribbean Sea, after Madison abducted him in Chetumal. Good times, man.
Thank you for your questions! Winner of the Best Question in this round is Kaelyn Cook.
N.B. Beady-eyed fans of a certain TV show will have spotted the reference to a certain TV show’s episode in the title. A free signed book if you can tell me what the reference is, with a full explanation about why it is relevant!
Through the magic of tinternet, we’ve managed to get a message to Josh Garcia in Ek Naab. (I posted a comment on his blog, is how. If you haven’t found Josh’s new blog yet, take a look: myinvisiblecity.com)
The prize for BEST QUESTION goes to Tobias Nottingham, who will be receiving a rare signed first edition of any Joshua book. THANKS to everyone who sent a question!
If you had the chance to go to another alternate reality, what would it be like and why? (From Tobias Nottingham)
Hi Tobias. Well you know what? I’ve been to a couple of alternate realities already. I went to a pretty darn horrible alternate future, in which the Sect of Huracan had won. To be frank, I still have nightmares about that. But there was one alternate reality that I can’t get out of my head. There’d been a nuclear war and some really nightmarish stuff in the 1960s, (The Cuban Missile Crisis didn’t turn out so well in that reality.) And quite a lot of the world was basically wiped out.
But there was a whole different attitude there. Nuclear weapons has been completely dismantled. There was no Islamic fundamentalist terrorism, no problems in the Middle East (to be fair, that’s because they’d been bombed badly, too.) The USA and Russia weren’t big powers any more. Brazil, India, Australia and China were the big superpowers. And Mexico was very chilled. It wasn’t like now. In that reality, I had all the money I could every need and my girlfriend and I could have lived pretty happily on the beach. I’m ashamed to admit it, because I shouldn’t have enjoyed a place where so many had suffered so much to make it such a peaceful world. All I can tell you is that I was happy there. Although I missed my Mum, Tyler, Benicio and Emmy.
And I’d go back there. Please don’t hate me for it.
What have you found hardest about your life? (from Henry DeFerrars)
Hmmm – I try not to look backwards too much, so right now I feel pretty good. The moon machine is up and running OK and everything should be cool for the 21st/22nd December (you wouldn’t know about it, since the media seem to have it well under wraps!). Some of the physical stuff was hard at the time. I don’t think about it much now but being shot in the leg was very not-good. But if anything niggles at me, it’s this – Tyler. He’s the real hero, if you ask me. He stood by me when I needed him and what did it get him? He’s ended up back in the Sect of Huracan’s future. And even though I know that we need that alternate reality to exist so that our reality can be the way it is, I feel bad that my best mate had to suffer – and still has to struggle in that world.
Why didn’t you go back in time to save your father? (from Andrew Lemerand)
I tried, man! I did. That was my whole plan, the main reason that I fixed the Bracelet of Itzamna. Look how that turned out – I found my dad, but he still ended up being transported to the slopes of Mount Orizaba. After that, honestly, I was too sh*t scared to try again. I kept thinking – and I still do – what else could go wrong? You think things can’t be worse but they CAN! Jeez. If I’ve learned anything with the time-travelling it is that.
If the Hurucan do take over the world what will you do and how? (from Calum Webb)
You’re right – it’s not a sure thing that the Sect still won’t find a way to bring about some kind of doomsday! I’m just hoping that we’ve done everything we can to stop the superwave. That would just have made it so much easier for the Sect. But they might not give up. One thing we’ve really got going for us is that we know the formula for hypnoticin – the Sect’s mind-control drug that only they can use. So we’re already working on a drug to block that. If the Sect tried to take over, we’d make that drug available freely, worldwide. If they found some way round that…I dunno. I guess I’d stay in Ek Naab and do what I could from here. But don’t worry. The Sect of Huracan are my sworn enemies. While I’m alive I’ll fight them. 🙂
What if forecast is correct? What can we do to ourselves each if it really happened? Whether there is any relevance to the present situation? (from Amelia Nurkasih)
The thing forecast by the Mayans is going to be OK. It’s all under control now – finally! But if something like that really happened . . . wow. I think your only bet would be if you were one of those ‘doomsday preppers’. Have you heard about those types? Kind of like my dad (Andres Garcia) in the alternate future. He was fully prepped out. had his ‘bug-out’ plan all ready and when the time came, he was off up to the hills with the family (to the Lake District) where he’d been prepping a house with food and stuff that could last them years. (Here’s a website about a TV documentary about Doomsday Preppers.)
Do you sometimes wish you could go back to that Capoeira night, before you went home? (from Jens Hildebrand)
also Josh, do you want your old life back without knowing Ixchel, Ek Naab, Montoyo or you are glad what you have and don´t want to change it (from Viktória Malotová)
Hey thanks, Jens and Viktoria, that’s almost the same question. Short answer – no. I’ve been through all that. You might say – well if you could go back, then Camila would still be alive. Well maybe. Or maybe she’d have tried to go after the Ix Codex without me, and been killed anyway? I can’t let myself think that way. It’s like what other-Tyler told me – you can’t stay anywhere for ever. You have to keep moving forward. Might seem like a weird thing for a time-traveller to say, since I can kind of go back. But I can’t go back anywhere inside myself, if you get me.
Do you wish you could’ve done something different? Something to save your sister or your dad? (from Kaelyn Cook)
I wish I’d done lots of things different! I wish I’d spent more time with people that I never saw again. Like my two sisters, Camila and Sofia. I wish I’d hung out more with my dad. It’s weird, now that I actually like all that jazz music, after listening to his iPod, I keep thinking of stuff I’d say to him about Miles Davis and Stan Getz and all those guys. I have this little fantasy where we hook up in some alternate reality, in the past, and go to the Montreal Jazz festival together. (maybe this should have been part of my answer to Tobias…?)
But as for saving them – Kaelyn – no. It’s been hard to accept that there are things I can’t change. It’s like that Butterfly Effect film, have you seen it? I watch it a lot, it all feels verrry familiar now. In that film, he keeps trying, over and over, to go back to a time where things can be perfect. Looking for his own zero moment to correct. You can NOT imagine the temptation to do that.
Maybe I’m starting to get religion again, but I’m starting to wonder if there isn’t a force, call it the Universe, or Fate, call it God, that controls certain aspects of our lives. And that some events are like fixed points that can’t be changed, because the Universe/Fate/God will always arrange things so that one way or another, they happen. I’ve stopped believing in a proper multiverse, in which every possibility is played out. I think, instead, that the different realities are in some kind of relationship with each other. Maybe the Erinsi time-jump device actually created them? I keep wondering about that thing. Why did the Erinsi make it? How? Was it from knowledge they gained from the dying universe, the one that transmitted it’s ‘world memory’ through a black hole? And what is the Oracle that Bosch-I-mean-Itzamna mentioned?
It’s strange to think that Arcadio and Bosch are both still out there, time-travelling. It’s one of the reasons I don’t want to get into it again. Too many cooks spoil the cookies, as my mum says.
Hey Josh, since you knew that the alternate you loved Emily, do you sometimes wish you could see how things could have turned out with her instead of Ixchel? (from Jeremy Mallia)
Dude…have you got a girlfriend?! Ixchel would NOT like it if I answered that any way except NO!!!
(actually I just asked if I could answer and she said sure why not. Her face was kind of a bit ironic when she said it but I’m going to take girl at her word, K?)
OK. The truth is that – I kissed Emmy a few times, back in Yr 7. In fact – she’s the first girl I kissed. It was at school, in one of the music practice rooms, where we were supposed to be ‘putting a band together’. But it never got beyond a smooch session. I just didn’t know what to do after the kissing bit. I mean, I didn’t know what to say. So it was like, we kissed and then I was just like, you wanna practice doing G-D-A-E a few more times so we can learn this song? and she was just like, OK and putting her gum back in her mouth. And then we went home with our mates and kind of just went ‘see ya’ to each other in front of them. And then she had this mysterious strop at me, honest to God I don’t even know why? And then we basically didn’t speak until Year 9, when we were in the same class for physics and did a coursework project together. Last I heard – swear to GOD – is that Emmy likes girls now. So when I heard that other-Josh and Emmy got it together in a serious way I was like – whoa. Strange days, right?
Thank you Josh Garcia for your answers! Be sure to let us know what you’re up to on 22nd December 2012…
N.B. Beady-eyed fans of a certain TV show will have spotted the reference to a certain TV show’s episode in the title. A free signed book if you can tell me what the reference is, with a full explanation about why it is relevant!
Guesting today on the blog it’s none other than Josh Garcia. Delivered this late, after staying up all night at some crazy party in Ek Naab. But I’ll let Josh tell you in his own words.
