Category: Joshua Files

MG and ‘The Joshua Files’

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ARG ice shock

Make your own ICE SHOCK trailer! (and some ARG news…)

Well a very Happy New year to everyone on this lovely, crispy-crunchy Twelfth Night!

I thought I’d alert my blog readers to the fact that there’s a new contest at themgharris.com, the official online hangout for fans of The Joshua Files. 

This one is for budding movie-makers – to make a 30-second video for ICE SHOCK.

There are photos, images, hints, tips, sources of royalty-free images and music, plus a couple of plot spoilers for ICE SHOCK, to nudge your creative impulses.

Go on, have a try! You could win one of these:

In other news, I have had a stonkingly good Christmas and New Year with much socialising and partying – but not TOO much. I can’t handle too much – start to crave the peace and quiet of my desk.

But some is good, as is afternoon tea at Huffkins in Burford, a lovely Cotswold village.

Apart from that, I’ve also been working on the ARG (Alternate Reality Game).

I forget – have we said what it’s going to be called yet?

Nope, I don’t believe we have. Well, it’s called THE DESCENDANT, which is the title of the techno-thriller novel I wrote back in 2005, before INVISIBLE CITY. It’s from this manuscript that the backstory of Joshua Files is drawn, as well as the ARG. I originally conceived a sequel, which was to be entitled THE FIFTH CODEX. 

But then it struck me that the hero of THE FIFTH CODEX could be a youngster. And from that, I had the idea to write for children. (That and a reluctant-reader teenage daughter who I longed to see reading…)

At the beginning of THE DESCENDANT two DNA scientists meet to swap secret biological samples. One scientist is murdered and the other goes on the run. Is he the killer? Or is he running from the killer? The story moves from Mexico to Europe and then to Iraq, where a mysterious underground chamber hides an ancient secret about human civilisation.

For the ARG, we introduced a new character, Gabi – the teenage daughter of the murdered scientist. Her father has been killed – but why? And by whom? Like Josh she’s all alone…stressed out…can’t believe what she’s hearing about her father…and increasingly close to danger. And since her Dad was Josh’s godfather, Gabi turns to her old friend in Oxford for help.

Josh is ready and happy to help…but it won’t be long before his life is taken over by the dramatic events at the beginning of ICE SHOCK.

When we launch THE DESCENDANT ARG you’ll be able to watch as Gabi’s story unfolds. Who’ll solve the mystery first – you or Gabi? And will Gabi survive to tell the tale? In a real-time interactive finale you’ll be able to watch and assist as Gabi goes on a midnight run – with her life at stake.

I’m making a 60-second video trailer about THE DESCENDANT for some online retailers who are interested in having a glimpse. Is this the kind of thing you’d like to see here too? Or does it too badly violate the ARG maxim TINAG – This Is Not A Game?

Tell me what you think.

Categories
2012

Is the 2012 prophecy linked to the economy?

I never do this, but for once I’m going to reference something else in the blogosphere and comment on it.

Yes – me – taking an interest in public affairs! Me peeking out from my self-imposed coccoon/ivory tower!

Well it’s 2012, is what it is. I keep an eye out for juicy 2012 stories and I liked the cut of this one’s jib.

In his Ten Economic Predictions for 2009 writing for the stock investment tip Website Seeking Alpha,  Jason Hamlin lists ten predictions, some of which seem startlingly precise to the untrained eye (gold rising to up to $2,000, for example). It’s gloomy doomy, as you’d expect although Jason tries to see the bright side: we’ll all be better for it in the long run.

Well sure, that’s the conclusion historians often make about terrible historical events. The Black Death in the European Middle Ages did wonders for class mobility, by all accounts. I’d still sooner not have been one of those that died of black death to make Europe a better place, however.

The 2012 connection comes in the conclusion: the world’s economy may hit rock bottom in 2012. If there was ever an event that might change the whole world’s outlook on life, a broken economy might do it. That’s what Jason reckons. Is this what the ancient Maya foresaw? That the finances of the world could only continue for so long and then blam. It was all bound to fall to pieces. Probably around 2012. Dec 21st or 22nd. Round about teatime.

That’s some pretty fine soothsaying, if you don’t mind me saying so. Economic mysteries revealed in celestial events like the precession of the galaxy…wow.

So, we have now officially considered our first bit of 2012 quackery.

As Bill Clinton’s election campaign team liked to say, it’s the economy, stupid.

Categories
ice shock mgharris websites

Pre-packaged Christmas blog

For the second time it strikes me that I’ve been Doing Blogging All Wrong.

Over at Litopia, the writer’s community run by my literary agent, they put out a daily podcast. I actually believed people were insane dedicated enough to get up early to record this every morning.

But no. Turns out that this is what my agent does with his Sunday afternoons, then preps all the podcasts for a neat daily publication schedule. That way he can put something out every day without actually going mad.

So too the 12 Days Of Christmas feature over at literary magazine The View From Here, was prepped in advance and is now lined up to appear on a schedule over Christmas.

My own article appears on the second day of Christmas. As in – today!

At least it will be – when you read this.

(Btw readers who voted for me to post clues about ICE SHOCK might want to take a look. I give away a juicy bit of plot-line on this article…)

Lightbulb moment. You’d think that I would have cottoned on to the idea from our work developing the ARG that will be co-launched with ICE SHOCK. One of the websites has over 60 blog entries scheduled to appear over a month. We’re hoping that people will become hopelessly addicted and be checking the site every hour or so for updates as the story unfolds. It’s a thriller, so the pace hots up towards the end.

Yet it’s never occurred to me to do this with my own blog.

Until this post, everything you read has been published right away. No planning, just feel-think-write-publish.

There’s glory for you.

I received a brilliant fan letter recently. A boy from Colchester who said lovely things about INVISIBLE CITY and then said he was looking forward to my next book. He then described what he wanted my next book to be about – in quite some detail! Enough detail that I would probably be in trouble if I wrote exactly that plot. I think I’ll write back and suggest he writes up his idea himself. It sounded fab. People stranded on an island and at the mercy of flesh-eating zombies. Cool huh?

Apart from that, I’m having a very Christmassy Christmas, lots of carol singing and advent services and relatives and friends. Today we sampled various bloatation aids – cream tea in Burford, fish and chips, mince pies and mulled wine. And lemon, strawberry and blackcurrant bonbons from an old-fashioned sweet shop.

By the time this post appears I will be a BLIMP.

Categories
appearances writers

Heinstein and Friends

Oxford-based radio presenter Bill Heine has his first book out – ‘Heinstein of the Airwaves’. It’s a set of recollections of his years working for BBC Radio Oxford during which he came to see a very different side to Oxford.

Not the Oxford of ‘dreaming spires’ and Inspector Morse and scientific endeavour, but the Oxford of ordinary people and troubled estates and corrupt publishers (Robert Maxwell)…the real Oxford.

I love this book and read most of it in one sitting soon after buying it at the wonderful launch party in the Ashmolean Museum. Of course I turned straight to the one story in which I had participated – the story of how Bill Heine and author Brian Aldiss incurred the wrath of Stanley Kubrick when they tried to show the then-banned film ‘A Clockwork Orange’ at Bill’s movie house, The Penultimate Picture Palace.

That night, I was in the audience, having queued for ages for the free showing of this notorious film. I’d read the novel by Anthony Burgess and was keen to see it on screen. When Brian Aldiss came forward and explained to the gathered audience that Kubrick had sent ‘people’ and an injunction to stop the show, I got up to leave. I’d queued for ages next to and was now sitting beside a quietly spoken young guy who’d told me that he’d watched the film 57 times. He loved Alex, he told me with tears in his eyes. “I feel so sorry for him when he’s being tortured…”

If you know the story of Clockwork Orange, you might understand why this kinda worried me. So, I declined Bill Heine’s offer to the audience that they could stay and watch ‘Doctor Strangelove’.

Bill Heine invited me to co-host his radio show the week that ‘Invisible City’ was launched. Here’s a 3-minute excerpt of the show.

There was a second event to launch ‘Heinstein of the Airwaves’ last week, at Blackwell’s bookshop in Oxford. Bill invited four authors to talk about their books, updating him or retelling stories that he’d coaxed out of them on his radio show. So I shared a platform with adult authors for the first time; Brian Aldiss, Moazzam Beg and Mark Lynas. They told their stories before me; seriously dramatic stuff about dealing with Stanley Kubrick, being unjustly arrested and imprisoned for years in Guantanamo Bay, and almost dying of altitude sickness on a melting glacier (respectively!).

I wasn’t sure how I was going to come across after all that. But light relief and a sneak peek at the beginning of Josh’s journey actually went down very well! And what with Christmas coming up and granddaughters and godchildren and nieces and nephews to consider…we sold lots of copies of ‘Invisible City’!

It made a change for me to be signing copies for adults! Children don’t usually stay to chat…I guess they are shy? But that night at Blackwell’s I was kept very busy and met many interesting new people, including children’s authors and the organisers of Oxford’s new Jazz Festival…who invited me to their launch party! (click on the link to see photos.)

Categories
ice shock

ICE SHOCK video trailer

The Joshua Files – ICE SHOCK book trailer

Here it is finally – the video trailer for ICE SHOCK.

You might spot something intriguing in there…if you look carefully.