Category: Joshua Files

MG and ‘The Joshua Files’

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Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 1 of 2)

MG at Kennington Literary Festival (photo by Mostly Books)

It’s all over the Internet and the news – to save money, local governments plan to close down some libraries. In Oxfordshire, 20 of 43 local libraries are threatened with closure. The communities are protesting, demonstrating, writing letters. This is the moment to persuade the county councils to change their minds!

I’m involved with the Save the Kennington Library Campaign. I’ve written before about this lovely village library and the Kennington Free Literary Festival that the community organises to support their library.

Local primary school children who use the Kennington Library have written letters to Cllr Keith Mitchell, who leads the Oxfordshire County Council. The Save the Library campaigners have written to Cllr Mitchell and to local MP, Nicola Blackwood, inviting them both to tea with the kids on February 7th, and to receive the letters of petition.

I’ll be joining with Korky Paul, an Oxford neighbour and illustrator of many wonderful children’s books (including Winnie the Witch), to read to the Kennington children.

Local media have also been invited to record the event. We’re very much hoping that Cllr Mitchell will turn up!

Here’s an excerpt of a letter I wrote to both.

The Government proposes to radically overhaul education, which I support. In that instance, it isn’t proposing to close schools and let natural selection take over! Libraries deserve the same, albeit on a smaller scale.

Please – consult with stakeholders, ask for proposals and bring in examples of best practice.

Don’t just cut a hole in the heart of the community. Don’t make the mistake of assuming that because some people don’t personally use a service, they don’t have an interest in its existence. Where would we be if we took that approach with every publicly-funded institution?

Libraries and civilisation go hand in hand. What do we rightly regard with horror as one of the existential crises in Western civilisation? The burning of the Library of Alexandria!

Please use your influence and act to serve the community who elected you.

Please show that this matters to you!

I’m involved in the Campaign to Save the Kennington Library. This is a perfect example of a local library that should be supported. It is the Big Society in action. The community run a Free Literary Festival (see attached article from The Oxford Times), which raises awareness and funds for the Kennington Library. The library is used regularly by local primary schools, in effect providing an extension of their own library provision. Without that library people for whom mobility is an issue will have difficulty getting to town.

So…roll on February 7th…! I will post a report from the event, right here on the blog.

UPDATE: To see how it all turned out, see Save the Libraries – Kennington (Part 2 of 2)

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dark parallel other books writers

A 2011 Round-Up

The Joshua Files - Dark Parallel proofs
The Joshua Files - Dark Parallel proofs

I know, the New Year ’round-up’ should refer to the previous year. But I’m exhausted just thinking about it. In general, I’m starting the year tired. “Why do we have New Year?” my Teenage Daughter asked me. “How is it a ‘new beginning’? If you commit a crime on Dec 31st 2010, you’d still be punished in 2011.”

So it is with seasonal illness. If you spend the Christmas/New Year period suffering repeated attacks from viruses and secondary sinus infections, you start the year exhausted.

Lots happened last year and mostly very good, luckily for me. But with a diary that is getting packed out, I’d rather look ahead. So here are my forward-looking highlights of 2011.

  1. My sister’s wedding. Little Sister is getting married in Melbourne, Australia, giving me a lovely excuse to visit.
  2. First ever visit to school in Europe (outside of UK). Looking forward to meeting the students of College Leman in Geneva!
  3. Publication of Joshua Files book 4 – DARK PARALLEL. The photo shows the stack I’ll be sending off today to winners of the New year’s prize draw and to some book bloggers who have expressed special enthusiam for Joshua.
  4. A decision about After Joshua, What Next? If you follow this blog you may have heard me refer to Ultra Secret New Project. Well, New Editor has now read the manuscript and given me some pointers about how to improve it. So it won’t be much longer before I find out… (AL Kennedy saved me the bother of writing about what it’s like waiting for an editorial report over Christmas in her blog post Waiting for book ‘go’… Basically – what she said.)
  5. Teenage Daughter’s UCAS application is in. Will there be offers? Will she get the grades? Is this the year when my Firstborn Leaves Home?
  6. My first London Book Fair. Big trade fairs make me dizzy, as I learned when running an IT business. Without a stand to focus on or a conference speech to make, I get terribly baffled and have to go and lie down. So I’d foresworn never to attend a Book Fair unless invited as a speaker. I’ll be talking alongside Francesca Simon (author of Horrid Henry) about school libraries, in an event run by the School Libraries Association.
  7. Book deals! My fingers are tightly crossed for two ridiculously talented friends of mine from very long ago. Sarah Hilary (crime writer) and Christian David (author of a rollicking historical biography-fiction) are both writers who secured literary agents last year. They are now working on edits prior to the big submission process – to editors! I won’t be happy until they are recognized for the huge literary talents that they are.

It’s a particularly lovely set of events. No lurking gremlins as yet. However, I find it easier not to look too far into the future. The plots of my own stories almost always involve calamity striking the minute everything seems to have gone calm. Not that I enjoy such a rollercoaster in my own life. I try to make lemonade when served lemons. Nevertheless, it gets increasingly tiring, all that lemonade-making. That’s what they don’t tell you about getting older. Yes, you get wiser and more experienced, so lots of things are easier. But your energy levels diminish.

No wonder people turn to magic beans and nutrional supplements and exotic exercise regimes. If only all it took was Berocca.

However, I am still aching pleasantly from the weights I did at the gym a few days ago. I will change nothing! Maybe lose a little weight to look good in the Diane Von Furstenberg dresses.

Happy New Year!

If you haven’t seen it yet – here’s the draw for the advance review copies of DARK PARALLEL. Once again I’m assisted by Matt Barnard from Summertown Starbucks.

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appearances writers

A night of KLQ and Booked Up fun

More excitement on the Kids Lit Quiz and Booked Up front. Last week I joined the author’s team at the Oxfordshire & Berkshire heat of the Kids Lit Quiz, only to miss an historic finale because I had to swoosh off to That London for a Booked Up launch party.

(I love the swooshing to That London. It sounds very glam and so it is! Whizzing off on a train to some distant part of the capital to drink wine, eat canapes and meet lovely children’s authors and the movers and shakers in the Book Trust, who do so much for kids literacy in the UK that it’s not funny to imagine life without them.)

Anyway, the author team starred the inimitable Lucy Coats, the adorable Mark Robson, the quietly brilliant Susie Day, the Next Big Thing in teen historical fiction, Marie-Louise Jensen (yep, the former editorial director at Scholastic told me that), and a new friend, Joanne Kenrick, who I know from FaceBook and the kids lit world, but met for the first time that night.

Normally the combined intellect of Susie, Mark and Lucy alone would be fine to win the heat, beat all the kids, pah, see THAT?!

But not that night. It was an historic night, destined to bring the highest number of teams ever to participate in a heat (42), as well as the highest ever score in the KLQ (97.5).

St Gregs KLQ team 1 2010 (3rd place)

The author’s did not get the highest score, nope. The winners did – Oxford High, those brilliant girls. Joshua Files fans too, good on ’em!

(ahem – added belatedly. Apparently I’m wrong, the author’s team did win, by half a point. But their score flashed past in a moment onscreen and we never mention it when the authors win…)

However, the photo shows not the winning team (who for my money may go on to win the UK Championship next week). Instead, it shows the 3rd placed team from St Gregory the Great – the school of which I’m a governor. It’s only the second time we’ve fielded a team, and these guys had to beat former heat winners Cherwell in a tie-break for the 3rd position.

So three cheers for the Saints! And what an achievement by Oxford High – 1st and 2nd place, as well as a record-breaking score!

I missed all the excitement, alas. Still, I had big fun in London, met the lovely people on the selection panel who so kindly included Invisible City in the Booked Up list for 2010. Met Chris Priestly, whose amazing Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror helped me to give our daughter such a great Halloween. And Steve Cole, author of so many hit kids titles (Astrosaurs and Z-Rex, to name only two) that he makes me feel like a slacker.

Turns out that Steve Cole and I share a teenage passion for Blake’s 7. Oh the geekiness in the air as we quoted favourite episodes… Then I had to rush off to catch a train. I didn’t get round to telling Steve Cole how much Blake’s 7 fan fiction I’d written. Just as well. Sometimes I get all silly and start pressing it on fellow B7 fans. Never wise…

Steve Cole blogged about the Booked Up party too. And I may have mentioned Blake’s 7 before.

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appearances writers

Northern Ireland Triple Whammy – BookedUp, YLG and KidsLitQuiz

Some kind of publicist’s witchy magic must have been operating last week because Scholastic’s dynamite team of Alyx’n’Alex (suggest a HipHop name for the duo?) managed to coordinate three events into a one week visit.

I was over in Derry officially to launch the Northern Ireland pilot of the Booktrust’s BookedUp programme by which youngsters starting their secondary school careers are given a FREE book from a list of 19 titles. Hooray for Joshua – Invisible City was picked as one of the BookedUp titles for 2010.

MG Harris launches BookedUp Northern ireland in Derry Central Library 2010
BookedUp Launch Derry 2010

The wonderful staff of Derry Central Library, including Eugene Martin and Trisha were on hand, as well as Liz Canning of Booktrust, Hannah Pegg and Caroline Wright of BookedUp. Poor things, they had to sit through my Event (it’s a thing!) twice as classes of Yr8 kids from four different schools were brought in to hear all about Joshua, my visits to the land of the Maya as a teenager, etc. A spectacular lunch of fresh sandwiches and delicious traybakes was on hand to entertain us all. I was particularly impressed at the reach of the Booktrust when two ladies from the regional Education Boards were brought in, and then at the end, a TV crew from the BBC! Trisha, Liz and I then dashed off to talk to local BBC station Radio Foyle before I was whisked off to Bangor by Scholastic Book Fairs dynamo Jenny Duncan.

Where, in Bangor, I dined in slap-up style with established authors like Gillian Cross, Paul Dowswell, Geraldine McCaughrean, as well as leading lights of the UK Youth Libraries Group, Joy Court, Margaret Pemberton and Lesley Martin. And another newish author, Keren David…who also writes about a teenage boy.

Now that, for the record, is a Very Exciting Author Day. You have to write something pretty darn amazing on a writing day to match that.

The following day was a one-day conference, another first, the Youth Libraries Group in Northern Ireland. I was joined in a two-handed event by Keren David, author of two deliciousy angsty teen-boy novels, When I Was Joe and the sequel, Almost True. I’d spent the previous Friday and Saturday immersed in the world of Keren’s lead character Tyler, a 14-year old whose family life is hit by a bolt of lightning when he’s forced into the Witness Protection Scheme. So it was a very happy hour indeed that I spent discussing Tyler and Joshua with Keren, lead by Joy Court of YLG. I suspect the convivial atmosphere that Joy succeeded in encouraging may have led to some revelations that I didn’t plan to make, but hey-ho. I’m sure they won’t go further than the gathered audience of librarians…

(Keren David has blogged about the YLG conference in her post The day we went to Bangor.)

Tanja Jennings and Wayne Mills at KLQ Northern Ireland, 2010
Tanja Jennings and Wayne Mills at KLQ Northern Ireland, 2010d

The conference was no sooner drawing to a close when Carol Martin of Scholastic Book Fairs popped me into a car and it was off to Belfast for a whirlwind tour of schools and the Northern Ireland heat of the Kids Lit Quiz.

Quizmaster Wayne Mills blogged about the N.I. 2010 regional heat on his KidsLitQuiz blog.

Carol and I achieved an unprecedented level of book sales at Victoria College in Belfast when Carol unveiled a stash of now-rare, brand new neon sleeved copies of Invisible City and Zero Moment. I’ve spotted Ice Shock with the neon sleeve in shops, but mainly the PVC sleeved versions of the books are now out of stock. So the youngsters fair jumped on the books that carol brought along. I even had a couple of kids asking for signed, lined and dated copies to sell on ebay. ‘After I’ve read it’, they assured me…

At the KLQ, Wellington College, Belfast, was throwing a birthday party for the event’s 5th anniversary. Students of the school played songs from famous children’s movies (The Little Mermaid, Oliver), there was cake and balloons. And Coleraine High School won the regional heat, so go on to the UK Lids Lit Quiz Final in Oxford!

On the Friday morning I’d been prepared for a lie-in or a walk around town, but at the last minute Jenny Duncan pulled one last school visit out of the bag – Fort Hill Primary School in Lisburn. What enthusiatic Joshua readers they turned out to be! We had to finish the event a little earlier than usual so that I could sign all the Joshua books that the students had snapped up. It turns out to be a devastating combination – the Scholastic Book Fair+author event! (schools get a 60% commission for books sold, redeemable against books/teaching materials – pretty good deal huh?

MG with girls from Victoria College, Belfast
MG with girls from Victoria College, Belfast

The week I spent in Northern Ireland was a fascinating glimpse into a part of the UK with a different state education system (post-11 selection on academic grounds), and a history of sectarianism that still creeps into everyday conversation. It’s not so much that you see evidence of the Catholic/Protestant divide everywhere (you do, it’s in all the language, there are Catholic and Protestant parts of town), but that the idea that people can talk openly about differences between people; as in, they can acknowledge it frankly in conversation and in their societal structures.

After all the years I’ve as a school governor when I’ve been immersed in the often politically correct environment of education, it’s actually pretty refreshing. Or maybe that is a naive view…

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Festivals and Prizes (part 2 of 2)

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.

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!