Category: travel

Always exotic

Categories
appearances Australia dark parallel nostalgia

The Dark Parallel Reverse Diaries – Melbourne, Australia!

Pyjamas, Crazy Hair and Joshua Files

Yeah! First time showing DARK PARALLEL in Australia, Melbourne to be precise, St John’s Primary School, Clifton Hill. My good pal, Professor Magda Plebanski (already known to this parish…) is a resident of those parts and kindly arranged for me to visit the school during my brief but lovely stay with Magda and her family.

(Photo kindly taken by Little Daughter on my BlackBerry!)

The reason for such a wonderful opportunity to spend time in Australia was the wedding of my baby sister Adriana to Shay. That’s two of my sisters married to Australian men!

As luck would have it, Adriana and Shay also live in Melbourne, which gave me the extra excuse for a long-overdue catch-up with Magda.

(Also known to this parish in another, more secret capacity…as the alter ego of Dr Magda Poborsky. Leave a comment if you understand the cryptic reference…I like to keep tabs on the ARGers…)

Adriana and Shay get married

Adriana and Shay were married in a Persian ceremony at a Victoria State heritage property, the Boyd-Baker House.

It was my first time meeting Shay, who is a lovely guy, just what you would love in a brother-in-law. Also my first time meeting my sister Grace’s partner, Lance, a former WWF wrestler of the Von Erich wrestling family!

Honestly, the people you meet in the Caribbean, you wouldn’t believe it.

My sister Grace and the still-fabulous Lance.

The weird thing was that I was meeting all these Mexican family and friends (Magda) in Australia! Adriana’s childhood friends joined Shay’s friends and family (many from Iran) to dance the night away. I went to bed early but may or may not have walked back through the woods in full moonlight – the ‘Super’ moon to get cake at 3.30am….

And it was pretty strange, to be having that experience, so far away from where we all started out.

Australia! It’s a heck of a long way away but you can’t forget it!

Categories
blog tour nostalgia ramble switzerland writers

Return to Eggli Mountain

On top of the Eggli. No skis.

As I tell kids when I visit schools, the Eggli mountain near the Swiss town of Gstaad is where I broke my leg skiing, the ‘lucky break’ which gave me the time and mental space to start my writing career.

I hadn’t been back – until today! Visiting my brother Michael and his family, I joined them at the top of the mountain. In fact I’m writing this post whilst sitting on a deck chair, facing the sun and a gorgeous view of gleaming snowy mountains. In fact…is that a tinge of tanning I can feel on my face?

Michael has given me his iPod with his playlist of Ed Reardon’s Week. Essential listening for writers, I’m assured. It’s probably because I insisted that we check to see if the airport WHSmith’s had my books. All authors torture themselves like this. Luckily I left happy – they had ZERO MOMENT.

My tiny, three year old nephew and niece are schussing around the piste as if the skis were extensions of their legs.

I’m in the middle of a bunch of author visits – last week with kids from St Edmund’s in Hindhead, Bampton Primary, Cheney School Oxford, and St Bartholomews, Newbury. Next week – College du Leman in Geneva. Photos and a big round-up to follow.

Coming soon: On March 10th Children’s author Katherine Langrish and I swap blogs for the day! Two teenage readers, Libby and Patrick Caffrey have read West of the Moon, a new abridged version of Katherine’s Troll Fell trilogy, and also The Joshua Files. They’ve put together some questions for Katherine and I – we’ll be answering on 10th March. It’s all part of Katherine’s West of the Moon blog tour.

I’ve been reading WEST OF THE MOON and telling a very simplified version to my three-year old niece and nephew. Trolls stealing young children, evil Uncles Baldur and Grim, it’s going down a storm! I overheard my nephew playing a game later which featured Uncle Baldur as the villain…

Ah. The shiny shiny snow beckons. Maybe I should take a little walk around the top of the mountain.

Categories
translations travel

When MG met Frank…in Berlin

Frank Boehmert and MG Harris

Ultra Secret New Project features a key sequence which takes place in a French town shown in this blog post.

But at the end of summer, my travels took me back to Europe, this time to Berlin. I walked the streets where the final scenes of the novel will be set, plotted a course for the Big Chase, and had a good look at the (secret) location of  the novel’s climax.

My first time there, imagine! All those years visiting Germany, I never visited Berlin. I rather regret not visiting before 1989 now, or soon after. The city has utterly transformed since then. In my lifetime few major cities have changed quite to much. I’d quite like to have seen it before.

I’d like a chance to have a bit of Osstalgie (newish German word meaning nostalgia for the good-old-days of the DDR, when they were properly Communist and austere.).

But no Goodbye Lenin for me and my good pal and long-time travelling buddy, Rebecca. We sampled the delights of Europe’s coolest capital city: cafe life (Kaffee und Kuchen, Berlin cuisine, the best Mexican tacos I’ve eaten outside Mexico) cultural life (museums and a performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater in the Marienkirche of Alexanderplatz).

Not neglecting, of course, Cuban salsa! Where else but Berlin’s fabulous Havanna nightclub. One of the best salsa nights I’ve been to In The World! Lots of cute guys to dance with…

Another great pleasure was that I finally met the wonderful German translator of Joshua Files, Frank Boehmert! Here is Frank’s own version (auf Deutsch) of the event, featuring the same photo taken by my pal Becs.

MG in Berlin

So here’s some of Berlin’s new architecture. I’m standing in front of a glass wall on which is etched the German consitution.

Das ist Extrem Cool.

Categories
other books travel

Where in the world am I now?

It's France. But where?

It’s been quite a while since I blogged. Apart from having family and friends visit and move to Oxford, I’ve been busier this summer than I usually am.

Busy with writing and busy with researching!

As I type this I am 74,000 words into Ultra Secret New Project. I haven’t written an uncommisioned novel since Jaguar’s Realm (I’m still holding onto that by the way, in case you’re wondering, haven’t decided when the right time is for Jaguar to hit the world…). I remember blogging about the final stages of writing Jaguar’s Realm and this feels a bit like that.

1. Tiring!

2. Someone had better publish this book after all this effort to write it…

3. Drained.

Usually I do all my research trips before I start writing a novel. In the case of Ultra Secret New Project, however, I visited the two foreign locations during the writing itself.

The first location is shown in this photo. At the bottom of the photo you can also see my two Brazilian friends, Ana and Deborah. Loyal travel companions and veterans of an MG Harris research trip, (they’re mentioned in the dedication of Zero Moment), Ana, Deborah, as well as Ali and Kizzie, once again braved foreign lands to scout a location with me.

But where in the world are we?

Prize for the first correct answer in the comments – a Joshua enamel badge and a signed Invisible City postcard.

Categories
disney

Halloween at Disney’s Magic Kingdom

Halloween at Disney’s Magic Kingdom

Originally uploaded by mgharris

Well it isn’t for the faint-hearted, tired or the Disney-phobe. We arrived yesterday at 9am and parked in the Pluto car park. When we left after midnight there were only 6 cars left of around 1000 spaces. Everyone else had wimped out!
Ha, amateurs, to those with staying power, the candy!
Mickey’s Not-So-Scary Halloween party is a ticket-only event which takes place on select evenings during October. The actual Halloween date sells out way in advance.
Too bad we didn’t think of that when we booked our hotel and flights some months ago. We ended up buying tickets from a scalper on eBay, some clued-in guy who bought them up well ahead of time, and made out like a bandit. As my friend Donna’s husband Ben remarked yesterday, at this point buying those tickets in advance is a better investment than any stock.
Party-goers get to enjoy a special parade (Boo To You) and fireworks, trick-or-treating and dance parties, plus late night access to the rides.
After lining up multiple times for the free candy that was being handed out all over, and seeing the mayhem around popular rides like Peter Pan we headed for the relative quiet of Tomorrowland (quiet apart from Stitch’s wild disco dance party, where we mamboed with Pluto and Goofy.)
There we adults finally allowed the kids off the leash, and let them ride the Peoplemover alone, where i’m told they discussed confidential ‘girly’ stuff. And in our own separate car we kicked back, exhausted, and temporarily child-free. ‘The best ride in the park’ was the verdict of Donna (fellow author @writerdonna of the LITOPIA Daily podcast).
Best ride of the day: Splash Mountain.
Best score on the Buzz Lightyear ride/game: Donna with 270,000 odd points.
Best snack: the Pineapple Whip at Aloha Isle in Adventureland.
Emailed from my BlackBerry®