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appearances getting published Joshua Files readers

Author Tour Report 3: Gorgeous Thing – the cover of ‘Invisible City’

Author Tour Report 3: Gorgeous Thing – the cover of ‘Invisible City’Originally uploaded by mgharris
My editor Elv said it best, I believe…it is a gorgeous thing. And nothing to do with me…except very indirectly as the author of the story which inspired this artistic vision of Andrew Briscombe from Scholastic.I’ve visited a school every day for the past three days of my author tour…photos to follow when I get home. A big talking point is always the cover, which the young readers adore, but also teachers including one Headteacher and an award-winning librarian…Now a couple of reviewers have been a bit sniffy about the cover, whilst being perfectly lovely about the novel itself. That’s okay…its success in attracting readers might lend the impression that it’s what such reviewers have decided is simply a ‘marketing gimmick’. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…to quote a famous Seinfeld episode…

But in fact, as I’ve discussed with almost 400 school students in the past three days…the jacket of Joshua Files is a genius tactile intrepretation of some key facets of the story.

Allow me, Umberto Eco-like, to offer a semiotic analysis of this remarkable piece of packaging:

1. ‘Invisible City’ features a mysterious ancient Mayan book whose cover is deadly to touch…hence the removable cover in dangerous-looking neon orange.
2. The J symbol denotes the Maya…in a highly subtle way. Mayan ruins impress immediately with their terraced temples of stone rising from the jungle…the parallel lines of architecture. Hence the lines of the J symbol. And when you slide the slipcover across the J, white lines appear next to the black ones…steps in shade and light.
3. The J also represents hieroglyphic writing. It is in fact a glyph – symbolizing Josh.
Umberto would have had said something much cleverer and brought in some eclectic references from art history and maybe quoted Deleuze…but, yanno.

At a school in Romiley, Stockport today, a year 11 boy showed me up for the slow-witted, former Rubiks wannabe I am. He finished the cube 60 seconds before me, in true Rubiks-kid fashion, hardly even glancing at the cube as he whooshed the pieces into place. By comparison I was staring at the cube, slowly turning it much as a caveman might handle a one-for-all TV remote.

Nice going pal, but as we say in Mexico…’Como me ves, te veras.’ (as I am, you one day will be)
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

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appearances getting published Joshua Files readers

Author Tour Report 2: School Visits

Author Tour Report 2: School VisitsOriginally uploaded by mgharris

Copies of “Invisible City” on display in a school in Dulwich. Check out the groovy Mexican masks on the wall behind!

I’ve been doing school visits in Dulwich Hamlet Primary, St Joseph’s Primary in Headington and later today, Manchester. Before I spoke to any audiences of young readers, I wondered how I was going to modify my speaking style. Years of addressing scientists and business people might not be ideal preparation, after all. The BBC staff at go4it were really great with the kids, had them laughing and joking. And I’m conscious of the fact that I’m used to bring rather direct and serious…

I used to try to get a laugh from scientists etc. At least one, to get things going. Science humour, yanno… So anyway, I decided basically to talk to the kids as I did the scientists but without the jokes and with a bit of gentle quizzing.

Yes that’s probably a bit teacherish but they sure seem to enjoy getting the answers right and BOY are they smart. The mix of archaeology, personal journey and 2012 eschatology does seem to fascinate them, thank goodness. And out of over 500 kids seen to date, no-one has ever asked me the one question that everybody said I’d be asked…how much money do I make?

I think it’s brilliant that they aren’t asking. Not that there’s anything wrong with the question but if young people are interested in making money I’d rather point them in a stack of other directions…like starting a business.

This emailed from a train passing through Stoke-on-Trent.

Emailed from my BlackBerry®

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ice shock readers writing zero moment

Editing ICE SHOCK, getting deeper into Joshua book 3

Editor and I have almost finished working on the manuscript for ICE SHOCK.

We lost a couple of chapters but gained a new opening – a scene I’ve been wanting to write for ages. Benicio visits Josh in Oxford and takes him for an early morning spin in a Muwan, over the dreaming spires of Oxford and out to Josh’s school…yes you’ll finally find out which school Josh attends.

Meanwhile I’m getting deeper into book 3. When I visit kids in schools and libraries, I’m often asked about working titles so I might as well own up that the working title of book 3 is TIGER KIDNAP. I hope it sounds cool, action packed and intrigiung… But it also means something.

Go ahead…Google it…

Today I wrote one of the most difficult scenes I’ve ever written. It wasn’t an action scene – they aren’t particularly easy but that’s about being focused, visualising the action and expressing it in some non-tedious, non-repetitive, ideally thrilling sort of way. No; I was writing a scene where Josh experiences some new and rather teenage emotions. One emotion piles on top of another, sometimes conflicting with each other. Getting that across without wallowing, whilst showing not telling, staying in character as Josh, I find pretty hard.

In terms of what was happening, it was sort of a childish (and for that read very non-adult) version of the brilliant scene of the newlywed’s devastating row at the end of Ian McEwan’s “On Chesil Beach”. In McEwan’s story, two newlyweds have a row which effectively ends their marriage on the night of their wedding. McEwan’s male protagonist has been – although unintentionally – badly hurt by his wife. In revenge, he lashes out in an orgy of of self-stoked, self-justifying anger. Even as he says the words which he knows will end things, he simultaneously enjoys whilst also horrified by his own actions.

I thought McEwan did an amazing job of conveying how lovers can simultaneously enjoy and suffer the process of hurting and tearing down what was between them. Not a nice fact of life but very true.

On a small scale that’s what Josh does in the scene I wrote today, which also takes place on a beach. Josh is unintentionally emotionally wounded by someone…and so he hurts them in return. He’d rather be angry than sad. So he stokes his own anger.

But what I learned from McEwan is that it’s at this point that you lose sympathy for the male character. Self-pitying, self-justifying rage – not too attractive as it turns out!

So I didn’t let Josh enjoy it. Instead, he is shocked to the point of numbness about making this person cry.

 Ah but who…?

That would be telling.

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appearances getting published

Author Tour Report 1: Obviously, I’m a philistine…

Author Tour Report 1: Obviously, I’m a philistine…Originally uploaded by mgharris


…because today was my first time at the British Museum.

My lovely publishers always out me up at a boutique hotel in Bloomsbury when I’m doing author stuff in London. It’s right next to the British Museum but until today I’d not taken the time to visit.

Quite awe-inspiring stuff actually. Mind you, all the big London museums are.

The striking thing is that unlike the huge museums of Mexico City (and I believe, Cairo), they aren’t dedicated to indigenous culture. London’s museums reflect a fascination with every other part of the world.

Is it hubris on the part of Mexico and Egypt, compared with generous interest on the part of the Brits?

Or does it simply reflect the success of Britain’s plunder and conquest of ancient treasues? And modern Mexico and Egypt’s lack of conquest over anything except a dead indigenous civilisation?

The people who think the Elgin marbles should be returned to the Greeks might argue it’s the latter.

While I was writing this blog post, two American tourists from Minnesota -father Lars and 12-year old Leif – sat down near me to enjoy some yummy-looking chocolate cake and Coke. We started chatting about this and that and the Maya.

The museum is light on Mexican exhibits, but the little they have is nicely displayed. An excellent lintel from Yaxchilan shows a Mayan queen performing the blood-letting ceremony.

Anyway. An amazing day followed…brilliant visit to the quite fab Eltham Centre library to meet a class of year 6s from a local primary school. Then a sumptuous afternoon tea with my publishers. Then champagne cocktails and canapes at Waterstones Piccadilly as we watched a Sotheby’s auctioneer sell off handwritten short stories by famous authors (read the BBC news report here…)

Luckily for me they hadn’t asked Murakami or Vargas Llosa so I wasn’t in danger of losing my head and getting into a bidding war. One of my publishers was a bit miffed at being beaten to the Doris Lessing. And we all felt that the 800 word Harry Potter went cheaply at around £25,000. But the auctioneer was taking absentee bids. The whole room could sense that Mystery Bidder was prepared to go to daft numbers. So everyone chickened out. Afterwards we all felt daft. Because you could probably have doubled your money at least even on eBay. Later I asked one of the Bloomsbury team why they hadn’t bid to push up the price. She pointed out that even JKR’s agent hadn’t bid. And from what I heard about who was there…he was probably the richest person in the room.

It would have been public-spirited to have kept Mystery Bidder going to what would probably have been silly money. But it seems no-one wanted to risk that tricky conversation at home. ‘Honey, I seem to have spent fifty grand on a bit of a story…’

Then Scholastic kindly took Axel Scheffler and I to dinner at the Criterion. His lovely Gruffalo story was the fourth most expensive at the auction.

Ee. See what a fabulously glamorous author life I’m having just now? Today doing a bunch of bookshop signings and then playing the biggest room I’ve done as an author – 180 years 5 and 6 in Dulwich.

Better get up then…
Emailed from my BlackBerry®

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ice shock nostalgia raves writing

One of those rambling posts about the vagaries of life

I am doing blogging all wrong.

I’ve been reading other people’s blogs and I can see that mine is Not Quite Right.

Well I’m going to do a post that’s more typische. Part rant, part rave, part diary, part confessional.

Rant: Where to start? I’m not much of a ranter over things that don’t directly concern me and over which I have zero control. Not saying there’s anything wrong with ranting, in fact I seem to have voluntarily surrounded myself with people who love a rant; my daughter, my husband, my agent to name only three. Maybe that’s why no ranting. Ranters need to be listened to. And that, it seems, is increasingly my role.

However, I did recently get slightly involved in the age-ranging debate about putting labels like 5+, 7+, 11+ on children’s books, although only in the private e-space of a members-only online writers’ club. But actually, meh. The businesswoman in me dislikes the attempt to stop a perfectly legitimate marketing initiative. Last time I looked publishers sell the books and do the deals. Ifnwhen the sales director at my publishers phones me up and asks me to make sales calls to sell my books to the major chains, then maybe I’ll start to feel I have any place telling her how to run the business.

Rave: Now what I AM is a raver. So many things to enthuse over, so little time. Let’s just divide the things that have recently amused or fascinated me into categories.

TV: All the usual suspects for me: Battlestar Galactica continues to swoop, Lost continues to be gloriously daft-yet-compelling, still laughing over Peep Show’s use of a highly literary reference as a euphemism for erm…well I can’t better it so let’s just say ‘doing a Chesil beach’; reruns of Sex And The City. How I love Samantha. She somehow reminds me of Jessica from Pokemon’s Team Rocket.  And a surprise new addition to my highly selective TV viewing is BBC4’s US import Mad Men – set in 1960’s Madison Avenue and the cutting edge world of advertising. The men are urbane, sexist and wear natty suits; the woman are gorgeous, ambitious, under-appreciated, professionally limited and don’t complain when their bottoms get slapped in the office. Everybody smokes and all these macho men wilt the minute one of these supposedly suborbinate women turns her ravenous gaze upon one of them. You can sense the powerplay just waiting to happen. Ah the good-old-days when a pretty secretary could take a powerful man down. Mostly I enjoy the offices though. They remind me so much of my father’s set up at Mexicana de Cobre. Just good ol’ plain nostalgia.

Reading: I’m very busy writing so haven’t read much lately. I bought some books by Cornelia Funke; Inkheart and Inkspell and some books for younger readers that I’ll read to the little ‘un. I have, however, been enjoying reading The Spectator and New Scientist, which I can manage in bite-size chunks. Two Speccie articles made me laugh out loud today, one by Rod Liddle about the Eurovision Song Contest (it wasn’t political; Eastern Europeans just don’t ‘get’ decent 12-bar blues based pop music), one by Deborah Ross, but then she always makes me laugh. Right-wing intellectuals are so much funnier than left-wing ones. And therefore sexier. I’d have PJ O’Rourke over George Monbiot, any day. But then the left does have Naomi Klein. So maybe it’s gender specific?

Geekchic: Loving my Sony Vegas video editing software. Hey I never said I didn’t have some special interests.

Podcasts: The usual trio of Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Radio5 movie review show, Melvyn Bragg’s In Our Time and the Litopia After Dark podcasts continue to equip me with the knowledge and ideas to do my job.

Music: Performance Channel is screening a Beethoven piano sonata every evening. I caught one while half asleep yesterday. It wasn’t one I knew and being on the verge of sleep was struggling to place it – Brahms? Schubert? Beethoven? It sounded very German and very wonderful. I lay there thinking about Wilhelm Meister and Marienbad and Werther and other ghosts from the past, conversations with my mother.

Diary: Well not much to report here. I have been editing book 2 of Joshua; ICE SHOCK. It’s been hard work but I finally made it through the whole script, having addressed all Editor’s notes. Now I need to write two short new sections and then do a continuity check. But I’ll do a separate post about this. And liasing closely with the publicity department at Scholastic to put things in place for a book tour starting next week. Yay!

Confessional: Well wouldn’t you like to know. I don’t dare to be open about such stuff. Would cause a rare old scandal, no doubt.