Gareth Stranks's early design drafts for THE DESCENDANT

It seems that for the past six months, all anyone in publishing is talking about is ‘self’ or self-owned-’indie’ publishing. A few successfully self-published authors are being signed up by traditional publishers. The self-published best-seller Joe Konrath writes a damning indictment of the industry: Do Legacy Publishers Treat Authors Badly? JK Rowling sets up a publishing venture (Pottermore) to promote and sell digital versions of Harry Potter (clever, clever agent for holding on to those rights!). Household-names like Jackie Collins and GP Taylor are self-publishing.

Mega-successful children’s author and screenwriter, Anthony Horowitz, wonders aloud “Do we still need publishers?” and delivers a paean to the tradition of publishing, which also manages to be a stinging rebuke. His comments have some agents and authors on the twittersphere tut-tutting and using the word ‘arrogance’, whilst others quietly retweet and admire the frankness and cojones of an author who has both benefited from having a traditional publisher whilst also making them many times the money he ever earned. If what Anthony Horowitz says is true, then only someone very successful could dare to say it.

Self-publishers document their process and sell how-to books on Kindle. Hundreds of thousands of blog words are devoted to asking theoretical questions: how might the new world of publishing look? Will there be any pie left over after Amazon take their piece?

About fifty per cent of the authors I’ve chatted to in the past few months are thinking of dipping a toe into the self-published waters. Why? Partly it’s down to falling advances and marketing budgets. This means that some manuscripts are being bought for less than an author can afford to write for and will be lightly-marketed, so may be unlikely to sell beyond the advance.

To some, that might give the perception that authors may as well invest their own cash into publishing the manuscript and reap all the potential profits.

Partly too, there is the attraction of the new.

Whoever called e-book publishing a ‘bubble’ is right in one sense; it’s something that a LOT of people are going to want to try. If/when the majority discover that it’s difficult, time-consuming, and elicits too little money; that’s when the bubble might burst.

Most traditionally-published authors I know will probably not try the exercise whilst we’re still in the experimental, bubble-type phase. It’s risky, there’s a cash cost and a substantial opportunity cost to doing the job properly; i.e. treating the manuscript exactly as you might a traditionally published book.

Like most, I would not have thought of trying anything in this phase of the publishing revolution.

But it happens that The Joshua Files is coming to a final chapter, in the UK at least. The books have earned  me some unexpected foreign rights royalties and income from Public Lending Rights and Authors Licensing and Copyright Service, which could be spent on bootstrap investment for a new imprint, owned by my husband and I.

Like many authors who do a huge amount of their own marketing and publicity, I’m extremely curious to know if I can marshal the necessary skills and expertise to execute the whole project. Mr. Harris and I have also started and run a successful technology business (The Oxford Knowledge Company).

Most of all though – I have a spare Joshua Files-related manuscript, first written in 2005 for an adult readership.

THE DESCENDANT has already formed part of the back-story of The Joshua Files. The novel was the basis for the 2009 Alternate Reality Game used to promote ICE SHOCK. It’s unlikely that any publisher the book would publish as fast as I’d like; i.e. roughly around the same time as APOCALYPSE MOON.

You can only dangle so much speculation and theorization in front of a scientist before they’ll rush to the lab to try the experiment.

And dammit – I’m a scientist!

So over the next few weeks I’ll be sharing the details of the experiment, just like a scientific paper. Materials & Methods, Results and Conclusions.

Next: Self-publishing and the barriers to entry, or Why publishers are good at publishing and you are not, and what you can do to narrow the gap.

Today, Ruth Eastham, author of new release THE MESSENGER BIRD, visits as part of her blog tour, to tell us about the code-filled influences on her writing and on her latest children’s book. THE MESSENGER BIRD is a taut, emotional story with a deadly code and secret at its heart. Who could resist?

The Messenger Bird blog tour is also a code-hunt. Each post features a special letter to collect. So keep your eyes open! Full details on Ruth’s website

Here’s how our conversation began – via Twitter, naturally.

MG to Ruth: “How about we start with me challenging you to solve a code that Anthony
Horowitz sent me.”
Ruth *gulps*: “THE Anthony Horowitz? How long did it take you then?”
MG: “About 10 minutes!”
Ruth *gulps again*

!B4R P4N S3H TKC 1RC DL5 4C1 3CR 1GH S4J

I have to say I’m worried. Worried that – like Nathan in The Messenger Bird – I won’t be able to break the code in time. I’m competitive that way. (And nobody wants to come across as a bit of a duffer on someone else’s cool blog, right?)

Don’t get me wrong. I’ve always been partial to puzzles. But then there’s trivial time-filling fun code cracking, and there’s THE code cracking. I’m talking real code breaking – the SERIOUS stuff – like Josh in MG’s books. I’m talking saving lives on a GLOBAL scale. I’m talking BP (and not the petrochemical kind).

BP = Bletchley Park

Inspired early on by reading about wartime code breaking, I tried to teach myself Morse with the moving mirrors Survival Kit item my brothers got one Christmas. And I have to say, back then I felt reasonably confident that I would be able to signal SOS
when the need arose.

I was also strongly inspired by Famous Five stories…

… which are all EXACTLY like The Messenger Bird.

(Okay, okay, so Nathan, Josh and Sasha may have completely different adventures to Julian, George and the gang, but the important point is:)

A Famous Five Story = our heroes on a mission to solve a mystery

The Messenger Bird = our heroes on a mission to solve a mystery

(PLUS they both have a dog in them)

It’s a tried and tested formula for story writing.

(I know MG will appreciate this with her scientific background.)

Cracking codes is pretty much all about solving some kind of mystery, right?

Besides, I’m in love.

RE 4 BP

My love affair with Bletchley Park all started when a friend told me that a mate of her mum used to work there. Before long I was in the company of 85-year-old Beryl, telling me how she signed the Official Secrets Act at 18 and what it was like to work in Hut 7. Before much longer I was heading for Bletchley Park itself.

Now prior to this trip, I’d already goggled at my first Enigma machine at the Imperial War Museum in London. Gazing through the glass case with me was a security systems bloke from the US. Together we were smitten.

His girlfriend looked none too impressed as we chatted geekily about mechanical rotor mechanisms, and it was only after weighing up the statistical probabilities of a three versus a four rotor machine that the two of them (her with a last jealous glare through
the glass) left me to my gogglings.

But wonderful as that was, seeing the Enigma machines in the context of Bletchley Park itself was even more breathtaking than I could ever have imagined. I was hooked.

Hopelessly head-over-heels.

And by the way,

JOSH GARCIA COULD CRACK THIS NO PROB! (that’s the solution to the code sent by MG, using a cipher introduced to her by Anthony Horowitz)

(6 minutes, 47 seconds)

(But I’m worried to admit, a clever friend helped me.)

And for those of you collecting letters for Ruth’s mystery message competition:
Ruth Eastham’s Messenger Bird blog tour.

MYSTERY LETTER NUMBER 5 = I

Ruth Eastham’s website.

Ruth Eastham’s facebook author page

Follow Ruth Eastham on Twitter: @RuthEastham

Thank you Ruth, for taking the time to drop by The MG Harris Blog!

The publishing industry is based on a business model that may well be out-dated – the scarcity model. (Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Agatha Christie and Junot Diaz and assorted literary masters, etc have few equals on the planet, therefore those who control access to their works – publishers – control the market).

It is not this factor per se, which makes it unlikely that a technological innovation is coming from within this community.

It’s that when your business gives you a particular mindset, developing anything that depends on having a radically different one is nigh on impossible. 

I used to work in the information business. (Here’s a paper I gave at ONLINE 1998.) There were conferences galore with sessions about the future of the information business.

Ha. No-one got it right. Some kind of inter-library global information network was the future. Then it was CD-ROMs. Then it was the Internet and paid access to private databases. Then it was intelligent agents.

Here’s what I rarely heard about: ebooks, e-readers, tablets, apps, social networking. And this was only TEN years ago.

For this reason, take a massive pinch of salt before you believe anything that anyone predicts about the future of publishing. This is an industry which did not invent or finance the development of the Internet, Facebook, the first apps or the first e-reader. (Amazon is a new player in publishing. They are fundamentally a technology and logistics company.) Massive mistakes have been made by HUGE decision-makers. I present m’learned friends with the example of Rupert Murdoch, he of media mogulness. I point at the glaring errors of his purchase and subsequent development of Pointcast and MySpace.

That said, I’ll have a go at this game myself. Why not? (Sam Missingham @samatlounge recently tweeted ”If I had a penny for every ‘the future of publishing’ article ever written, I’d be coining it in.” Sorry Sam, here’s another and still no coin.)

I too haven’t ever personally developed any innovative information technology and I work in publishing, which makes me brilliantly qualified to gaze into my own crystal ball.

1. The number of self-published novels is going to soar. This sector within the industry, leaner in costs than any publisher can hope to be, is already providing significant competition. When (to date) over 140 authors have sold over 50,000 ebooks, that is major. It begins to chew rather convincingly into the midlist. Therefore…
2. The midlist will go. (You don’t say, MG.) Yes, it’s been said before, by Seth Godin and other soothsayers of the publishing tribe. This is no longer soothsaying. It’s happening. The word on the street, in the coffee bars where authors meet, is that advances are lower; in many cases so low that the author can’t afford to keep writing for a living. This is basically the midlist author being told to kindly go away.
   (Btw I have no problem with this at all. It is basic business sense. As Nicola Morgan reminds us, publishers are in it to make money. Enough money to pay their salaries. We all have to make a living. Nothing wrong with making a living selling rewritten fan fiction, Pulitzer prize winning fiction and celebrity memoirs, if that is what people want to read.)
3. The midlist will migrate to self-publishing, or as I believe it may soon be called, micro-publishing.  Sales of 10,000 copies (a respectable midlist sales level for the UK territory) could realistically translate to a gross income of $10,000. In this sector, the overheads will be stripped to the bone.
1. The intellectual property – i.e. the content – will be free. This is the authors stake in the business.
2. Editing will be by freelance editors, perhaps even cooperatives of authors working for credits within the organisation, to trade against having their own work edited.
3. Jacket design will also be via freelancers. Hurray for this, because the graphic designers have often had a rum deal by their agencies. They already rely on freelance work. Some co-ops/micro-publishers may even retain freelance designers.
4. Marketing will be left to the author. It practically is anyway, to which traditionally-published author after author will attest.
4. Print won’t go away. Many people love a paper book. Createspace may well take over the entire micro or self-publishing sector for print. As a recent user of their service I have been blown away by the ease and efficiency of this service. The minute that CS set up in the UK and Australia, their main competitor, Lightning Source, may have to forget about the self/micro-publishing sector and concentrate on printing books for traditional publishing. Createspace  and Lightning Source allow authors to print and distribute books at a price which both competes with traditionally-published books in the marketplace, and give the author slightly more royalty than they’d get via a standard book deal.
5. Traditional publishers will have to spend ever more on marketing, to compete with the self-published books, which in electronic version at least will be substantially cheaper. An increasing number of books in this sector will be authored by the very authors they developed and then discarded. At that moment, the self/micro publishing sector will no longer imply ‘amateurish’ but ‘books by authors who typically sell fewer than 10,000 copies, but could be very good indeed’.
6. These bigger marketing budgets will force traditionally-published authors to be instant hits. The debut author will begin to feel like a football player taking a series of penalties at a high-stakes game, having to score a goal with every shot, or risk elimination from the game.
7. The guaranteed big-hitting authors will realize how profits from their sales are increasingly being used to subsidize the development of new talent which can have only one role to the business – to usurp them. What will they do? First they’ll have their agents hike up their percentage royalties. If your books are making millions, you might feel that a bit more than 10% of that should come your way.
8. The swollen mid-list will be joined each year by those eliminated from the latest round of penalty kicks. They’ll have homes (micro-publishers) to go to and fans to read their books. Yet more competition. By now, consumers may hesitate to may more than $3 for a ebook, especially since more and more of their favourite authors are available in this form and at this price.
9. At some stage, traditional publishers will start to introduce more onerous (e.g. post publication) non-compete clauses into their contracts, to stop an author walking away and becoming the competition. Agents may well collude, because otherwise they too will see their own share of the royalty walk away.
10. At this point any debut author has entered a truly high-stakes game, where they literally bet their future on the publisher’s promise to make them a hit. But debut authors are often relatively naive, having spent most of their time and energy learning how to write a great book. They probably won’t be able to make an honest assessment of the likelihood of those promises being kept.
11. Some debut authors will be badly burned and may lash out. Their stories may put other authors off trying the traditional publishing route. The burn-rate would have to be bad and the lashing out vehement, because the need for the kind of validation which a traditionally-published book can provide is strong.
12. Debut authors who enter via self-publishing, on the other hand, will be posting self-publishing success stories, or nothing at all. Since expectations are so low, there won’t be many bitter, angry burn-outs.
    This may make self-publishing the most attractive route for new authors. A publishing professional said to me recently ‘I don’t know why new authors bother with agents or publishers now’. (major aside – Mind you, the elderly Sir Edward Abrahams, the multi-millionaire developer of the cephalosporin class of antibiotics, once told me that he couldn’t see why young people did PhDs any more, since science had become such a rubbish career. And people are still enrolling in PhD programs. Sometimes folk become disillusioned. Doesn’t mean it is over for everyone.)
13. The new route to traditional fiction publishing could be this: you self-publish a book, it sells well and gains critical acclaim on Goodreads or Amazon. At this point you approach an agent or possibly, they approach you (as happened to Amanda Hocking and EL James). Or conceivably, the micro-publisher itself starts to act as an agent, directly selling rights to foreign publishers and traditional publishers who promise to big up their author’s books.
14. Unless you are celebrity, in which case, you can write what you like and it will be published. Regular Jo authors shouldn’t envy celebrities this – these people have done whatever it is they have done to become famous, now they are reaping the fringe benefits. If this is the route you desire, then become a movie star or pop star. No point griping that some folk want to read what Justin Bieber has to say rather than what you have to say.
15. The slush pile will vanish, the midlist will vanish, and fewer books will be traditionally published, but those which are will receive greater marketing funds
16. Advances will go but royalties will increase.
17. If Dan Brown, John Grisham, JK Rowling, Lee Child and all the other multi-million selling authors each decide to hire their own editor, publicist and sales person, and start selling their books at a price which would compete with the new, cheaper midlist books, then the big publishers may well collapse. If I worked for their publishers I would be instructing the levels of loveliness around such authors to go up by a significant notch.

There are probably some readers laughing and thinking, tell me something I don’t already know, genius.

Because this is already happening. In 2011, the high profile debuts were “The Emerald Atlas” and “The Midnight Circus” – two manuscripts that were discovered and sold by agents. (Well maybe not the former, which was written by the screenwriter of a top TV show, but basically, it was the usual route.)

In 2012, the high-profile publishing ‘debuts’ had already sold millions – as self-published ebooks by authors Amanda Hocking and E.L. James.

Yes, we can tell ourselves that this is temporary, that once the novelty of a self-published book being successful wears off, the media will stop writing articles about them.

But that belies a fundamental truth about what how media of any kind succeeds – people like to read/watch that which lots of other people read or watch. It doesn’t matter if what everybody reads or watches is not of the highest quality available. What people crave is a shared experience.

Amanda Hocking and E.L James demonstrated that you don’t need a costly marketing campaign to sell a million ebooks. Of course, a costly marketing campaign helps. But there isn’t going to be cash for every book to be heavily marketed. And crucially – many of these costly campaigns are going to fail.

Well, hey. Remember what I said at the top of this post. I am a mere author. I’ve been part of the publishing industry for less than five years. The track record predicts that I can’t predict anything.

The new face of theMGHARRIS.com

I was rather fond of the adventurous theme of the original design for THEMGHARRIS.COM (see the bottom of this post). But a new, post-Joshua era calls for a new design. The new THEMGHARRIS.COM has cool new things like a slider to showcase important news, and a mini-features section.

The forum, however, is no more. Lately Joshua readers have tended to have discussions on The Official Joshua Files facebook group (which you need to ask to join), or The Joshua Files facebook page (hit LIKE and you’ve joined!)

Also, I haven’t transferred every single news story. If you were ever featured in a story, maybe for winning a competition, then I hope you don’t mind if that story doesn’t appear in the new version.  If you do mind, put a comment here and I’ll see about recreating the article!

Take a few minutes to look around! You’ll see that I’m already starting to flag up my soon-to-be-published new book, THE DESCENDANT, especially this announcement:

Coming soon – win a Kindle!

Stay tuned for the launch of THE DESCENDANT facebook page, which will be the focus of an exciting new competition to win a Kindle.

Finally, here’s what the original site looked like. Bye bye!

The original face of theMGHARRIS.com

]]> http://www.mgharris.net/2012/05/05/themgharris-com-gets-a-makeover/feed/ 0 http://www.mgharris.net/2012/05/05/themgharris-com-gets-a-makeover/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MgHarris-OfficialAuthorWebsite/~3/TwOrRMJ_giY/ http://www.mgharris.net/2012/04/05/apocalypse-moon-has-landed/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2012 16:25:09 +0000 MG http://www.mgharris.net/?p=1772

With Yr 7 students at Elthorne Park

So the day finally rolled around – the day that Josh Garcia’s 2012 adventures come to an end. APOCALYPSE MOON, the final instalment, is published today. for the past two weeks, I’ve been showing its sleek black coat to children in schools.

Everywhere I go, I get the same ‘oooh, cool!’ reaction and the question – “Will you write more stories about Josh?”

I’m making no promises. . . But you never know. Those who’ve already read the finale will know that it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that Josh might have more adventures in store. Let’s see if any of them come to me!

You can now order APOCALYPSE MOON from Amazon.co.uk or The Book Depository (free worldwide delivery!)

Many, many thanks to St Gregory the Great School and Oxford High in Oxford for hosting the official launch events of APOCALYPSE MOON and to Mark Thornton of Mostly Books for being with me that day and for his absolutely lovely write-up of APOCALYPSE MOON on the Mostly Books blog.

Thanks also to Elthorne Park High School and St John’s Primary, Banbury for inviting me for slightly postponed World Book Day celebrations.

With Yr6 at St John's, Banbury

I’m delighted that Lovereading4kids, who’ve been consistent supporters of THE JOSHUA FILES have made me the Featured Author of the Month. Here’s the lovereading4kids entry for APOCALYPSE MOON.

A few reviews of APOCALYPSE MOON have already appeared, all of which manage to express enthusiasm without revealing any spoilers, which can’t have been easy!

The BookZone’s review of APOCALYPSE MOON.

The Bookbag review of APOCALYPSE MOON.

Thanks very much especially to readers who’ve reviewed APOCALYPSE MOON on Goodreads and Amazon. Keep ‘em coming! (Unless you didn’t like it. Then keep it to yourself!).

It means a great deal to me that you all seem to be enjoying the finale so much. I really wanted to leave you satisfied and hopefully, happy.

With New College School and Oxford High

Meanwhile the poll to decide what song Josh Garcia records next on his video blog has a couple of days still to run. You can vote here, (see the sidebar to the right), or at fb.com/joshuafiles

And over at the Official Joshua Files Facebook Group, we’re discussing ideas for a final big competition to win rare, neon-PVC sleeved copies of the winner’s choice of any of the five books. This could be your chance to finally complete your collection! I’ll announce the competition at the end of the Easter holidays, over at themgharris.com

Meanwhile, there are still a few more Joshua-related events coming up. All five books should be available as ebooks soon (really! Honest!). The hotly-anticipated Gramedia (Indonesia) edition of DARK PARALLEL will be out soon. And in the USA, Catalonia, Turkey and Vietnam, this will be the year of ZERO MOMENT.

And guess what. . . there is still one untold story from the world of THE JOSHUA FILES.

It’s the very first one I wrote – before I realised that Josh had a part to play. The first book I wrote when I was laid up with my broken leg and finished in two months, only to realise that another story was breaking out – the story of a teenage boy in search of a lost Mayan codex. I set that manuscript aside to concentrate on telling Josh Garcia’s story.

But if you have a yen for yet another thriller that plunges you into a world of ancient civilisations, secret societies, genetic manipulation and global conspiracy, you might like to meet my very first action heroes, the Bennett brothers, Jackson and Connor.

First though – read APOCALYPSE MOON! Find out how it all ends! Post online reviews! Tell your friends! Enter the competitions!

I just joined Goodreads! Here’s my first review. I’m only going to review books I liked – I rarely finish books I don’t like and it isn’t fair to review a book you don’t finish.

How Mumbo Jumbo Conquered The World by Francis Wheen

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Did we just imagine the Enlightenment? Because according to Francis Wheen, its enduring power to persuade might be on the wane. This is a riveting account about the ‘rise’ of emotion-led thinking versus rationality, as evidenced by phenomena such as the fascination with alternative medicine, happy-clappy business gurus, the enthusiasm with collective grief at the death of Princess Diana. The darker side to this is the rise of religious fundamentalism. Written in 2004 whilst the world was still reeling with shock from the 9/11 terrorist attacks, this book stands the test of time. In fact it seems rather prescient. The swivel-eyed thinking of the financial markets are touched upon, but even Francis Wheen didn’t anticipate how far and how disastrously ‘mumbo jumbo’ thinking would go on to affect the world. Read it and weep…

View all my reviews

Also see THEMGHARRIS.COM for extra Joshua Files goodness!

Jacket art for The Joshua Files: APOCALYPSE MOON

Here’s an excerpt of the opening of the final chapter of The Joshua Files. You can pre-order the book from Amazon.co.uk

Blog Entry: The Joshua Doomsday Manifesto OR How to deal with the possible end-of-the-world

1.            Keep busy. Learn a skill or trade. Do your exams. Take me, for example, I’m learning to be a pilot. OK I’ll admit that I’m partly doing it to impress a girl, but also, it might come in handy, especially if the end-of-the-world starts to look likely.

Mainly, keep your mind off the possible impending doom. The trade/skill/exam thing is just a bonus.

2.            Stay in denial. The world is NOT going to end. Tell yourself this a few times a day. Thoughts of what might happen may spring up on you when you’re least expecting it. In those moments, you’ll need that denial to be rock solid.

3.            DO NOT look at videos on YouTube about the world ending. Most of them have got it badly wrong anyway. They talk about asteroids crashing into Earth or the Planet Niburu or some other rubbish. You won’t find much about a Galactic Superwave and a gigantic electromagnetic pulse wiping out all the computer technologies. That’s so much less photogenic. Instead of massive fireballs, there will be a massive no-show. No TV, no InterWeb, no money going through the banking system and no twenty pound notes in the ATMs. No food trucks going to the supermarkets, no power in the hospitals. The whole developed world relies on computer technology. Very definitely don’t think about what would happen if there was suddenly a great big OUTAGE.

4.            Make a bucket list – a list of all the things you want to do before you ‘kick the bucket’. Quietly. Show it to no-one. This is just for you. You’ll never have to use it, probably, because the world won’t end. It’s a just-in-case. Look at it for a long time and think about what really matters, what you really want to DO or BE.

You might surprise yourself. I did.

5.            Stop reading this blog. How did you find it anyway? What makes you think I’m not making it all up?

6.            Trust the adults to sort everything out and save the world. Hey, they usually do, right?

7.            If you’ve tried all of the above and you still wake at 3am with a cold, vacant pit where your stomach should be, wondering if civilisation is on the brink of destruction – then there’s always this: GET INVOLVED.

Chapter One

Lately, I’ve been having the feeling that people aren’t being straight with me. Or some people in particular; my parents.

By ‘parents’ I mean my mother (Eleanor) and her partner Carlos Montoyo.  If it weren’t for the fact that my real father died pretty recently, Mum would probably already be married to Montoyo. They fell for each other after a few months. Now they’re definitely a couple. But when you marry a widow, I think you’re probably meant to leave a polite interval.

Montoyo is an interesting guy and I won’t deny that I respect him. He’s been on the Ruling Executive of Ek Naab – a hidden, ‘invisible city’ – ever since the last proper Bakab Ix died – my grandfather.  Now I’m the Bakab Ix; I’m next in line to succeed to the Ruling Executive. When I turn sixteen.

That’s if Montoyo will give up his place for me. If ever there was a wheeler dealer, it’s him. About nine months ago Montoyo played a sneaky trick on me. Since then things have gone downhill. Nine months ago, he tricked me into traveling in time in search of an ancient Mayan codex – the Ix Codex. Montoyo might say he had his reasons for tricking me, but it’s not easy to get over being conned into risking your life. It’s probably fair to say that if Montoyo could have managed the time travel bit, he’d have done the deed himself. If he could have touched the Ix Codex, that is. Like my dad used to say, if we had eggs, we could have ham and eggs, if we had ham.

Of all the people in the ‘invisible city’ of Ek Naab, only I can use the time travel device, the Bracelet of Itzamna. Only I can touch the Ix Codex. It’s not a magical power, it’s a genetic ability: I was born with it.

Until nine months ago, Montoyo didn’t think twice about risking me on a dangerous time-travel adventure. If the Ix Codex went missing, I was the guy for the job. It’s what I was born for, after all. Prince William doesn’t whine about being second in line to the British throne. And I try not to whine about being what I am, the Bakab Ix – genetically tweaked to be the protector of the Ix Codex.

There’s an ancient legend that the world-as-we-know-it will end in December 2012. The bad news is that it’s true. What is going to happen, has happened before. It will all happen again, too. The good news is that this time, we’re meant to be prepared – thanks to the Ix Codex.

The instructions for how to save the world from the coming Galactic Superwave of 2012 are in the Ix Codex. But the cover of the Ix Codex is impregnated with a poisonous gas. Only a Bakab Ix can touch the book and survive.

There were times when it was very hard to carry all that responsibility. I didn’t ask for the job; I was born into it. I wasn’t always keen. But I did what was needed, I risked my life again and again. I’ve been shot in the leg, attacked with knives, experimented on, watched people I care about being hurt by my enemies, seen my father in prison, seen him plunge to his death saving my life.

All to try to protect the Ix Codex, to do my bit to save the world from the Galactic Superwave.

So when apparently I’m too young and too inexperienced to play a part in this incredible plan to save the world…when I’m completely side-lined and ordered to ‘Get on with your studies and leave everything to us’…

I get pretty annoyed. I get a bit suspicious too.

It has something to do with what happened nine months ago, when I time-travelled. That’s when everything changed. Before that, I felt like I was on the inside, allowed to know what was going on, how the 2012 plan was coming along.

Now – nothing. No part in it for me. I’m surplus to requirements.

On the up-side: you can get a lot done in nine months, if you really focus. I had no idea. Nine months of intensive maths coaching and I’ve covered a decent chunk of the A-levels in maths, further maths, physics.

Not that I was a huge fan of maths before I came to live in the city, but for trainee pilots, maths is essential. My second cousin Benicio passed his pilot exam when he was fifteen. I’m determined to at least equal that.

And there are only six weeks to go, before I turn sixteen.

There’s a knock at the door to the apartment I share with my mother. Right now I’m here alone – Mum is off with some new friends, teaching them Irish cookery, soda bread, Irish stew, things like that. She and I are the only foreigners, the most exotic people to have lived in Ek Naab for over a hundred years. After six months of determined friendliness, my Mum seems to have won over even some of the more xenophobic residents, who weren’t too happy when we moved in.  But after a while, her relationship with Montoyo made her quite popular – it seems people have been keeping their fingers crossed that he’d marry again – either that or leave town. Being alone didn’t suit him; that’s what I’ve heard.

I zip up my flight jacket, empty the pockets of lint and a half-eaten flapjack. Still only half-dressed for my flying lesson, I move out of my bedroom and into the living room, open the door. Standing outside is my girlfriend, Ixchel. She’s smiling and carrying a basket of something wrapped in a white linen cloth. It smells delicious

“Surprise!”

“Hey! What are you doing here? I’m supposed to be out. Already late for Benicio.”

“You’ve got time to taste a cookie though, yes? I just came from your mother’s class.”

I put my head on one side. “Aw honey, you baked!”

She grins. “Try one.” The grin vanishes for a second, to be replaced by a look of mock ferocity. At least I’m hoping she’s joking. “You’d better be nice. It’s the first time I’ve baked anything.”

She opens the cloth and hands me a crisp, warm, shortbread biscuit. I take a bite and the warm, buttery pastry crumbles in my mouth. I close my eyes and give a long sigh of appreciation. She watches with a hopeful expression. I’m silent, experiencing the delicious sensation of the freshly baked biscuit at the same time as gazing at her shoulders and neck. They’re tanned the colour of honey, a wonderful contrast to the strappy purple top she’s wearing.

“Good?”

“Amazing. Marry me.”

Ixchel is momentarily taken aback. So am I. The phrase just tripped off my tongue, a joke, yet not a joke, because for Ixchel and I, the whole subject is a bit tense.

After a second or two, she recovers her composure. “Josh Garcia; you don’t get away with proposing as easy as that.”

Thank goodness. We’re back to joking about it. “Why not?” I mumble, mouth full of shortbread. “We’re already engaged after all. I’m the Bakab Ix and you’re my betrothed. It’s all been agreed.”

“Engaged, betrothed. Do you even know the difference?”

“Give us a kiss, sweetness, and I’ll tell you.”

She plants a kiss on my cheek and grins as she pulls away. “Engaged is when you give me a ring and get down on one knee, and since you’re only…what age are you, again?” Silently, Ixchel pretends to compute my age in her head.

“I’m fifteen, almost sixteen,” I growl. “And you’re already sixteen, I know, I know.”

“It’s not that you’re a few months younger. It’s that we’re both too young.”

“Who says I even want to marry you anyway? I’m just being accurate about our relationship.”

“’Betrothed’ is just something our parents decided on.”

“What’s going to swing it for you, my good looks or charm? Or the massive political power I’m going to wield when I’m finally sixteen? They say it makes you irresistible, you know.”

She gazes at me. “Josh. Be serious. We both know you don’t care about power.”

“But they could at least listen to me, right? I know the rules say that Bakab can join the Ruling Executive of Ek Naab when he’s sixteen but…”

“…that’s never actually happened.”

“Right. And can you see Carlos Montoyo letting it happen? He’s doing everything he can to keep me out of the planning for 2012.”

Ixchel shakes her head in sad agreement. “I know. I’ve heard that he’s going to try to change the law. Make it so you have to be twenty-five. He’s arguing that the ancient law exists because life expectancy used to be so short.”

“Twenty-five will be about ten years too late. This 2012 stuff is going down in December! Now is when they should be asking for my help.”

From behind us a voice calls out lazily, “Maybe they don’t need you.”

Ixchel and I turn swiftly to see my cousin Benicio standing at the door to my apartment. He gives us a sheepish grin and knocks twice on the door jamb.

“Whoops. Knock, knock.”

Benicio is fully kitted in his flying gear; black trousers and a navy blue flight jacket that hangs open to reveal a clean white vest underneath. All ready for our lesson: me, Benicio and a Muwan Mark 2, the nimble little ‘sparrow hawk’ aircraft based on the technology of the super-ancient, lost civilisation, the Erinsi, whose writings are inscribed in the Four Books of Itzamna, including the Ix Codex.

“I guess you forgot about the lesson,” Benicio says with a nod at my shoeless feet.

“I’m nearly ready. And what do you mean, ‘they don’t need me’?”

“I’m not denying you’re handy when the Ix Codex is around,” Benicio says, lightly. He’s teasing me, but there’s just a bit too much truth to what he says. “But what we need now are grown-ups! Experienced soldiers in the battle to save the world from the Galactic Superwave!”

Ixchel says quietly, “Benicio, don’t.”

It’s too late, I’m already getting annoyed. “People like you, you mean?”

“Hey buddy, I’ve saved your life more than once.”

“I know. I’m grateful. But you know what I’m talking about. You know I’ve been in dangerous situations, right? You know I can handle myself, yeah? And Ixchel is, like, this total genius with ancient languages. We should be on the team to decipher all those ancient instructions. We should be helping with the 2012 plan.”

Benicio’s easy grin falls away, to be replaced with an expression of caution. “Yeah. Maybe. I couldn’t really say.” And I know Benicio well enough to recognise this behaviour – hesitant, as though he’s afraid to say any more on the subject. This is how he acts when he’s been ordered to keep information from me.

“OK Josh, but right now, let’s focus on turning you into a pilot. Today, I’m teaching you a flight manoeuvre that’s sure to make you vomit.” He snatches a second piece of shortbread out of my fingers before I can put it to my mouth. “So, no more cookies  for you.”

Watch a video trailer for Apocalypse Moon 

LJ asked me to go on the show to talk about the emerging phenomenon of self-publishing, mainly fueled by the print-on-demand revolution. You can see what  I thought two years ago. My how things have changed, in only two years. Note how little we talk about ebooks! That’s where the action is nowadays.

Maybe I should go on Click again to update LJ on my opinion now… because as some beady-eyed members of the Joshua Files Facebook group may have spotted, I myself will be testing the waters in the brave new world of publishing and putting out an indie-published techno-thriller for older readers, set in the fictional world of The Joshua Files around May 2012…

LJ meanwhile has been developing her talents as a musician. Her latest album features her own gorgeous arrangements of traditional Christmas music, performed by LJ herself. Very tasteful and classically inspired, with a touch of gospel. I think my favourite is “I Saw Three Ships”. Perfect background music for a Christmas drinks party or the long drive to visit family, I’d say.

You can preview or download here at http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/ljrich3

My mother (Maria) in her Lufthansa days

I’m enjoying the current TV series ‘Pan Am’ – not so much for it’s alleged similarity to ‘Mad Men’ but for its personal nostalgia value. My mother worked as a stewardess during the same period – the late 1960s – first for Aeronaves de Mexico (now AeroMexico) and then for Lufthansa. She’s pictured here modelling, I think for Lufthansa. Then after being ‘grounded’ by the twin miseries of marriage and children, she worked in reservations for Lufthansa, in Manchester. When her marriage to our stepfather broke up, she returned to the airlines to keep her three children fed and sheltered, this time working for Pan Am.
I choose to write ‘twin miseries of marriage and children’ because I noticed that the Pan Am TV series uses themes that would have been very familiar to my mother, and therefore strike me as accurate. ‘Pan Am’ presents the life of an airline stewardess as one of the few glamorous, exotic escape possibilities for intelligent, attractive women, usually from ‘respectable’ families. One of the main characters actually runs out on her own wedding in order to escape and work for Pan Am. The leading man, a dashing blond pilot named Dean, even warns his lecherous co-pilot not to ‘ground’ the stewardesses when they are admiringly talking about the women as evidence of natural selection in action – beautiful women who achieve flight. The implication was that marriage and children were traps to be avoided – unless you snagged a rich, successful bachelor; another good reason to become a stewardess.
My mother had her offers of marriage – they were more or less a staple of the job, my mother said. She’d started working for Aeronaves de Mexico after divorcing my father, and left my sister Pili and I with our grandmother while she worked short haul flights mainly to South America and the USA. There was a pilot named Hans who showed up with what I remember as increasing regularity, but she was never willing to divulge too many details.
When she was more or less forced to stop flying for Lufthansa, I remember she was rather depressed. We’d moved to Manchester then and lived in a freezing cold flat in a Victorian house in Stockport. The walls were unpainted, the floors were bare boards (and not polished or anything). Mummy dressed up in knee-length leather boots and fashionable A-line skirts and silk scarves, then rode the bus to Manchester city centre, to the sleek offices of Lufthansa in St Anne’s Square. Often, she told me, she would cry all the way there, mascara running down her cheeks, tears for her lost, globe-trotting life which had been replaced with a desk-based existence. I couldn’t blame her. Those years in Stockport were sometimes pretty drab, living through the 3-day week, her husband away on tour with the Halle Orchestra for days and weeks at a time, as well as many evenings. It could have been a very happy time, on reflection; she was in love, she had two healthy little girls who were pretty happy in school, her job relieved her of domestic tedium and brought her in contact with some lovely women, Lufthansa employees who remained lifelong friends; Annie, Ann Samy, Marijke, Maya the dancer.
But for a woman in her twenties, how could that compare to the excitement of flying to a new city, every day, of being responsible for the safety and well-being of airplane loads of well-heeled passengers?
Poor old ‘Pan Am’ – even back in the 1980s the writing was on the wall for that company. Poor service, an ageing stock and the dread entry into the market of Freddie Laker and frill-free flying; things began to get very difficult. When we were enjoying (?) our family right to free travel on Pan Am (standby-only – it could take days to get to Mexico City, with long waits in airport lounges), my mother used to despair of the low standards of customer service, compared to what she’d been used to provide. The passing years had made her stop pining for the job, too. ‘Hours on your feet and being polite to passengers who are rude to you? You can stand it when you’re young…’
By then she was studying and researching Spanish and German 18th century Romanticism. Not quite her true vocation either – that would have been singing. But it did seem, finally, to have cured her wanderlust.
My own memories are slight but definitely and powerfully glamorous;living in a stylish apartment in Frankfurt, my mother playing the Getz/Gilberto album that her cellist boyfriend had given her, looking sharp in a navy-blue, fitted uniform before a flight to the Middle East during which some handsome German or Arab would doubtless ask her out for a drink, or propose marriage. I found it impossible ever to begrudge our mother any sadness she felt for losing that.