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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.

The desire to celebrate Murakami must have built up into something unbearable because when Zool Verjee (@cadmus08) started tweeting about the upcoming launch of 1Q84, I couldn’t resist urging him to organise a party at Blackwell’s in Oxford.

It turns out that another Oxford-based author, Dan Holloway, had been doing just the same thing. Also that Blackwell’s in Oxford is a hotbed of Murakami fans who were delighted at the chance to throw a party for the sheer joy of Murakami-love and shared delight at the appearance of a hotly-anticipated new novel (watch the trailer for 1Q84.)

So last night saw a bunch of Oxford folk gather in the shop for the We Love Murakami party. In honour of Haruki’s own obsession with jazz and cocktails, we had the pleasure of a live jazz pianist. And I mixed Cosmopolitans, Coolman Martinis, Sea Breezes and Shirley Temples, with help from newly-recruited mixologist, Steph.

We shared stories of how we came to love Murakami, what his writing means to us, there were impromptu readings of favourite passages from his books. We voted on our favourite books (mine s0 far is The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle). On pink and blue postcards, we jotted down thoughts of what Murakami means to us. There were pop quiz questions with book prizes (I won a copy of Norwegian Wood for our 19-year old daughter).

Euan from Blackwell’s recorded videos of the speeches. He’s sending footage as well as the postcard jottings to Murakami’s publisher who have promised to pass them on to Haruki. (and we believe them!)

Really a special night of great warmth and affection for a writer than I’m pretty sure none of us with ever meet, but whose inner world has touched us to our very core. That’s what readings is for, at its very best. I am but a humble entertainer, but even humble entertainers need sustenance to inspire our writing. Any writer that inspires me; Murakami, Junot Diaz, Pedro Juan Guttierrez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Kazuo Ishiguro, well, I’m forever in their debt.

Thank you Blackwell’s for such a wonderful evening!

(Big announcement about Joshua 5 over on themgharris.com, btw)

Rewriting, as any author will tell you, is mentally exhausting. You have the editor’s notes that point out all the flaws in your manuscript, all that’s needed is to fix things. Sometimes this means breaking your plot and putting it together in a better configuration. I received my editor’s notes whilst on holiday in Spain. During  a long swim, I mentally put together the new, improved plot. Luckily, it still seemed to work when I returned to my computer.

So after emailing the second draft of Joshua 5 to my editor, I’m now free to write about two exciting upcoming events I’m involved in. Two events which demonstrate the awesomeness of Oxford.

The first, next Saturday, is the 2nd Kennington Literary Festival. In aid of the wonderful little Kennington Village Library, this event is pure ‘localism’. You can come along and meet Oxford authors including Bill Heine, Brian Aldiss, Korky Paul and also – me!

Here’s the article in The Oxford Times:  Literary line-up to aid village library

You can download the full brochure for the Kennington Literary Festival 2011. Or later today you can go pick one up from Starbucks in Summertown or the Jericho Cafe, where I will be dropping some leaflets.

BBC Oxford’s Jane Markham interviewed me about Joshua Files, time-travel fiction and the Kennington Festival – you can listen on the interviews page.

My event is on SATURDAY 15TH OCTOBER 2.20pm-3pm. Free for under 16s! Send your teenagers along to hear some Joshua secrets, tea and biccies in the village hall afterwards.

Meanwhile fellow Oxford author Dan Holloway and I seem to have successfully lobbied Blackwell’s, Oxford to organise an event to celebrate the launch of our beloved Haruki Murakami’s new book, IQ84. Read more about our plans here: We Love Murakami. I’ll be making Cosmopolitans and Coolman Martinis, still deciding on which mocktails… Dan might be making Wind-Up Bird spaghetti. Any volunteers to make rude phone calls to him while the pasta cooks?

So much excitement! And Swindon Youth Literature Festival coming up in November!

Meanwhile I will now work on Surprise New Project – an adult techno-thriller set in the Joshua Files universe. More on this soonish! And Ultra Secret New Project, about which I am still keeping mum…

Like Jenkins I’m as interested in the cultural as well as publishing implications of Pottermore. I was slightly startled to see Youtuber Alex Day (nerimon) respond within hours with his video What the F**k Is Pottermore? (over 200,00 views since posted, as of today).

Was this some kind of new backlash against an author trying to control how fans play in the sandbox she created? Or just a disguised version of the all-too-familiar Potter-envy, which has resulted in a tedious stream of law suits, and critical sniffiness, such as this think-piece by a author A.S Byatt?

Two of the comments by Alex Day struck me. First, he seems to resent to being referred to as part of the ‘digital generation’. Maybe like me, nerimon senses that this is yet another spurious term trying to pin down something which marketeers don’t actually understand. Those crazy digital people! Yes. That’s right. Fear us, we are strange and pixelated!

Secondly, he suggests that if one feels strongly enough about which Hogwarts house you might be in, if such a thing actually existed, you should be able to decide for yourself.  Official or not, you shouldn’t need the official website to dictate. (Alex feels loyal to Ravenclaw. When I did the test on Facebook, it picked me as a Gryffindor. But I’d have chosen Ravenclaw too, probably.)

In Three Reasons Why Pottermore Matters, Henry Jenkins addresses whether authors should try to control the extent and manner in which which fans interact with their creation. Jenkins coined the term ‘textual poacher’ for such fans, and he’s written extensively on the phenomenon of fan fiction, in which readers/viewers appropriate published or broadcast material for their own creativity.

Where do I stand? Well, for once I have a foot in both camps.

Like a few other newish YA authors (e.g. Cassandra Clare, author of The Mortal Instruments books), I began my writing career as a ‘textual poacher’. Back in the late 1990s my good friend Reba Bandyopadhyay and I started the first online Blake’s 7 fan fiction zine.*

Without the literary multi-gym of fan fiction, I would probably never have become a published author. Writing Blake’s 7 fanfic developed me as a writer, it also introduced me to some wonderful friends.

So I’m in favour of the fan-created world. Long may it live!

On the other hand, now I’m an author too. And the world of The Joshua Files doesn’t stop at the books. There is a whole other novel in the form of the Alternate Reality Game, The Descendant. Who killed Josh’s godfather, PJ Beltran, and why? Where is PJ’s teenage daughter, Gabi? The answers these questions are answered in the form of over 50 videos, blogs, secret messages in Habbo Hotel and a code in the UK and US editions of the second Joshua book, ICE SHOCK.

Then there’s Josh’s new secret blog, which provides glimpses into his life before and after the fourth adventure DARK PARALLEL. Fans are beginning to comment on Josh’s blog, to interact with him. But fans have also created their own versions of Josh’s blog, and have inserted themselves as new characters in the investigative drama that is The Descendant, they’ve made their own video trailers.

I think this is more than cool – it’s essential to real growth of a story. A story really only takes off when it has been poached. Hence all the versions of Robin Hood, the Merlin story, etc. Now we have modern day equivalents – the new Star Trek movie franchise kicked of by JJ Abrams is a professionally-produced AU (alternative universe) Trek fanfic.

But authors should be able to play too! That’s what Pottermore is – the author’s own personal sandbox, or as Youtuber Mickeleh says in his response to nerimon (What’s Pottermore? I’ll Tell You) – it’s JKR’s “own personal bandcamp”.

Join the author there if you want, if not, don’t. Mind you, it will be the only way to buy HP ebooks.

However! Chin-stroking commentators who write that it’s the end of publishing as we know it, fundamental paradigm shift etc, may have missed something.

Pottermore is a closed shop – a site for HP fans only where they can only buy HP-related products. That’s fine when you have hundreds of millions of readers.

If you don’t, if you are, oh I don’t know, lemme see, almost anyone else on the planet, you probably still need to sell your books, e or paper, in a place where other books are sold.

Never underestimate the power of cross-buying, impulse buying and the all-powerful bookseller’s tool, 3-for-2. Or indeed, Amazon’s witchy ways of figuring out what customers like to read.

Pottermore is like a cheese shop that only sells gorgonzola. Great if you love gorgonzola, but a fan of cheddar, cheshire or brie isn’t likely to wander into there by mistake and give it a try.

Like, I suspect, all other authors in the world, when my books go digital later this year – next week for ICE SHOCK – I want them sold at all the outlets possible. Breathe easy, Amazon et al. There’s only one Harry Potter.

*Reba has read everything I have ever written and from the beginning commented as seriously on my Blakes7 fanfic as she does now on Joshua Files and the manuscript for Ultra Secret New Project. I promised to base a character in Joshua Files on Reba, so Joshua readers will be visiting Reba at her observatory in Joshua 5…

Joshua 5 - soon on Kindle?

A day does actually arrive when you find yourself typing the final words of your multi-volume young adult series. My final Joshua Files day didn’t have the intense drama of JKR finishing Harry Potter, naturally, because we can only imagine the pressure she must have been under.

And there’s also the sheer levels of immersion – all five Joshua adventures weigh in at around 375,000 words. That’s only one-and-a-half of the longer HP books!

There was however, one tiny similarity, which is that I too will admit that I had written the final page long before I finished the series. I think I wrote it back in 2009 when I was writing Zero Moment (Joshua Files 3). There’s a scene in that installment – let’s just call it the surreal bit – which put me in just the right, slightly sentimental mood. And I knew, quite suddenly, how I wanted to end The Joshua Files.

That kind of mood is difficult to bring about on demand. There are ways to get close, but if it should happen that one day you find yourself in the right emotional state to put down a particularly tricky or evocative scene, I find it’s best to go with it, drop everything and write it down.

Which is what I did that day in 2009. So when it came to the day of finishing Joshua, I had the most difficult part already drafted.

Here’s what I did that day. It was a perfect writing day – no author events that day, daughters were both at school, husband was out at meetings. I was guaranteed to have no interruptions. I had about one chapter left to write, then slide in the final scene and polish it up.

I made some toast with marmalade, brewed a cafetiere of coffee, dropped myself in the sofa in front of the 1980s movie ‘Risky Business’, the movie which launched a very young Tom Cruise to mega-stardom.

No idea why I picked that movie – it was on the Sky box and I was wondering if it was as good as I remembered.  As soon as the music started I realised that I’d forgotten just how great that soundtrack was, with the electronic dance music of Tangerine Dream. As Joel’s life fell apart, with his hopes of a place at Princeton seeming to melt away under mounting disasters, Joel seemed to snap. An almost joyous, freeing sense of fatalism overtook Tom Cruise’s character. The Tangerine Dream track ‘Love On A Real Train’ kicked in, with a relentless, yet emotionally detached drive.

I saw immediately what I wanted to write and exactly how Josh might feel during the climactic moments of Joshua 5. Like Joel from Risky Business – all the best laid plans of his young life are suddenly under threat.So, I rushed upstairs, added the track to the growing Joshua Files playlist on we7, plugged the computer into surround-sound speakers and played the track.

Perfect – just the right sense of tension, urgency and drive, yet underneath it all I could sense that Josh, like Joel in Risky Business, would feel control slipping away from his hands and into the hands of some external force; destiny. And in that moment, like Joel, who grins and says ‘F**k it”, a part of Josh is resigning himself to fate.

I finished the scene, added the finale that I wrote in 2009 and gave both scenes a brief polish.

I was done by lunchtime. I went out into the street feeling a stone lighter. On the way to pick up my daughter I passed BBC Oxford’s Bill Heine and rolled down the car window to yell ‘I’ve finished The Joshua Files’. Bill gave me a huge thumbs-up.

And that was it. No trauma, no sadness. Quite a bit of satisfaction, if I’m honest.

Will there be more Joshua? Who knows. I leave Josh in a place that wouldn’t make it difficult to allow him to continue his adventures. Yet part of me feels that the kid should be allowed to live a normal life, play his guitar, write his songs and date a girl, without having to save the world and evade death every few months.

If you’re interested, here’s the Joshua Files playlist, featuring all songs that are mentioned, quoted or alluded to in the series, roughly in order.

The final four tracks are from Joshua 5. For now, that’s the only clue you get…

World Book Day 2011 - St Barts, Newbury

So we come to the final post of the Dark Parallel Reverse Diaries wherein by a time paradox I revisit the early days of the launch of the fourth Joshua book and jump back to weeks before all the last few entries. In fact in chronological order this post fits between Author Visits 2011. C’mon in, sit a spell and Return to Eggli Mountain.

Weeks before the launch of Dark Parallel, I’d managed to get my hands on a bunch of ARCs (Advance Review Copies) as well as a very small number of finished copies. With these in my suitcase, I set off across the land, well across Oxfordshire and Berkshire. Kids were pretty excited to have a chance to win one of these rare ARCs and early copies of the fourth book. Winners won their copies by winning a badge-guessing contest about authors, or a quiz about Joshua Files, or by designing an alternative cover of on of the Booked-Up listed titles.

Yr 7 student's design for Invisible City

I showed the new trailer for Dark Parallel to audiences of hundreds, and was relieved to see that the young actor playing Josh still looks good when his face is blown up to cinema-screen size! Kids were also treated to some of the behind-the-scenes footage from the brief filming session.

After a full week of visits, I was off to Switzerland for the two-day visit to College Du Leman, Geneva. (This is where the weekend of relaxing at the Eggli Mountain blog post fits in…)

Visiting CDL was a hugely fun experience, although a bit daunting – five sessions each with around 200 students. And one session en francais! I’d had massive help from the French publishers of Joshua, who had translated a transcript of the talk I’d prepared. But as I looked over the notes in the hotel the night before, I realised that I hadn’t spoken French for any length of time for 25 years. Even reading it aloud – was I going to be comprehensible? Well I won’t lie – I practiced a bit, and crossed my fingers that the kids would be able to understand my lazy English accent.

First ever signing of "Operation Joshua"

It was fascinating to observe the differences between schools in England, the English-language side of CDL and the French-speaking side. In England, especially in state schools, students were expected to be quiet whilst waiting to hear the talk, and were occasionally reminded. Afterwards they were allowed to show their excitement, queuing for autographs and photos.

In the English-speaking strand of CDL the corridors looked like US high-schools with casual hanging around lockers. Once in the hall, the students chatted quietly but weren’t expected to be silent while waiting. The French-speaking strand of CDL, a classical Lycee type education, were used to much stricter teaching conditions, absolute silence in class, for example. But for a more entertaining session like an author visit, these same kids kicked back and relaxed, and the teachers were fine with that.

In fact the French-speaking grades 5&6 were the most energetic and excited group I had ever visited! They clapped along with the music in the videos, they whooped and cheered, they clamoured to ask questions at the end.

Three different styles of behaviour management, but all worked out pretty well with the kids seeming happy and relaxed. It was a pleasure to meet everyone and I’m delighted that quite a few young people added me on Facebook in the following days and weeks.

Thanks so much to all the wonderful school librarians and teachers who invited me into school, as well as to Krysia Rodak and all the brilliant Parent Faculty Association of College Du Leman for such a wonderful visit to Geneva!

MG at College Du Leman

Joshua readers at College Du Leman

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!

I say ‘events moving so rapidly’ but mainly it’s down to one thing: naughty me, I still haven’t finished Joshua 5! My deadline is mid-May. My stretch-deadline is end of May. Cue a bunch of writerly excuses worthy of Ed Reardon himself. But basically, that’s the deal. If I’m going to avoid a late delivery then I need to write, write, write like the wind!

But, my dear blog readers, all blessed six of you, you all still want to hear about DARK PARALLEL, don’t you?

So watch out for the Dark Parallel Reverse Diaries! They start with the launch party and end with the very first time I showed off a shiny new copy of Dark Parallel in a school. College Du Leman, your photos will soon be here…

You can find photos of the Dark Parallel launch party on Flickr. Thanks to everyone who attended, I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did! The focus this year was on the friends and readers who helped me to make the live action sequence that appears in the Dark Parallel book trailer. We watched the ‘making of Dark Parallel’ film and oh, we did chortle. We also ate cake. There was an after-party at the pub, we sat outdoors!

April is a great month in which to release a book. Thanks to all at Scholastic for another great job with a shiny new book!