The Latest News from Joanne
January 2012
Belatedly, a happy New Year to all of you, and thank you for all your good wishes. As you know, I’ve been racing towards the end of the new book, ravelling up plot strands as I go, and I’m happy to say that I have finally managed to get a first draft that I (and my characters) are happy with. Barring a bit of reworking and editing, I think we’ll be comfortably on time for the release date of May 24th (later for the US). I know some of you have been waiting impatiently for the next chapter of Vianne’s story, so here’s a little background to get you in the mood … PEACHES FOR
MONSIEUR LE CURÉ
Otherwise, it looks as if 2012 will be a busy year. Apart from PEACHES, Transworld are also publishing a little collection of my short stories sometime in autumn, plus the paperback of RUNELIGHT will be coming out then, too. Watch the Events board for details and dates, or follow @joannechocolat on Twitter…
Runelight Competition
The winner of the final leg of the Runelight competition is Anna D (sorry, don’t know your last name, Anna).
Here is her winning entry:
Society of Authors' Tweetathon
As you know, the Society of Authors organised a tweetathon in which Joanne wrote the first line of a story which was completed by a number of other writers. This was to draw attention to the short story cuts on Radio 4 and to prove how much we still love our short stories and want them to continue. Here's the finished story read by Downton Abbey's Hugh Bonneville ... Click Here.
October 2011
With less than 2 weeks till the publication of RUNELIGHT, I’m juggling too many things at a time. Still, it’s a great game, and I’m very much looking forward to launching the new book and announcing the first of our three winners in the RUNEMARKS competition. As for the other two, well. My publisher has requested that I extend the deadline of the competition to give a chance to enter to some of the schools and reading-groups included in the Random promotion. So, what I’m going to do is this:
I’ll announce the first winner on November 1st, as planned. After that there will be a second deadline of December 1st, after which I will announce the second winner. After that, there will be a third deadline of January 1st, when I will announce the third and final winner.
All three prize-winners will get a RUNELIGHT goodie bag, including a unique silver rune pendant from The Silver Bough. http://www.thesilverbough.com/index.shtml
There’s still plenty of time to enter, so see what you can come up with!
Click Here for more details of the competition.
Runelight was published on 3 November 2011
Meanwhile, it was great to be on the Review Show this week with Germaine Greer, Sam Leith and Dan Stevens. Thanks for all your messages about it.
Thanks too, for your support of Why Willows Weep: Contemporary Tales from the Woods, the book of modern folk-tales in support of the Woodland Trust, to which I contributed a story this month (Click Here for further information).
To buy your copy visit: www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/whywillowsweep
I have also made a contribution to the short story anthology Who was Betty?, a whimsical collection of tall stories about Bettys Tea Rooms, with the proceeds going to The Yorkshire Rainforest Project.
www.yorkshirerainforestproject.co.uk
The rest of the time I’ve been in the shed, hard at work on the new book, which I’m hoping to finish by the end of the year. I don’t have a title yet, but so far I can tell you this: Vianne’s back in Lansquenet – and facing her toughest challenge yet …
September 2011
Launched on 14 September 2011 for 5 consecutive weeks, Simon Brett, Neil Gaiman, Joanne Harris, Ian Rankin and Sarah Waters will lead a short story tweetathon in which authors and tweeters will collaborate to write a short story in 670 characters.
In a never-before-attempted collaboration between top authors and tweeters one story a week will be written via Twitter. Five first-line contributions of varying genres will be tweeted by authors Simon Brett (The Feathering Mysteries), Neil Gaiman (American Gods), Joanne Harris, Ian Rankin (the Rebus novels) and Sarah Waters (The Night Watch). Tweeters following the Society are invited to complete the next 4 sentences. Every hour the best lines will be selected and the resulting short stories will be published on the SoA website. Each week’s writer and first line will be announced on Wednesday morning, starting with Ian Rankin on 14 September.
If you have a Twitter account and would like to support the Society's campaing then log in every Wednesday at 11am to take part.
The stories and rules can be viewed at: www.societyofauthors.org/soa-short-story-tweetathon-soatale
or check out: twitter.com/#!/Soc_of_Authors
July 2011
Summer’s rushing past, and I’m still working hard trying to bring Vianne back to Lansquenet. Gifts of biscuits from my editor have helped enormously –
- and the shed, free of distractions, telephones and Internet, is proving to be a most creative environment.
Runelight comes out on November 3rd, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing your entries for the Runelight Competition. Some of you have already come up with some great ideas, proving that you don’t have to be a film-maker to think creatively and visually. And remember, the winner and two runners-up get a terrific goodie bag, including a piece of handmade rune jewellery from the Silver Bough…
Plus: to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mervyn Peake, I’ve been talking about Peake on TV and radio, as well as contributing an introduction to the new centenary edition of Boy In Darkness and Other Stories, just out in paperback this month. (Click Here for details.)
If you haven’t read anything by this great and woefully underrated author, or if Gormenghast is the extent of your knowledge, then this is your chance to discover one of the twentieth century’s most mercurial voices.
May 2011
How does an author, faced with several deadlines of the most pressing nature, most profitably spend their time? In my case, they spend it on Twitter; digging the garden; listening to a great deal of musical theatre; re-reading the collected poems of John Donne and The Duchess of Malfi in a vain attempt to help their child revise for their English A-Level; cleaning out the house for the first time in years and making ridiculous amounts of tea.
That said, in spite of this I have managed to finish editing the final, final version of RUNELIGHT, which should be coming out in October. My child is especially pleased by this (although I sense that very soon I may have to start thinking about the sequel). I’m also working on a number of other projects, including a novel, which I’m hoping will turn out to be the third chapter in the story of Vianne Rocher.
In the hope of getting some uninterrupted working time, I have now moved my laptop and desk to the shed (a very posh shed, commissioned by my husband as a phone-free zone to which I can commute every day, avoiding the distractions of Twitter, toaster and fridge). Sadly, the view from the shed is so beautiful that it has become a distraction in itself…
Last month I was privileged to be asked to judge the shortlist of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel Award – the shortlist was very strong, but my congratulations to the winner, Jonathan Kemp, for his marvellous novel LONDON TRIPTYCH (see here for details).
Plus, a couple of weeks ago I shared a stage with Tatiana de Rosnay at the French Consulate, talking about what it’s like to be raised straddling two different cultures and speaking two different languages. We found we had quite a lot in common, in spite of our very different experiences. Find out why in this video:
(Click the circle to view, but please be patient as it may take a few seconds to begin.)
Otherwise, I’m watching with interest a couple of other projects – perhaps too new and delicate to dare to give details of just yet, but which may grow into something good over the following six months or so. Watch this space…
February 2011
Good heavens, where did the time go?
Another day, another deadline. That’s my only real excuse. And I’m increasingly horrified at the number of people I have forgotten to thank, greet, acknowledge or do long-overdue events for - although most of you are very kind, and understand that while I’m doing readings, festivals, book reviews, articles, travel pieces, interviews, tweets, blogs, guest blogs and all the other literary impedimenta that comes with the turf, I’m probably not writing any more books.
To summarize my progress, then. Last month I realized that RUNELIGHT still needed a little work. I’m very close to finishing it now, and it should be published later this year, probably in October sometime.
I do have another current project, too, although I don’t think I’ll tell you much about that for the moment. Suffice it to say that if it comes off, I’ll get Vianne Rocher back to Lansquenet, and you might get to meet a few old friends.
I won’t be locked in my writing shed all the time, though. In April I’ll be at the Oxford Festival for most of the festival week, mostly interviewing other authors, though I’ll also be giving a reading to coincide with the paperback release of BLUEEYEDBOY. (Thank you for all your encouraging messages and comments, by the way. I knew this particular book was going to be literary Marmite, but your enthusiasm was very cheering.)
In March I shall be at the Perth Literary Festival, so if you’re around, please come! It’s my first time at this particular event, and I’m looking forward to it very much (not least because I get to go snorkelling. The writer’s lot can be hard, sometimes.)
I’ve also spent a lot of time this month campaigning to save our libraries.
[See more about Philip Pullman's support for this campaign: click here.]
I know that local authorities are under pressure to make cuts, and that in some ways they have been put into an impossible position by the Government. However, I do urge you to spare a thought for our libraries and what they mean to our communities, to the literacy of our children, our schools, the well-being of our elderly and handicapped and to those who may not be able to afford to buy all the books they want to read.
Last year I went to Togo in Africa with an aid organization called PLAN. One of the many things PLAN was working on was the creation of libraries to benefit schools and the wider community. And rightly so; libraries are one of the things by which a civilization is judged. If we lose our public libraries we will have lost one of those things that define us as a civilized country, and regardless of how much money it saves, we will be the poorer for it.
We take so many things for granted – at least until we’ve lost them. And then we say: Remember when we had -
Free access to books for everyone
Trained librarians to help us with any aspect of research we needed
Storytime for children
Archives of specialist, out-of-print and commercially unavailable books
Study rooms for students
Reminiscence therapy for old people
Comfy chairs just to sit and read
Communal spaces for author readings, lectures and book group discussions
A place for anyone to come and share their enthusiasm for reading
Remember when we had all that? Why ever did we let it go?
We are told that libraries have to close because they are not cost-effective. But how can you quantify the things that a community library provides? What price your child’s literacy? Your passion for books? Your book club? That accidental discovery? That sudden inspiration to do something you might never have thought of, if you hadn’t read about it in a library book?
We are told that closing some libraries will make the others “more efficient.” How? The libraries that are being closed are mostly from the poorest and most under-privileged areas. Do we really think that doing this will help those poor communities thrive? Or are the politicians simply removing one more vital resource from an already impoverished system?
We are told that some libraries can survive if they are staffed by volunteers. But how can this work in practice? Who are these volunteers? Where will they come from? Who will decide whether they are suitable? Who will determine what they do? How can we expect a volunteer to do the job that was previously carried out by a trained librarian with a degree? This plan makes about as much sense as replacing schoolteachers, or nurses, or care workers with untrained, unpaid assistants. It’s a plan that cannot possibly work. And when it is shown not to work, the politicians will blame “lack of interest” for its failure.
Finally, we are told that if libraries are not closed, then other services will suffer. But we should not have to make the choice between the things our civilization considers essential. Care for the old and handicapped; education for the young; hospital treatment for everyone; free access to books for all. These should be universal rights; they should be non-negotiable.
As for those smug, condescending politicians who would have us believe that our libraries can be replaced by Wikipedia (possibly the largest and least reliable public information resource ever created), or by buying books on the Internet (I’m afraid these have to be paid for); or worse still, by downloading books for free on the Internet (which counts as piracy): you can no more replace a proper community library with an online resource than you could replace your loved ones with inflatable dolls. Plastic is plastic, real is real, and yes, we can still see the difference.
So please, support your library. It’s not just about taking books home - in fact that is perhaps the least of it. It’s about the continued survival of a place where books are given their true importance, and where people can discuss their love of books in front of something other than a computer screen. This isn’t a debate about whether physical books are to be replaced by electronic ones. Maybe this will happen one day; technology is always changing, and libraries should reflect this too – at least, if they’re given the funding.
Because whatever the format of a book, it’s the words that are most important. Words are what we care about, whether they appear on a screen, a page, or an electronic tablet. And access to those words is what we’re trying to save - we, the authors, you, the readers, they, the children, the students, all the people who care about books. So don’t give up without a fight. Don’t believe the slick excuses made by politicians and think-tank operatives who think that what is free has no value. Otherwise, we may soon find ourselves having to answer the question:
“Mummy, Daddy - what was a library?”
November 2010
I’ve reached the conclusion this month that an author can either do things or write things, but not both. I’ve been doing both. RUNELIGHT is finally finished, barring redrafting and copy-editing, and I should be able to give you a publication date very soon. I’m afraid publishers take quite a long time to bring out a book – sometimes almost as long as it takes to write it! – so you may have a bit of a wait yet, but I have done my part (arguably the most important one), and look forward to seeing the results. In October I spent three weeks going to New York and back on the lovely Queen Mary 2; some of you may have followed my tweets http://twitter.com/Joannechocolat , but in case you didn’t, I’m writing a piece for the Daily Mail about the trip, which should be due out in December. Meanwhile, thank you to everyone who came to my lecturres, and to my fellow-lecturers, especially Bill Bryson and David Blunkett, both fabulous speakers and terrific human beings.
Thanks also to Betty’s of Harrogate, (http://www.bettys.co.uk/) who, guessing that I was in desperate need of supplies, last month sent me a care package containing all of my favourite things; cakes, tea, biscuits - plus their new cookbook which I suspect is all set to be one of my new obsessions. Click Here for Details.
Last week I launched BLUEEYEDBOY in Milan, so many thanks to all my loyal Italian fans and to everyone who bought, read and reviewed the book. Italian readers will be able to see a selection of early press interviews and reviews on this site within the next few days.
I’m also still working on my screenplay for THE LOLLIPOP SHOES, in the hope that someone, somewhere, will share my vision of how it should appear on screen. Maybe they will, maybe they won’t. Either way, I’m having fun. Meanwhile, COASTLINERS is being rewritten as a stage musical by a couple of very talented young musicians, now working with a very talented young producer. I can’t wait to see what they’ve come up with so far between them. This could end up being more fun than any movie…
Did I miss anything?
Oh, yes. Well, I’m still in the early stages of the new book I’m working on, but I think I know where I’m going now. I shan’t say much about it, but if I get my story right, there’s a chance that we will finally learn what happens next to Vianne and Anouk – plus it’s not set in Paris this time, but in a village I think you’ll recognize. Wish me luck. I may need it! It’s going to be a busy few months…