Send your answer, name and postal details to
competition@za.penguingroup.com 

 

 

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I hand you over to Ross Garland!!!

I see John has been insulting me on his blog for my procrastination.

So here is an update for your blogging delight.

Spud the movie feels like it has passed its watershed moment in its journey towards being made. We have a real international star on board to play the GUV. I’m hoping to be able to reveal his name in the coming weeks. I see that BBC is doing reruns of his top tv show at the moment.

On the back of this news, the money to make the film is starting to piece itself together. As soon as I get confirmation that all is on track for our target shoot date of December we will be rolling out our casting for all the teenage roles, both at certain schools around the country and online. I wish we could do a full on Idols style process because I have no doubt the talent out there will be overwhelming but with the usual limitations of money we are going to have to be smart to give everyone a chance to have a go at auditioning for the film. So we will also launch a web process where people can go online and try out that way. Just like Spud’s audition for Oliver…the long shot at fame and fortune.

Other news is that the same Hollywood distributor that distributed “Tsotsi” to the world has picked up the film, which certainly confirms our view that the film has international legs.

Meanwhile we slowly put together the behind the scenes team – cinematographer, editor, art director – who will all play their part in the 57 person crew who will ultimately make the film what it is. And we are also starting to look at the more mundane issues of where the crew will all stay in the KZN Midlands whilst we shoot, and whether our star should stop over in Rio or London on his way from LA.

And for me, the producer, it’s the usual thing of trying to hold it altogether in the face of constant questions about whether anything we are doing is right – is the budget too high? Is the budget too low? Is the script too commercial? Is the script commercial enough? I too would love to disappear in Vietnam for two months but alas I am not a famous author.

Your man in Cape Town,
Ross

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To read John’s Travel Blog click here

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71 DAYS to launch

Happy April fools day y’all! Since my job is to make people laugh and to distract them from their daily lives with idiotic nonsense, i shall therefore desist from attempting an April fool’s joke about myself. Options i considered were:

I’m not coming back.

I’m having a sex change.

I’m racing in Sunday’s Malaysian Grand Prix

I’ve plagiarised Spud, Learning to Fly.

Penguin Books has gone bankrupt.

I’ve bought a brothel.

Macaulay Culkin is playing Spud in the movie!

So back to Malaysia. I find myself in the steamy equatorial capital of KL! Okay i thought Durban in February was worth moaning about, but this is a whole different ball game! The taxi driver who ferried us from the airport to the centre of the city yesterday morning was a lively character. He told Julia and I that we were extremely pale Africans and tried to out us as dinkum Aussies! Luckily we found some common ground discussing the Cape Malay culture and the evils of the global economy. He refused to open up about Malaysian politics, which made me immediately suspicious that he may be an undercover Malaysian booktrade operative. When he finally asked me what i did for a living to allow for a 2 month holiday, this is what followed.

ME   I write books

TAXI    What books?

ME   Funny books.

TAXI (Laughing hysterically for no apparent reason) Oh funny books!

ME   It’s set in a boarding school.

TAXI   Oh Harry Potter!

ME    Except without the magic.

TAXI  No magic?

ME   None.

TAXI   Nothing?

ME No magic.

The taxi driver doesn’t look impressed and falls silent for the remainder of the journey.

So there we were last night sitting at a sidewalk cafe, drinking Tiger beer, and devouring beef cantonese whilst watching the passing trade of this bustling Asian city. I love this place. I love cruising the streets at night with no other goal but to drink it all in. The foot massage was also a triumph – i could feel the stress and tension of a year behind the laptop leaving my body. It kind of made me want to whistle or perhaps sing a loud hymn in the streets. Unfortunately my sleeping times are shot being 6hrs ahead of SA and all. I only fell asleep at 4am this morning and awoke at 1400. Hopefully that rectifies itself soon because i’m losing out on free breakfasts.

So tonight it’s into Chinatown to check out the throbbing underbelly of KL. On Friday morning we leave for Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia where our backpacking begins in earnest. I’ll catch up with you there, and hopefully shall have some exciting news about Spud the Movie to share with you.

You all be good
love
J

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Acclaimed author

Adele Parks

will be visiting SA

from 10- 16 June ‘09

Adele Parks will be travelling to South Africa to launch her latest novel Love Lies at the Cape Town Book Fair this year. ABOUT THE BOOK:

Adele brings you the steamiest, star-packed read of the summer.

Fern is glaring thirty in the face and can’t ignore the love lies any longer. Life with Adam was amazing once – although these days swinging from the chandeliers means DIY not SEX. She believes a romantic wedding should be the next step but Adam just won’t go down on one knee. Then a chance meeting with Scottie Taylor – the UK’s sexiest pop star – lights fireworks in Fern that won’t stop exploding. It’s mind-expanding love at first sight for them both, so when he proposes in front of a sell-out crowd at Wembley Stadium, there’s only one answer. Yes, yes, yes! Before you know it, Fern is living the celebrity dream in LA and a wedding-planner is arranging designer-shoe fittings. But isn’t it all happening a little too fast? Why is this modern-day Cinderella homesick for a rented two-bedroom flat in Clapham?

OTHER BOOKS BY ADELE PARKS:

Game Over

Husbands

The Other Woman’s Shoes

Playing Away

Tell Me Something

Young Wives Tales

THE AUTHOR

Adele Parks was born in Teesside, north-east England, and now lives in Guildford with her husband and son. She is the author of eight bestselling novels, including the iconic Playing Away and, more recently Husbands, Young Wives’ Tales and Tell Me Something.

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In 1984 Patrick founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition (ION), a charitable and independent educational trust for the furtherance of education and research in nutrition. Today, ION is the largest training school in the UK offering a degree-accredited course in nutritional therapy and is widely respected as a leading edge organisation by professionals and media alike. Patrick formed a relationship with the late Dr Linus Pauling, who became the Patron of the Institute for Optimum Nutrition.

In 1986, Patrick started researching the effects of nutrition on intelligence, collaborating with Gwillym Roberts, a headmaster and student at ION. This culminated in a randomised controlled trial testing the effects of improved nutrition on children’s IQ – an experiment that was the subject of a Horizon documentary and published in the Lancet in 1988. This study was the first of its kind in the world and considerably raised awareness of the role of nutrition in intelligence.

During his years as director of ION, Patrick ran many educational campaigns that brought attention to the importance of zinc and pyrolluyria, disglycaemia, antioxidants, methylation and homocysteine, IgG food allergies, essential fats in mental health – factors still greatly underestimated in the treatment of mental illness. Patrick retired as Director of ION in 1997 to focus on writing, teaching and researching.

Patrick was awarded an honorary Diploma from ION and is also an Honorary Fellow of BANT (the British Association of Nutritional Therapists). In 2003 he founded the Brain Bio Centre at ION, a treatment centre pioneering the optimum nutrition approach for mental health, to formalise the treatment of mental health with nutrition and to act as a research centre. The Brain Bio centre is owned by the Food for the Brain Foundation, a registered education charity set up by Patrick to promote awareness of the link between learning, behaviour, mental health and nutrition.

Patrick lectures and conducts workshops throughout the world on a wide range of topics, to the public, health professionals and the medical profession. In the UK he presents around 50 workshops and lectures a year. His knowledge, personality and enthusiasm, together with his strong scientific approach, helps him to stimulate lively debates, simplifying complex issues and help the public and professionals expand their understanding of health issues. Patrick is frequently involved in government campaigns and debates concerning optimum nutrition.

Books by Patrick Holford include:

• 100% Health
• 30 Day Fat Burner Diet
• 500 Health and Nutrition questions answered
• The Alzheimer’s prevention plan
• Balancing Hormones Naturally
• Beat Stress and Fatigue
• Boost your Immune System
• Food Glorious Food
• Food is better Medicine than Drugs
• The H Factor Diet

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In addition, McCall Smith’s delightful German professor series, Portuguese Irregular Verbs, The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, and At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances were published in the US in January 2005. He is also the author of children’s books, including the Akimbo.

Some of Alexander McCall Smith’s other titles include:

• 44 Scotland Street
• Akimbo And The Crocodile Man
• Akimbo And The Elephants
• At The Villa Of Reduced Circumstances
• The Baboons Who Went This Way And That
• Blue Shoes And Happiness
• The Careful Use of Compliments
• Dream Angus
• Espresso Tales
• Friends, Lovers, Chocolate
• The Kalahari Typing School For Men
• The Miracle at Speedy Motors
• The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency

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She worked briefly as a legal secretary.  “I could type fast but couldn’t spell, I was the worst legal secretary ever,” she says now.  After her sons were born she stayed home and tried every craft that came along.  A blizzard in February 1979 forced her hand to try another creative outlet.  She was snowed in with a three and six year old with no kindergarten respite in sight and a dwindling supply of chocolate. Born into a family of readers, Nora had never known a time that she wasn’t reading or making up stories.  During the now famous blizzard, she pulled out a pencil and notebook and began to write down one of those stories. It was there that a career was born.  Several manuscripts and rejections later, her first book, Irish Thoroughbred, was published by Silhouette in 1981.

Nora met her second husband, Bruce Wilder, when she hired him to build bookshelves.  They were married in July 1985.  Since that time, they’ve expanded their home, traveled the world and opened a bookstore together.

Through the years, Nora has always been surrounded by men. Not only was she the youngest in her family, but she was also the only girl.  She has raised two sons.  Having spent her life surrounded by men has given Ms. Roberts a fairly good view of the workings of the male mind, which is a constant delight to her readers.  It was, she’s been quoted as saying, a choice between figuring men out or running away screaming.

Nora is a member of several writers groups and has won countless awards from her colleagues and the publishing industry.

Nora’s J.D. Robb titles include:

• Naked in Death
• Glory in Death
• Immortal in Death

Nora Roberts titles include:

• Angels Fall
• Birthright
• Black Rose
• Blood Brothers
• Blue Dahlia
• Blue Smoke
• Born in Fire
• Born in Ice
• Dance of the Gods
• High Noon

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Clive Cussler married Barbara Knight in 1955, and they remained married for nearly fifty years until her death in 2003.Together they had three children, Teri, Dirk and Dayna who have given him four grandchildren.

After his discharge from the military, Cussler went to work in the advertising industry, first as a copywriter and later as a creative director for two of the nation’s most successful advertising agencies.As part of his duties Cussler produced radio and television commercials, many of which won international awards including an award at the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival.

Following the publication in 1996 of Cussler’s first nonfiction work, The Sea Hunters, he was awarded a Doctor of Letters degree in 1997 by the Board of Governors of the State University of New York Maritime College who accepted the work in lieu of a Ph.D. thesis.This was the first time in the college’s 123-year history that such a degree had been awarded.

Cussler is a fellow of the Explorers Club of New York, the Royal Geographic Society in London, and the American Society of Oceanographers.

Clive Cussler began writing in 1965 when his wife took a job working nights for the local police department where they lived in California. After making dinner for the kids and putting them to bed he had no one to talk to and nothing to do so he decided to start writing. His most famous creation is marine engineer, government agent and adventurer Dirk Pitt. The Dirk Pitt novels frequently take on an alternative history perspective, such as “what if Atlantis was real?”, or “what if Abraham Lincoln wasn’t assassinated, but was kidnapped?”

The first two Pitt novels, The Mediterranean Caper and Iceberg, were relatively conventional maritime thrillers. The third, Raise the Titanic!, made Cussler’s reputation and established the pattern that subsequent Pitt novels would follow: A blend of high adventure and high technology, generally involving megalomaniacal villains, lost ships, beautiful women, and sunken treasure.

Cussler’s novels, like those of Michael Crichton, are examples of techno-thrillers that do not use military plots and settings. Where Crichton strives for scrupulous realism, however, Cussler prefers fantastic spectacles and outlandish plot devices. The Pitt novels, in particular, have the anything-goes quality of the James Bond or Indiana Jones movies, while also sometimes borrowing from Alistair MacLean’s novels. Pitt himself is a three-dimensional, larger-than-life hero reminiscent of Doc Savage and other characters from pulp magazines.

Clive Cussler has had more than seventeen consecutive titles reach The New York Times fiction best-seller list.

Clive’s Books include:

• Mayday!
• Iceberg
• Raise the Titanic
• Vixen 03
• Night Probe
• Deep Six
• Cyclops
• Atlantis Found
• Valhalla Rising
• Trojan Odyssey
• Black Wind
• Treasure of Khan
• Arctic Drift
• The Adventures Of Vin Fiz
• The Chase
• Corsair
• Dark Watch
• Fire Ice
• Golden Buddha
• Lost City
• The Navigator
• Plague Ship
• Polar Shift
• Sacred Stone
• Skeleton Coast

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Stephenie Meyer graduated from Brigham Young University with a bachelor’s degree in English. She lives with her husband and three young sons in Phoenix, Arizona. After the publication of her first novel, Twilight, booksellers chose Stephenie Meyer as one of the "most promising new authors of 2005" (Publishers Weekly).

Praise for Twilight:

• A New York Times Editor’s Choice
• A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year
• An Amazon "Best Book of the Decade…So Far"
• A Teen People "Hot List" pick
• An American Library Association "Top Ten Best Book for Young Adults" and "Top Ten Books for Reluctant Readers"
• Has been translated into 20 languages

Stephenie’s published books include: Twilight, New Moon, Eclipse and Breaking Dawn

via

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