Ruby Loves Adventure

So, last Tuesday, Oct 19th, I got a chance to go to the book launch of "Trash" by Andy Mulligan at National Bookstore Glorietta 5. This is my third book launch so far, second of Andy Mulligan's, and I wouldn't pass up a chance to have a book signed! The launch was attended by a lot of British nationals [well, obviously since Andy Mulligan is also British, and taught at the British School Manila so his colleagues, and former students were out there to support him].

The launch started at 5pm, where he was introduced by a big boss of National Bookstore [NBS], and there was a brief question & answer by the audience and also by the host!

Some notable questions and his answers:

**What are you currently working on?
He's currently working on another book, due for next year. It's about a girl who falls in love with a boy from the streets. So Trash lives again [everyone laughs].  It was a work in progress but Mr. Mulligan's laptop was stolen so he has to rebuild everything from scratch!

Note: However, we should be able to get something new from him by Feb 2011! It will be a sequel to Ribblestrop, entitled "Return To Ribblestrop." Oooh! I can't wait for that! And ooh man, let's hope Andy gets to remember all the lines he typed when he was creating his new novel.. it's due to be sent to the publisher this December 2010 so here's hoping there's another book out after the Return to Ribblestrop novel!

**Will you hold another book launch when Return to Ribblestrop comes out? [personal question that I asked when I was having my booked signed]
Hopefully National Bookstore will invite me again, but we'll see how it goes.

**Will there be a sequel to Trash?
Unfortunately, no. The book in itself is simple and there's not much elements to place in a sequel.

**Will Trash be turned into a movie?
There is a British filmmaking company who has already bought the rights to the book. They are currently on pre-production and are scouting for the location. They did go to Brazil and were thinking of setting the movie there. He was trying to convince the film people to try and film it in Manila, but unless he is JK Rowling or some other money making author, he has no rights to the filmmaking process. And currently, he's not getting his hopes up too early as these film people tend to put the red light on projects very quickly and unexpectedly.

**Are the characters of Trash based on someone you know?
Yes, there is a boy in India from which the main character, Raphael is loosely based on.

**How did you make the transition from a light young adult read [Ribblestrop] to a more serious young adult read?
As a background, Andy Mulligan has already penned his debut novel titled Ribblestrop - it's about a group of kids in a school... well, they are very, very special kids and the school is quite special as well. Andy says that writing Ribblestrop was harder because there were too many characters involved and intertwining them in the novel takes far more time. Trash, on the other hand, only involves three characters and the story is far more simple than Ribblestrop.

**How do you feel that children reading your book may think how lucky they are that they are not living in the streets?
The novel wasn't written as a journalistic expose meant for kids to realize the realities of what's outside. It was just written as a tourist seeing what's real in MNL. If the kids realized that they are lucky then it's good that they learned something but the book definitely wasn't meant to be written in an expose form.

**No photos from the book launch from my camera yet! I've no idea when I'm going to get the time to upload them though!