Hot Key Books- Bloggers Event!

Wahey! My first ever meeting at a Publishers!

Thanks to my Dad and Hot Key Books, I was invited to their offices based in London to discuss their fantastic soon-to-be-released books, chat, and to have a nice lunch.

We arrived there on time, and were given a tour by staff around their office. It’s pretty cosy, with modern looking offices and computers with books everywhere! Stacked on shelves, on desks, everywhere were the eight brand new releases of Hot Key Books, as well as the Non Fiction area owned by a partner company.

I especially loved the in-office design studio, occupied by the illustrators and graphic designers who are amazingly talented; and put together all of the front covers! The studio was really cool- with giant book covers on canvases everywhere. It looks really professional, just like the rest of the office!

Over a little bit of lunch, everybody got to meet everybody else! I got talking to an awesome (Hunger Games Fan!!) girl the same age as me, and we sat together in the board room.

In the board room we were shown a really cool presentation about their first releases. They all sound really great, and all by brilliant, known and new authors!

Each of the three attending authors, (Sarah Mussi, who wrote angel dust, Sally Gardner and her book Maggot Moon, and Lydia Syson, who wrote A World Between Us,) each gave a little interesting talk as to why they wrote their book and what it is about when their book came up on the slideshow. As we were going through titles to be released in 2013 whom I am not allowed to tell a soul about a skype call popped up!

The caller was S.J Kincaid, an author for Hot Key Books who for obvious reasons couldn’t make it to the event because she lives in Chicago! But, all of us bloggers were lucky enough to receive a skype chat from the author of Insignia, a book which you can read my review of HERE, and one exciting thing was that this brilliant book has very recently been given movie rights by Fox! (So… watch out in the coming years, it’s sure to be a blockbuster soon!)

We asked loads of questions just like with the other authors, but this time the authors with us in person were asking questions too. S.J exchanged writing tips with us, told us the latest news on her sequel to Insignia, told and showed us what she writes on, and said thank you to me!

Yes, I was extremely excited today, because not only was this my first ever publishers event, but when I got there I found out that a snippet of my review was picked to be printed in the inside cover of Insignia! How cool is that? My first Event, and first Book review to be put in a book… (And a pretty awesome lunch) and all in one day!

After saying goodbye to S.J, we all went out to have a bit more to eat and got our goodie bags, full of lots of books to read! Instantly, I got the three books of the authors that were there and got them all signed, having a friendly chat with each author. Now I have Angel Dust, Maggot Moon, and A World Between Us, all signed! The authors were lovely to chat with, and here is a picture of me with the highly successful Sally Gardner!

(Left: I met Sally Gardner, Award Winning, Bestselling author!)

One thing though, we were told tales of another author (Gareth P.Jones) who wrote one book called Constable & Toop, but sadly he was at a music festival! I hope to see him soon at one event or another, because he writes songs and plays them on his guitar relating to every story he writes!

Overall, I had great fun at my first ever event, so many thanks to my Dad for taking me, the awesome Hot Key Books Staff for inviting me, The amazing authors who I got to meet, and all of the bloggers and reviewers I got to say hello to as well!

Here’s a quick list of the books published this year by Hot Key Books:

• A World Between Us (By Lydia Syson)
• Angel Dust (By Sarah Mussi)
• Constable & Toop (By Gareth P. Jones)
• Insignia (By S.J. Kincaid)
• Jepp, Who Defied the Stars (By Katherine Marsh)
• Maggot Moon  (By Sally Gardner)
• Shrunk! (By F.R. Hitchcock)
• The Cloud Hunters (Alex Shearer)
• Under My Hat (A collection of spooky stories by various authors including Neil Gaiman, Holly Black and Garth Nix. Edited by Jonathan Strahan)

Also, why not visit Hot Key Books at their website here?