Even before the amazing Walker Books people sent me a copy of More Than This, I was geared up to go to this event. After finishing the book a few days before (and sitting and staring at it for a while, just in pure awe. Review soon, by the way, when my thoughts will form coherent sentences.) I was super excited to go see the author talk about it! This is possibly the funniest book discussion I’ve ever been to- and also the strangest because it really was quite hard for Patrick to discuss the book without giving too much away!

Anyway, onto recounting the book event. With my pictures included.

Patrick Ness was accompanied by Nicolette Jones, who is a writer and journalist; at Waterstones Piccadilly, to host his first ever event about his new shiny book, More Than This! The event was proclaimed by him to be pretty special not only because it’s the first More Than This event but the first event he’s done after getting married (Congrats, by the way, Patrick!!). It was also awesome because they had cut little cupcakes with books made out of icing on top of them… with the More Than This book cover! They. Were. YUMMY.  Yes, also fancy looking drinks too, but I obviously wasn’t allowed to try those 😉

I didn’t actually realise how funny Patrick Ness is. Well- he’s pretty hilarious. Nicolette introduced him by saying things along the lines of ‘And Patrick Ness has MADE HISTORY by winning the Carnegie Medal two years running with two books from the same trilogy-”

And then Ness cut her off saying “Oh, stop it, you,” And looking quite flattered. That probably didn’t sound so hilarious, but it was, okay ;). I’m just not good at making stuff sound funny.

Anyway, Nicolette and Patrick talked about the book- exploring the characters, themes, and the inspirations behind the book. Multiple times did I laugh. Like, for instance, Ness on inspirations:

“I’ve always wanted to write a book about waking up in an empty world: the idea appeals to me. No offense.”

The idea also came to him because his older brother, while they were little and living in America, kept boasting that he’d saved Patrick from drowning at sea in Hawaii. When he was older, Patrick realised “Hey, that never actually happened!” He’d been fooled into believing it. I’m guessing this is where the not only Questioning Reality aspect of the book came from, as well as the beginning, in which Seth drowns and dies in the first chapter. (Don’t worry. Not a spoiler. Trust me.)

Conversation later moved on to his character, Seth, who was practically the only character up for discussion as any others would give away huge spoilers! Patrick Ness talked about how he felt that no, he wasn’t cramming in teen dramas into one character. “If you were to look at a teen’s fiction online like I have… you’ll see it’s a hundred times worse than my characters mostly!” He said. Very important point- his story includes suicide, a secret gay relationship, and a terrifying kidnap of a very important person in the book… a lot of issues were pointed out in the book, and yet there can be worse for teenagers, still.

After that he went on to a question and answer thing and all of the questions were really great. They included one from a seemingly angered guy asking why one character in The Knife Of Never Letting Go was killed. I think the funniest part of that was Laure Eve’s (I’ll mention Laure more at the end of this post! :)) question. It was actually a very good question. “Why do you write? Do you feel like you have to write?” And Patrick finally replied with a yes, he feels he has to write, before saying rather loudly to everyone in the room that Laure Eve was ALSO a writer and that she should answer this question too. I think Laure was a bit annoyed at him for that, in a funny way 😀

After the Q&A with the author, we got to get our books signed! Extra points to Waterstones Piccadilly, because they set up this so that we weren’t all standing around waiting for hours, but also got to have short conversations with Patrick Ness too. After a surprisingly shorter-than-expected queue I got to meet Patrick Ness face to face, which was very awesome. Though, apologies to him, because I asked if I could get a pic of him signing my books and I left the flash on my phone. He therefore signed my book like this (<—- look Left!), after posing for another pic (which I’ve put above) so I could use one here that didn’t look like he was a rabbit in headlights. I wont put that picture up ;). Oh, and Patrick Ness also signed my copy of A Monster Calls for both me and my brother as well as his new book. Picture below!

As well as getting to eat cake and listen to an author, I also got to meet some cool people that I kind of know from twitter! 🙂 Firstly, Natasha Ngan (Elites author!), though accidentally and only briefly as we were sad to find out tickets had sold out and so she couldn’t go in :'(. However, Natasha is a lovely person! Also, Laure Eve, who has written Fearsome Dreamer also with Hot Key Books, and she is equally awesome (And ‘theme-atically linked to me as we both turned up in comic shirts. Whoop!). And lastly, Caitlin from Hodder and Stacey. They are both really cool people too!! 🙂 So, overall, the event was brilliant. Thank you SO MUCH to Waterstones Piccadilly for providing me with blogger’s tickets, I really appreciate it! It was an absolutely brilliant event; by two great people, and hosted by an equally great bookstore. I’m definitely recommending Waterstones Piccadilly events to everyone I know, and I’m hoping to buy some tickets to three (Yes, three gah!) YA events in October!