Hot Key Books Bloggers Brunch Event

Hey everyone,

So on Saturday I got invited to go to a special book bloggers brunch at Hot Key Books HQ in London. Obviously, I said yes and, with a rather empty stomach and a super early start, I boarded the coach to London to meet up with a bunch of authors, bloggers and publishers.

And it was so awesome. The venue was very packed, and I think to some extent they didn’t anticipate quite so many people turning up. But it was really nice. After grabbing a cup of tea with a fellow blogger called Rubin thanks to turning up too early, we went inside and were immediately surrounded by fellow book lovers and so SO many books. Brunch was a sweet toothed affair. I ate a lot of fruit [including some grapes that were more like mini melons than anything I’ve ever seen], drank a lot of coffee, and snarfed some fancy pastries and a yummy krispy kreme donut. Definitely a good selection of food. After that, I got chatting to some of my fellow book blogging friends who had turned up to the event.

Soon, we were invited to chat to Alexandra Christo, author of the amazing To Kill a Kingdom, and Sebastien de Castell, who’s fourth book in the phenomenal Spellslinger series, Soulbinder, is out later this month. Both of them were so funny to talk to. I spoke at lengths with Alexandra about the cute mugs Hot Key Books put out for the brunch [we debated putting them in handbags since so many book lovers there would make it difficult to tell who might be the mug thief was] and then we talked a bit about universities and academia. Sebastien had a really amusing conversation with a group of us about squirrel cats and their penchant for eating eyeballs, as well as talking about the importance of good fantasy fiction.

After a while of chatting, both authors did a reading from their books. A super dramatic reading from Soulbinder included some erm… interesting and highly amusing accents from de Castell, and from Christo we got not only a reading from TKAK but also a sneaky snippet from her current WIP. Obviously, we were all very excited to hear this, and even though our legs went a little bit dead from sitting for a while, it was totally worth it.

After that, we all lined up to get our books signed. Hot Key Books generously supplied us all with a copy of Soulbinder and To Kill a Kingdom, and since I already have a signed copy of TKAK I will be looking at hosting a UK giveaway for the book sometime in the very near future, so stay tuned for that.

The event wrapped up pretty quickly from there. A few of us lingered to chat amongst ourselves a little bit more, but we soon dispersed to various London locations. The event lasted a little longer than I’d anticipated, so I had to rush off to catch my coach home, but it was definitely a fun day out and I’m so pleased I was invited by Hot Key. It was a brilliant day and I loved every moment of it.

Until next time,