Event Report: Chicken House Big Breakfast Event

I'm such a fan of Chicken House and the titles they publish so I was pretty much the happiest bunny on the planet to get an invite to their big breakfast event.  Espically because it was in London and so I could justify taking the morning off work and going. 

The event was held at a restaurant at the SouthBank Centre, Waterloo and I made a special effort to not have breakfast before I went (it started at 10am and as some people on twitter may notice I'm a bad sleeper and thus eat breakfast at ungodly hours when bored).  I was created straight away by Tina from the Chicken House PR team who was so lovely and fab to finally meet in person.  She sorted out my name tag and immediately directed me over to C.J.Skuse.  Now, not only am I a big time cheerleader for C.J.'s books but I think it's safe to say that we both share a lot of interests and thus talk on twitter a ton.  The twitter banter between myself, C.J. and her sister during episodes of X Factor and Downton Abbey is a work of art if i do say so myself.

I won't lie.  I came to the event with two goals in mind.  See the new titles from Chicken House and fangirl at/with C.J.  I even brought my copy of Rockoholic and the US copy of Pretty Bad Things to get her to sign.  I'm a geek; I have NO shame.  I had a catch up with Liz from My Favourite Books and got to meet Nicole from The Reluctant Hypersomniac and gushed over her super lovely spotty bag.  I zoomed over to the book table and already had my eye on more than a few titles.  After loading up the bag I went and pounced on C.J.  LEGEND!!!  First thing she says is 'Ok, we need to talk about this now.  What's going on with his hair?'  *Note: we are both MASSIVE My Chemical Romance fans and the lead singer had the day before just "debuted" a new hair style.  Ain't we just awesome*  So it sort of ended up being a gathering of bloggers around C.J. and we got to meet two lovely video bloggers and chat about The Hunger Games and eat far too many scones and cake nimbles that can be healthy.

Barry Cunningham, publisher and founder of Chicken House took to the mic to greet everyone and thank the team and the author's attending and welcome members of the international Chicken House Team including the new Holland Branch (who gave Barry and the UK Team the gift of an adopted chicken, weird but awfully fitting).  We were then introduced to a few of the upcoming authors at the event that spoke about their books and gave a short reading.  We even had a reading from a cat.  Well Tina from PR dressed as a cat but a cat none the less.  I'll give a run down of all the books I picked up below but it looks like Chicken House are set for an awesome year ahead.

Time was too short as i had to get the train back to work so after nabbing a signature or two out of CJ and also getting a sneaky peak at the US cover of Rockoholic (which I'm not sure when it'll be out officially but the book comes out in the US in the Summer and the cover looks TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL).

Thanks to all the Chicken House Team for the invite and really awesome event. Looking forward to so many books from you guys!  Here is the bundle I picked up and you can click the links for them for more info about the books:

Freaks by Kieran Larwood

Shadow Runners by Daniel Blythe

The Look by Sophia Bennett

Hitler's Angels by William Osborne

Claws by Mike and Rachel Griniti

Haunters by Thomas Taylor