Barrington Stoke - My Heroes

**warning: long blog post, may require two cups of tea at least**

I am a fan of the Barrington Stoke books.  Barrington Stoke, for those readers who don't know, is a specialised publisher who focusses publishing some fantastic fiction for reluctant readers.

I only came to know of them a little while ago when James Lovegrove emailed me to tell me about this series of books he's been writing for them.  It was called The 5 Lords of Pain and each book, though shorter than the usual published books we get to review, was to be for that elusive demographic, the reluctant reader.  And because I know James, having met him several times, and because I am a fan of his adult military science fiction novels, I said yes, let's give this new thing a try.

And I fell in love. Not just with James' story, that was a given, but also with the whole concept of what Barrington Stoke were doing.

I took some titles with me when I went to visit one of my local primary schools on World Book Day.  I spoke to the kids there about the books and had a lot of interest shown.  Not just by the keen readers, but also from one of the boys who was dyslexic and who hated reading.  In fact, this boy was so charmed by the books I showed them, that when I asked them to write descriptions and stories from the covers they'd seen, and from looking at the story cards from Templar, he came up to read out what he had written.

His teacher was staring at him with open-mouthed amazement and only later told me what a strop he threw earlier that morning when I came in, when he saw that the whole day would be dedicated to writing, storytelling and reading.  These were the things he hated the most and she expected him and his table of friends to give me a lot of hassle.  And strangely, these were the boys who were the most engaged, who fought to read out their stories.  I would like to think it had nothing to do with me, but everything with the fact that they realised that stories and reading was not just the provenance of the clever kids, that there were books and stories out there for them too.  And that there was an entire publisher who focussed on books only for them.

So, back to the books themselves.  I love the look and feel of these books.  I love how tight and vivid the writing has to be and how strong the story lines are. The covers are superbly vibrant and it draws you in.  The stories themselves run the gamut from action adventure in contemporary settings with a twist of fantasy, to gritty realistic stories with very real troubled teens and recognisable moral dilemmas.  Looking at their list of titles online, they have a bit of everything for everyone, with some superb authors writing for them:

Anthony McGowan
Jim Eldridge
James Lovegrove
Bali Rai
EE Richardson
Theresa Breslin
Kevin Brooks

...to name but a few.  The overall list is long and extensive and honestly, I want them all. But the best part is, although I am concentrating on books for kids in this blogpost, Barrington Stoke also does books for adults.  And that is something I think that sets them apart from other publishers.  I will definitely be looking in on these adult titles too and report back, for sure!

In the meantime I'm focussing on the handful of titles Barrington Stoke sent me for review for Under 14s Only month.

Here they are:

Aren't they just gorgeous looking?

As I am a new fan of Bali Rai's (I know, I am behind the times) I read The Gun first.

When Jonas finds a gun on the estate, something makes him keep it.  Worse still, he shows his friends. Big mistake. 


Binny's OK, but Kamal's a bit crazy.  Once he starts flashing the gun around the estate, it's only a matter of time before someone gets hurt.  And it's Jonas who'll have to pay. 


The Gun is a short, sharp stab in your heart.  Taking no shortcuts, not dollying it up, it tells the story over a handful of days, of how Jonas' life goes from relatively okay to something awful  It opens up in a police station, with the policeman asking Jonas to tell them everything that happened.  And Jonas does, right through from how they were standing outside the local kebab shop when they heard gunshots, to him picking up the backpack with the gun in it, that the shooters tried to hide away, to how he stupidly tells his friends Binny and Kamal and the trouble they have with the kids from the other estate and how things go completely wild.

Super short chapters set the scene with spare prose and strong dialogue.  Jonas is a boy we all recognise, and so is his family life, with a mum always working and a sweet but mouthy sister who is far too clever for her own good.

The story doesn't pull any punches, showing the brutality of life on an estate run by gangs and how one choice can completely mess up your life.  A great, sharp vivid story, accompanied by a note from the author, telling us how he came up with the story and why he chose the characters he chose and why it panned out the way it did.

The book itself, as an object, feels good in the hands - matte cream paper with a larger than average font, shorter than usual chapters, I sped through the story with easy, liking the spacing of the words on the page. The story made me feel like I watched a rather excellent tv-show that wasn't preachy, but stark in its reality.  A great read.

The Fall by Anthony McGowan 

Two's company.  Three's a crowd.  One has got to go. 


Mog might be a loser, but he's not as much of a loser as Duffy.  So when Duffy tries to get in with Mog's best mate, Mog decides to take action.  But when he lands Duffy in The Beck, the rancid stream behind the school, Mog has no idea how far the ripples will spread. 


The Fall is told retrospectively from Mog's point of view as an older man.  He introduces us to his best mate, Chris Rush, who was a cool kid, a bit dangerous to know, but one of those charismatic characters we all knew or know in school.  Mog enjoyed hanging around with Chris but when Chris started paying attention to the loser, Duffy, Mog decides the best way to take care of it is to embarrass Duffy so much that he'd not want to be their mate any more.  Mog gets away with it, treating Duffy really badly and that is the turning point in his and Chris' relationship.  Things become edgier, angrier and when they steal Chris's brother's crossbow things get out of hand and Mog acts in a truly reprehensible way.

I enjoyed the story, but I reacted negatively to it the most as I couldn't quite wrap my mind around what Mog does in the end.  I understand why it was written the way it was, but I felt that Mog's character does nothing to redeem himself and it left me feeling sad.

Like The Gun, The Fall has short, punchy chapters and is printed on creamy off-white paper.  There is lots of space on the page, which is great as it didn't feel like an intimidating read at all. I liked that there was a sticker on the cover to indicate "dyslexia friendly" and that the sticker could be pulled off with ease by the reader or giver.

Bomb by Jim Eldridge (I only read my first Jim Eldridge earlier this year, which was a Western for kids, and LOVED it.  I love his prose and think he does some great writing for younger readers)

The clock is ticking...


Rob's a top bomb disposal expert.  He has to defuse a bomb in a school before it's too late.  Can he do it? 

Holy smokes! This one was tense.  The story starts with a Top Secret memo telling us what's going on - who Rob is, what the situation is (where the bomb was placed within a local school and that the terrorist had demanded a ransom which, if not met, would cause the bomb to explode) and who Rob was.

At only 19, Rob was one of the youngest bomb disposal squad members but he has a great track record.  MI5 sent him as he was young enough to be a cleaner, a disguise in order to fool the bomber should he be watching the school.  Rob finds the bomb in the basement and quickly realises that this is the same style of bomb that had killed a good friend of his...but Rob couldn't for the life of him remember the sequence his friend had gone through, when cutting the wires.  Illustrated by Dylan Gibson, we are shown what Rob looks like, what the bomb looks like and how fast the time is running out.

I liked that Rob was an older boy, that he had advance so far in his young life and that he was this competent.  And although I am a big Jim Eldridge fan, I did find a few of the paragraphs to be a bit too short and choppy, but, having said that, it did serve to drive the tension higher.

The Mountain's Blood by Lari Don 

Inanna's bored of being the goddess of love - how dull! When a volcano begins to make her people's lives a misery she decides to take it on. None of her brothers will help her so she faces it single-handedly, and her victory inspires her to become the goddess of war. Thrilling re-telling of an ancient Sumerian myth.


I laughed so much when I opened this one to read.  Inanna is such a great character - deeply spoiled, stubborn and a born hero.  When she is landed with the title of Goddess of Love, she goes off in a huff, riding her chariot across the sky, pulled by her blue bulls.  She's in a huff because she thinks being the Goddess of Love means she can't use her mad weapon skills and especially her axe.  A girl after my own heart.  Yet, as she travels the skies she sees how the people love her, how they are prospering and her heart grows warm with love, until she spots the disagreeable mountain that's sprung up from nowhere.  She demands that it obey her and leave the area, but the mountain refuses to budge.

Angered by its insolence, she decides to plead with it in a suitably goddess-like way, but no joy.  She resorts to pleading with all the other gods but gets nowhere.  No one is keen to help her out.  Inanna dons her armour and all her weapons and decides to fight the mountain until it submits.  Perfect!

The story is a retailing of an age-old Summerian myth and at the back of the book there is a brief write-up from Inanna herself, about the story, giving some information about Summeria.

The Mountain's Blood is beautifully illustrated by Paul Duffield.

Next up is The Jaws of Death by Malachy Doyle

Kwang-su must embark on a perilous journey so that he can marry Ling-Ling. He must cross monster-infested rivers and outwit the powerful genii that live on the mountain-top. With a little help from some magic gifts, he manages to return home in time to save Ling-Ling from marrying an old mandarin. Action packed re-telling of an ancient Chinese myth.

This is the first time I've read this myth and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  Beautifully illustrated by Nana Li, The Jaws of Death gives us a strong and intelligent young hero, Kwang-su, who is given a series of tasks to perform by an old woman, the mother of the young girl he's fallen in love with.  As with all these myths of strength, intelligence and riddles, the hero overcomes the obstacles in his way to cleverly win the day.  It is very well written with some great descriptions and the hero uses not only his martial arts skills, but also his intelligence to succeed in completing his tasks, showing us how he matures from boy with some martial skills, to that of a young man who thinks and plans to overcome his enemies and obstacles.

I've left the larger The Lord of Fire by James Lovegrove for last.  This is the last book in The 5 Lords of Pain sequence and it is a humdinger.

Tom Yamada must fight the demon Lords of Pain in a series of duels called the Contest - with the whole world at stake. Tom's defeated four powerful demons. Now he must face the ultimate test. The Lord of Fire - the most powerful demon of them all. If Tom loses, the world will burn...

Fifth and final book in a brand new Barrington Stoke series.


Cleverly, because this is the fifth book in the series, when you open TLoF, the first thing you find is the link to the official Five Lords of Pain website, but also a "The Story so Far" catch-up which is a mere 2 pages long.

Written in a concise way, we are shown how much Tom's grown through the progress of the five books.  He is no longer the very young innocent and inexperienced boy.  He is older, sturdier, tougher and an a far more experienced fighter.  We know he has to face up to fighting the final Lord of Pain and the summons to the combat comes far sooner than anticipated.  It also turns out that the final battle will be against someone whom he thought he could trust, who taught him his martial skills and who acted as a father towards him.

The battle lines are drawn when the place of battle is revealed: Canterbury Cathedral.  As the story progresses and Tom realises he needs help, we are treated to some great introspective moments.  He's come such a long way and takes great care in preparing himself for the battle to come.  He turns to his family for support and he comes to realise that the battle is not to be a battle of revenge, but by finishing this contest, and winning, he will literally save the world.

The 5 Lords of Pain books are so much fun.  They are written with great skill by a fantastic storyteller who loves these yarns.  Sometimes you can just tell when you read something that the author is having an absolute blast writing the story.  I'd say that out of the six books reviewed here, The Lord of Fire would be aimed at the slightly more advanced reader and it may be for someone who likes to be challenged, especially as the pay-off at the end of the book is so great.  There are Japanese words and terms dotted throughout the novel, but at the end of the book, there is a section where these are explained.  I found that they didn't hinder my understand of the story, but enhanced it, making me feel very much part of the story.

***

These titles are all a mixture of old and new titles from Barrington Stoke.  I honestly cannot recommend them enough.  Fun, entertaining and well written reads that are told for entertainment sake, is rare enough.  But books aimed at getting reluctant readers reading is even more valuable, especially when they are reading for fun.  And let's not forget that yes, we have to read for work and school, but reading for fun is even more important. 

A massive thanks to Barrington Stoke for allowing me to gab on about a handful of their titles only.  These books are very special to me as reader and reviewer as I feel a kinship with those reluctant readers these books are aimed at.  I had a nephew who was a reluctant reader, due to dyslexia, and I think that had these books been around at school at the time he was growing up, they could have changed his world.  I now have a very sweet but reluctant reader grand-nephew who is a bit hyperactive, yet will sit down and listen to books read to him and his baby sister Michaela, who will be getting a stack of these for Christmas back in South Africa. Who knows, I may make readers and writers out them both! 

Guest Blog - James Lovegrove - Writing For Barrington Stoke: The Complexity Of Simplicity

Many thanks to James who has taken out time from his schedule to talk to us about writing for Barrington Stoke and to tell us more about his Five Lords fo Pain sequence with them.

***

Barrington Stoke has been publishing books for reluctant readers and young people with reading difficulties since 1997. Based in Edinburgh, the company has scooped up countless awards in its 13 years of existence and has managed to attract work from some of the top children's authors in the country, as well as some of the top writers of adult fiction. And me.

My first book for Barrington Stoke was Wings. They approached me in 2000 asking if I would adapt my short story of the same name into a book for them. I, being a freelancer, and therefore one who never knowingly turns down an offer of work, said yes. Little did I realise this would be the start of an ongoing and deeply satisfying publishing relationship.

They provided me with a style sheet listing difficult grammatical constructions, tricky names and the like. Basically, the aim is to make the prose as straightforward and readable as possible, avoiding convoluted sentence structure and confusing phrasing. Certain words are very hard to read for those with dyslexia or other reading problems, so should be steered clear of if at all possible.

Following these "rules" was tricky at first but I got the hang of it soon enough. It challenged me to step back from my usual logorrhea and fanciness and strip my prose down to its bare essence. And my writing, I found, improved because of it.

After Wings I adapted another short story, "The House Of Lazarus", and then, for my third Barrington Stoke title, I created something out of whole cloth. This was Ant God, a tale of two boys, one normal, one strange, and of a Lovecraftian horror lurking at the periphery of perception. Another three books followed, all written to order -- Cold Keep, Kill Swap and Free Runner -- all of them fast-paced adventures, short-story length but structured as mini-novels, with chapter breaks and cliffhangers. In addition, I contributed to Barrington Stoke's adult line, with a tale of zombie soldiers called Dead Brigade. All of the books have sold well, and I continue to get royalties from them, as well as a decent return from library borrowings, which is the icing on the cake.

Barrington Stoke books are printed on off-white paper, to reduce the glare between text and background that can jar with certain readers and interfere with their reading. They're typeset in a special font whose serifs prevent the accidental "flipping" of letters such as "b" and "d".

The company's unique and inimitable attribute, however, is that the process doesn't end with the initial drafting of the story. That's only the beginning. The manuscript is then sent to a group of "consulting editors", schoolkids of the right reading age, who critique both the style and content of the text, underline bits they can't easily follow, and flag up references they don't understand. It's peer review of the highest quality, and it can be frank bordering sometimes on brutal. One author has described it as "being done over by Barrington Stoke". Teachers are also involved here, offering their own experienced insights and commentary.

The final step sees the manuscript coming back to the author, who then goes through it with a fine tooth comb with one of the company's language editors. In my case, I've worked on every one of my books with Barrington Stoke's very charming and wry founder Patience Thomson. She lives up to her given name, in that she's prepared to sit on the phone with me for anything up to three hours, helping me recast sentences and tease out new ways of saying what I'm trying to say in my prose without compromising style and rhythm or over-simplification. It's exhausting, often aggravating, but, although I'd never admit this to anyone, I love it.

Back in 2008 Barrington Stoke came to me wanting to know if I'd do a five-book series for them. I didn't even hesitate. Would I? Try and stop me! The editor, Kate Paice, said she wanted something either with zombies in it or ninjas. Without thinking, I said, "How about zombie ninjas?" She said, "Great," and I then had to dream up an idea into which I could fit undead martial-arts assassins. I managed to, and the result is The 5 Lords Of Pain.

I can't describe how much fun it was to write this five-book sequence featuring kung fu, mysticism, demons, possible apocalypse, and a smart-mouthed 15-year-old protagonist. It took me barely six weeks to complete and was a blast from beginning to end. I cribbed a bit off Frank Miller's Daredevil comics of the 1980s, and also off just about every martial arts movie I've ever seen, but for all that the series is, I believe, unlike anything else out there on the market. Barrington Stoke are promoting it with a website [http://www.fivelordsofpain.com/], postcards, posters, point-of-sale displays, and lots of other good wholesome stuff not necessarily beginning with the letter P. Plus, the books have awesome covers by Daniel Atanasov.

They're coming out at two-monthly intervals all this year. If you know anyone, particularly a young boy, who isn't into books and finds reading a chore, give them Book 1 in the series, The Lord Of The Mountain. Get them hooked. They'll thank you for it.

The Lord of the Mountain by James Lovegrove

Synopsis:

Tom Yamada seems like any 15-year-old but he's actually a supreme martial artist, training daily to face a terrifying challenge when he turns 30. It's his destiny to fight the 5 Lords of Pain - demons who have been trying to break into our world for centuries. But something's gone wrong. Tom must face the 5 Lords now - and no way is he ready. If he loses, a new Dark Age will begin. No pressure, then ...

First book in a brand new Barrington Stoke series. Visit the new Lords of Pain website at www.fivelordsofpain.co.uk

Lord of the Mountain is the first book in a five part series written by James Lovegrove (he of Age of Ra fame ) for younger folk.

Personally I think James is an amazing writer - skilled at turning his hand to various genres and age-groups and making it work. When I heard about this series he's putting together called "Five Lords of Pain" I was struck by the utter coolness factor and of course, being the greedy little guts that I am, I desperately needed to read the first book.

I sat with it yesterday morning and read it twice. It gets better with each reading. It also cries out to be read aloud.

The story moves rapidly. There is no superfluous information thrown into the storyline. It's linnear and cleverly written so that you get a stack of information without realising you're getting a stack of information about who Tom is, why he's training, who his family is, why he's set to combat the Lords of Pain and what would happen if he fails.

It's Mortal Kombat for a younger generation. Only this time, there aren't any other fighters to take on the bad guys. It's only Tom. If he fails, the world will fall to the Lords of Pain and humanity will be enslaved. That's it. No pressure then, right Tom?

Heavy going for such a slender book for the younger folk but to be honest, Mr. Lovegrove pulls it off with aplomb. I am chomping at the bit for the other books, I want to find out the challenges Tom will face. Something's gone awry and instead of battling the Lords of Pain in 15 years' time, they've decided to challenge him now, fifteen years too early. This means that Tom has to get his head into the game much faster than he and his tutor, Dragon, anticpated. You realise that like all teenagers (and adults) Tom is good at putting things off: I'll train harder tomorrow, I have plenty of time to do that as an adult or I'll eat better food when I'm older and in the meantime I'll enjoy junk food cos I like it. All of this conspires to a feeling of dread as you realise what's happening and that he has to face the Lord of the Mountain far sooner than he could have dreamed. An awful situation! Dragon starts drilling Tom intensively in various weapons and fight techniques. But as a reader I thought: frack, no way in hell is Tom going to pull this off! It's too soon, dammit!

The Lord of the Mountain is such a fun book - I loved it. It has enough martial arts info to keep all martial arts fundies happy and Tom as the reluctant hero is someone you can root for. Written for readers with reading difficulties I'd push this up a notch and say that everyone should give it a try - the writing is excellent, the plot runs smoothly and it's also quite a visual book so you can literally see it all take place in your mind's eye, which is something I love. The cover totally rocks your socks off too - the manga inspired cover is very clever and the depiction of the Lord of the Mountain on the front is just perfect.

Do check out the Lords of Pain website for more content, events and free stuff! Also do look at the Barrington Stoke website for upcoming and existing titles - many authors whom I've read in the past (before my blogging days) are listed and I for one can't agree more with the first line on their site: Barrington Stoke believes in stories.

Cover Loving

How beautiful is this? I love it - I can't wait to read it.

Yes, this is me, Liz, writing this blog post. About a military sci-fi novel. Don't faint or anything. But I love James Lovegrove's writing and this is the second book in this sequence of novel's he's writing.

This is the review I did over at SFREVU.COM for Age of Ra. I kept it quite low-key and without all the exclamation marks to drive my point across of HOW! BLOODY! COOL! IT! IS!

James Lovegrove on writing about gods and guns

I am so pleased to have the opportunity to put up this guest blog post. I have become a big fan of James' novel Age of Ra (I review it over here at sfrevu.com) and pestered him endlessly with questions and wore him down into popping by to chat to us about creating Age of Ra, writing, characterisation and how he managed to get a girl (me) who goes into spasms around science fiction books because she "just doesn't get them" to not only READ military sci fi but LOVE IT.


A little over two years ago, George Mann of Solaris Books approached me about doing a novel for them in the alternate-history subgenre. I said, “Of course,” partly because I never turn down an offer of work but also because Solaris was swiftly building a reputation for itself as a classy imprint that could also generate sales. I sent George three story ideas, and the one he – and, happily, I – liked the most was The Age Of Ra (although it went by the working title Hieroglyph at that point). I rustled up a plot summary, contracts flew, and next I knew, I was immersing myself in the bonkers world of ancient Egyptian mythology.

Normally I can’t stand research and will do anything to avoid it, but this time it was pure pleasure acquainting myself better with the weird, convoluted continuity of the Egyptian pantheon and their various backstories, feuds and spheres of influence. I’d decided I would make this the most “Egypt-y” novel conceivable, throwing in everything I could fit in – mummies, scarab beetles, animal-headed deities, the works – and see what resulted.

I’d also been hankering to do something in the military-SF vein, for the perverse-seeming reason that I am not a fan of such books. Too often, it seems to me, military SF is an excuse for jingoistic, manly-man, gung-ho antics that don’t show the downside of conflict except, perhaps, in the most sentimental of lights. I wanted to do it differently (my mantra, and my best and worst characteristic as an author). I’ve greatly enjoyed the World War II spy novels of Alan Furst, and I felt here was a chance to write something in that same fatalistic, melancholy style – without skimping on the action sequences, of course.

The fun part of the plotting was establishing which gods would control which portions of Earth and how they would interact with their worshippers. I had to streamline the mythology to suit my purposes. I also had to create credible characters for the main divine dramatis personae, and here I openly acknowledge the influence of Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, a masterclass in showing how to humanise entities who are, essentially, abstract concepts.

I’ll admit I found the “god” chapters of the novel a challenge. All-powerful beings who bicker and connive against one another? You have to tread a fine line between the high-flown and the bathetic in order to get it right. The main trick was to make them believable, sublime yet flawed, and on that front I’m pardonably proud of the scene in which Ra reveals the existential dread at the core of his existence – he is god of the sun, but the sun is just one of billions of stars in the universe, so what value, then, is there in being a sun god? Ra, by the way, was easily my favourite in the pantheon to write. I have a penchant for big, bluff, genial authority figures who can be soft when they want to but stern when required.

As for the humans in the book, the story hinges on the relationship between two brothers, which is something I have no direct personal experience of, being the sibling of two older sisters. I do, however, have two sons, aged three years apart like David and Steven in Ra, so I extrapolated from how my boys are now to how they might be as grownups. Surely the closeness and combativeness of their relationship, that strange mix of mutual love and extreme violence which typifies their daily lives, would persist into adulthood, mutated perhaps but basically intact.

Once Ra was done – and I’d enjoyed writing it immensely – I wanted to do more, and Solaris wanted more from me too. I had already vaguely entertained the idea of writing a trilogy of “pantheon” novels. I also – here we go again – wanted to do it differently. Hence the upcoming The Age Of Zeus and The Age Of Odin are standalone books, not direct sequels. Apart from anything else, Ra is too self-contained to warrant a follow-up.

Zeus takes the whole gods-versus-humans idea down a notch. In it, the Greek gods are flesh-and-blood beings who actually inhabit the material world, though their divinity still separates them from humankind. In fact, they’re kind of superheroes, or supervillains to be precise, which allows me to bring my comic-geek sensibilities to the prose form.

Zeus is nearly written, although it’s turned into a bit of a behemoth. When I get round to Odin, what I’m hoping to do is play on the notion of whether the gods concerned are actually gods at all. Their divinity will be subjective, depending on who you believe and what you believe. So that’s taking the gods-versus-humans idea down a further notch. In that respect the three books describe a descent from faith through doubt to scepticism, a path most of us take in our lives, having been children who’ll believe anything and growing into cynical adults who’ll believe nothing.

But don’t worry, there’ll still be plenty of room for gore and violence, and even love. What fun would fiction be without those?

– James Lovegrove

**Competition Time**

I have a spare copy of Age of Ra which I bought when I first met James at a signing at Forbidden Planet a few months ago. I am giving you guys a chance to win it - which in itself is cool enough - but, James has agreed to personalise my unread copy to the winner of this competition. You may start squeeling.

The rules, as always, are simple. Email us with your name, Random.org will choose the winner and we'll announce it on 14th October.

Gollancz Party

Dear readers and fellow bloggers from the sphere, Mark and I got to attend the very swanky Gollancz party this year. We were joined by Ana from The Booksmugglers and Gav from Nextread. Needless to say there was a lot of squealing and "ohmygodwhatamIgoingtowear" before the time because you know, the nearer we got to the date of the party, realisation dawned: a truckload of authors are going to be there whom we are all slavish fans of. (And we all had to look purty). Then we realised they will be joined by editors, reviewers, publicity people, journalists, other publishers and their media teams. It was going to be HUGE.

And it was - there were hundreds of people. The venue was the Oktober Galleries in Bloomsbury which were a series of rooms and a lovely outdoors garden. We mingled our way around and to be honest, the amount of people I recognised by name alone was staggering. The worst part was being unable to talk to all of them.

A definite highlight for me was catching up with James Lovegrove whose novel, Age of Ra, taught me not to turn my nose up at military sci fi! I owe James a long email and he in turn owes us a blogpost (hurrah!).

Further along we got to meet up with the luscious Alex Bell who seems set on outshining everyone because not only is she tall, very pretty and sexy, she has the dress-sense of fashionista. Check out this amazing shirt! Isn't it gorgeous? And angel wings, as we all know are very topical right now.

We got to hang around with one of my favourite people of all time - Saxon Bullock - who looked extremely suave in a velvet jacket and goatee. Saxon has this infectious air and a personality that hinges on the hysterical that has everyone falling around laughing. I think I may need eyecream for all the laughing wrinkles I got on Thursday night.

It would be bad of me not to mention the talented Ms. Suzanne McLeod who looked rock 'n roll. We didn't get a chance to chat loads, but I got to whisper some confidences to her very briefly before she shot off home. When we saw the tiny group of authors arrive I also spotted this tall chap in a purple shirt who looked a bit out, a little bit like Leonardo Di Caprio if Leonardo was actually six foot tall and had broad shoulders. I asked Alex who he was and it turns out he's a new author signed by Gollancz, called Sam Sykes. I've failed to find a website for Sykes. We did however corner him at the party - yes, me, Mark, Ana and Gav - to have him tell us about his upcoming book and people, all I can say is...2010 is going to be an awesome year.

Ana and I are particularly excited about the upcoming books from Gollancz - we are going to see authors like Nailini Singh and Caitlin Kittredge come to the UK as part of their urban fantasy / paranormal romance lines they are establishing. This, needless to say, had us fanning ourselves in utter joy.

We got to spend some time with the girls from Orbit: Sam, Rose, Coreen and Ana - who, all by the way, can take Paris by storm with their fashion sense! We were enticed about Blue Blood by Melissa de la Cruz and I for one cannot WAIT to read this series. Rose and I also discovered a shared passion for Kelley Armstrong, Dean from Supernatural and a variety of other things I'm not allowed to mention on here because it could be held against us in a court of law.

I got to chat to John Berlyne who runs the Zeno Agency - I also review for John over at http://www.sfrevu.com/ where he is the UK editor. They've had some amazing authors sign with them lately and sold books most recently to both Gollancz and Angry Robot. *sparkly eyes* More pretty books to read!

I also - yay! - got to chat with another legendary John - John Jarrold of the John Jarrold Literary Agency. It was brief only but after chatting to John on and off for about 2 years now, it was fantastic to actually get to meet him in person.

Ana and Gav met the amazing Robert Holdstock for the first time. A nicer, kinder and gentlemanly man is hard to find. I still do fan-girl squealing about him though - my autograph I got from him at the Gemmell Award is still a favourite treasure.

We got to meet some of the girls over at Voyager too - we've all been twittering incessantly for ages now so it was good to be able to put faces to Twitter names. Also a shoutout to the tallest guy at the party, 6ft 6inches Niall Harrison who is not only a cool guy but also a new friend.

Mark managed to get hold of Joe Abercrombie for part of the evening at the after party and coerced him into posing for a picture or two. I think Mark and Joe are a very dangerous combination and I'm a bit relieved that they managed to break away from one another. I had visions of some kind of creative collaboration in which more bloodshed and zombies would abound than you could shake your boomstick at.

My one regret of the evening is not being able to talk to MD Lachlan, a new author signed by Gollancz. His book is called Wolfsangel and we've met up and chatted on Twitter a few times. I really wanted to congratulate him in person but sadly, not this time around.

There is loads more to say about the party but to be honest, I'm still recovering. It was an amazing evening and we all had a tremendous time. Thank you to Jon and everyone at Gollancz for inviting us around. We all had a fantastic time!