Oxford University Press Bloggers' Event

Phone photo of Joss Stirling, Dave Cousins and me.
I really need to get a new camera!

Books, authors, bloggers, canapés, chocolate, and Bellini cocktails... All in the bloggers’ event organized by Oxford University Press (OUP).

You might not be aware, but PaulaSHx is just a baby. It is not even one year old yet. So I was really excited to be invited to my first bloggers’ event down in London and it did not disappoint.

The best thing wasn’t the yummy cocktails and nibbles, great location or fab goodie bag full of treats, although all these are great too. What I enjoyed the most was the opportunity to meet and have book obsessed conversations with other bloggers and a couple of authors.

Other bloggers have a lot to teach me. Not only have they been in this game for longer than I have, they have also read a lot more books than me. We had very interesting discussions about making your blog successful and, surprise-surprise, books you should read. I was also introduced to some amazing blogs, so say hi to my new friends:

Megan at The Book Addicted Girl, Stacey from Pretty Books, Sarah at Feeling Fictional, Casey & Hayley at Dark Readers, Darren from The Book Zone (For Boys), Dwayne from Girls Without a Book Shelf and Sammee from I Want To Read That.

Chatting to authors is always great fun and this time I had the pleasure of meeting Joss Stirling – the author of Finding Sky and Stealing Phoenix (findher interview, book reviews and articles here) - and Dave Cousins - who’s debut novel Fifteen Days Without a Head releases on January 5^th 2012. 

During his talk Dave said something every aspiring writer will know well. For years he has written stories and achieved them thinking they weren’t good enough; until his wife read one and convinced him to send it to a writing competition. Needless to say, he won. And through that came the release of his first novel. I, for one, am looking forward to reading the ARC copy I picked up. It sounds hilariously brilliant! To think it was under his bed for an year because he didn't think it was good enough... Moral? Get someone else to read your work and give you an honest opinion.

As an Events Organizer, I know events like this take an awful lot of logistics so thank you OUP for a fab event.

And there was also a little something for you... I have bagged some treats including a signed copy of Stealing Phoenix, a signed ARC copy of Fifteen Days Without a Head, a signed copy of Velvet by Mary Hooper (thanks Dwayne) and an ARC copy of Mortal Chaos by Matt Dickinson; all of which I will be giving away here. So keep your ears to the ground!