Hachette YA Bloggers Night

I was so privileged to be one of the bloggers to attend the Hachette Bloggers YA Night a few weeks ago. It took place in the beautiful Hachette HQ in Sydney, and as my first visit to a publishers offices I wasn't disappointed. They had a beautiful set out including  chandeliers made out of book pages.

In Australia there aren't many opportunities for books and book events, so this was definitely a highlight of the year for me, and also for the other bloggers that were there. Hachette were so great, making the event special by having great food, prizes and even a photobooth which was super cool.

The event started by introducing us to their YA website 'Date a Book', which has overgone a (for lack of a better work) 'makeover'. Their website includes the really cute idea: 'Date of the Month', a monthly book recommendation. I love their new website, and I am super keen to see how Hachette continue to develop it. You can find DAB here:

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Their told us about their current favorite books:



                                              

Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Eleanor and Park

Boy 21 by Matthew Quick

And Hachette's Upcoming Releases which included:

Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Upside Down by Lia Riley

The Here and Now by Ann Brasheres

The 100 Society by Carla Sprandbery

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin

A song for Ella Grey by David Almand

Laini Taylor was the guest author. She talked to us about writing and her books. Laini said that if you want to be a writer you shouldn't have a back up plan, because writing takes everything. I had never hear an author say this before, but I loved how strongly she spoke and how dedicated she is to her writing. She also told us that finishing her trilogy with "Dreams of God's and Monsters' she sat down and wrote for 23 hours straight, after missing a few deadlines. So crazy.

During the Q&A section, I asked her about how she came up with her names, and although I was expecting a fairly short answer, she spoke elaborately about the amount of research that went into it. For example, looking at different languages, and names that have meanings, like Karou meaning hope. But she found languages that basically no one in western societies knows of, and used certain words as names. I was surprised how much effort went into the seemingly simple tasks of naming characters. We also found out that she wrote DoSaB after struggling with a novel about ballerinas being forced to be soldiers, which she laughed at but I secretly loved the sound of it!

We all rushed to get out books signed by Laini, and had our fangirl moments getting photos with her. At the end we also received an awesome good bags. I also received one of the prizes for tweeting throughout the night. We trended 5th in Australia, which was cool to show people the importance of YA literature (as so many people these days disregard it). All in all it was one of the best nights of the year. Thank you so much to Ashley and everyone at the Hachette publishers team for the amazing night!

Photobooth fun with Joy,  Sunny and Francoise

'You had me at chapter one'