The facts behind the fiction: our new iBook!

For a fiction publisher, we’re pretty obsessed with non-fiction. Especially when it comes to our historical fiction books. We could just let them stand on their own, as they are brilliant stories in their own right. You don’t need to know everything about the Spanish Civil War to enjoy A WORLD BETWEEN US, just like you don’t need to know anything about baby farming to fall in love with THE QUIETNESS. Our authors enable you to time travel without ever getting in the Tardis.

But we feel that part of our job as a publisher is to bring you great stories that don’t end with the last page. Once you start to pull back the layers of history which inspired these great stories, it’s hard to stop. Over the past few months, we’ve told you a bit about all the places we visited to gather information for our non-fiction companion to THE QUIETNESS. We felt compelled to create something special for this book, because the history is so fascinating, so local, and so recent. THE QUIETNESS is set at the end of the Victorian period, only 140 years ago. Now, sure, 140 years isn’t exactly yesterday, but it’s really a mere blip in the timeline of British history.

Throughout our research, we were constantly amazed at how people lived in London during this period. Alison says one of the reasons she is so drawn to write about this period is because of the extreme darkness that lies beneath the polished veneer of Victorian life. It was supposed to be a time of beauty and chastity and propriety, but in fact, it was overrun by ugliness, poverty, and oppression. And who wouldn’t want to learn more about that?

So we’re opening the door for you just a little further. After you’ve enjoyed THE QUIETNESS, you can continue your journey through Victorian London through maps, photos, and original police reports. We’ve collected video interviews from experts at The Foundling Museum and The Old Operating Theatre, and there are even excerpts from Martina Cole’s LADYKILLERS program about the notorious Amelia Dyer. It’s all yours to explore, on your iPad, for only £0.99.

If you’re already familiar with our iBook editions (yay you!) you might notice that this one is a bit different. Instead of sitting the content next to the text of the book, we’ve condensed it all into a 40-page iBook. You can think about it like the bonus disc in a special edition DVD. Here’s a little preview of what you’ll see:

To celebrate the release of this book, we’re offering the ebook on Amazon and Apple and the paperback from our web site for 1/2 price! Plus, if you email us (keynotes@hotkeybooks.com) your receipt, we’ll enter you into our drawing to win one of 10 free copies of THE HISTORY BEHIND THE QUIETNESS!

It’s only for the iPad right now, but one day we hope to make our enhanced content available on many more devices. If you do download it, please let us know what you think!

We LOVE Museums!

This weekend, hundreds of museums across the UK will open their doors in the evening to host special events and programs highlighting museum collections. You can explore the Museum of London‘s extensive archeological collection by candlelight, watch the 1950′s classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers at the Royal Observatory, or even sleepover at the Eastbury Manor House!

We LOVE museums here at Hot Key Books. Rarely a week goes by when someone isn’t gushing about a cool exhibit they saw, or some mind-blowing event they attended at a museum. So, to celebrate Museums at Night 2013, we’re going to spend this week talking about our favourite museums.

Today, I’m kicking off our week of museum blogs with a few videos from two museums that were instrumental in helping us put together THE HISTORY BEHIND THE QUIETNESS. The Foundling Museum and The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret are both holding their own amazing Museums at Night Events, so make sure you get those in your diary right now! Click here for info about the Foundling Museum event, and here for info about The Old Operating Theatre night.

Wondering what to expect at these museums? Here are a few videos from the curators to give you a taste of what’s inside:

Here Comes Trouble (with Mummies)!

Jasen Booton’s group of voracious young readers have done it again! They put Fleur Hitchcock’s TROUBLE WITH MUMMIES under the microscope and have come up with this fantastic review:

Litter Vigilantes

In Elon Dann’s CLOCKWISE TO TITAN, the three heroes scour the brutal Institute for rubbish in order to make the equipment they need to break out and survive the wild journey ahead of them. Just like his teenage protagonists, Elon too spends a lot of time picking up litter and sifting through it, pondering its origins and potential uses. Today’s blog is about his findings…

Most people who see me probably assume I’m ‘on a scheme’. Or serving out a court order. The oldest young offender in town…I don’t blame them.  I can’t be from the council, not working on a weekend.  And I do look a sight, with my stick, my bag, my filthy overalls and a reflective safety vest shredded to fuzz by the need to dig deep into scratchy hedges.  My vibe is a janitor / scarecrow / wino three-way splice.

But I’m not planning to escape, and I’m not a scheme. I’m on a mission. Well, an errand: volunteer litter picker. The badge says ‘warden’, but that makes me sound like I have a peaked cap and the authority to shake my fist at kids (pesky kids) and confiscate footballs.  I favour ‘litter vigilante’.  A maverick, I work by my own rules. Any route.  Any day. See this stick, discarded fag packet? This is a Helping Hand Litter Picker 940mm, the most powerful extended reach gripping tool in the world…

I began litter picking (not to be confused with pitta licking) when walking one day to Tesco with my wife and my son, still in his pushchair. Funny, the connections you make.  I saw all the cans and the crisp packets  dripping from a particularly well-adorned hedge, fumed at the unutterable ugliness of it all, and snapped back to a visit I’d made years before to the Checkpoint Charlie museum in Berlin.  One of the escape stories described there was of a group of East German pensioners who dug a tunnel to the West. Months, it took them.  Even when they’d broken through to freedom, they refused to depart until they’d enlarged the tunnel sufficiently for their wives to walk along it without stooping. They absolutely refused to permit their loved ones to emerge with bowed heads, looking as if they had anything to be ashamed of.  I love that story; gets me every time. Anyway, I saw the way my wife turned away from the litter, saying she didn’t notice it.  Orbs, she didn’t.  She saw it, she hated it, she accepted it as another of life’s belittling belches in the face, just as I did.  And I thought: no one has the right to make my wife turn away in disappointment and disgust. That’s my job.

After the shopping, I went back with my gardening gloves and picked it all up. Three visits, it took.  I joined the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust, and they issued me with my picking stick and the comforting knowledge that there were scores of other local people who felt the same way and were Doing Something About It. I could have bought a stick on ebay for a fiver.  The support of a group is good, but a stick is essential. Without a stick, you’re a nutter, scrabbling around in the dirt. Slipped discs and TENS machines await you. With a stick, you’re hobo erectus. You’re a professional. Actually you’re a volunteer, but you feel like a professional.

Common questions for the volunteer litter picker:

I bet you get loads of hassle. Loads. Every week I get gangs of up to two people swaggering up to me. ‘You’re doing a lovely job!’ they scream, their faces contorted into masks of unreasoning hatred. ‘Thank you so much!’ the heartless fiends will call out as they depart.  In truth, I get lots of thanks, and in ten years the complete catalogue of hassle is three counts of ‘Oi! Ya missed a bit!’ one ‘Get a proper job!’ and one ‘HOW BIG’S YUR WILLY?’. That last was a little scary because it was shouted out by a massive youth through the passenger window of a car that screeched into a lay-by ahead of me for no reason other than to pose that query. Unable to think how best to respond, I raised my picking stick and clacked the grippers in a manner I hoped went over as comically boastful but in no way suggestive of any desire to take the matter further. The car drove away. Weeks later, as I was picking in the steaming July heat, the same youth stopped me in the road and passed me a can of cold lager. No mention of my willy was made.

Besides, I can never really be scared. If I ever was attacked (and why should I be?), I’d need only to open my bag. It’s not the dog mess that honks the worst, it’s the beer tins. The beer attracts the slugs, the slugs die, the smell is…funky.

Trash or treasure?

I bet you find loads of money. Yes. I now manage an investment fund portfolio standing at over £800 million made up entirely of coins worth 50p or less.

The real figure is less than ten quid in eleven years. Plus my hat, one pair of jeans, a fleece I gave to charity, and a pristine copy of ‘The Smartest Giant in Town’ by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. Hah. The irony.

If you tidy an area, doesn’t it encourage people to drop more litter? The opposite. People drop litter where they see litter. Once cleaned, areas pretty much stay tidy.  Oddly, I have never once seen anyone drop rubbish. Never. Apart from when they approach me and drop it into my bag, and even then, they ask very tentatively beforehand. ‘Alright if I…I mean, can I actually…cheers, mate, nice one.’ Can’t imagine why they think I’d object. What else do they think I might be doing, taking my bin bags for a stroll?

Droppers must do it in the style of Great Escape prisoners disposing of dirt down the insides of their trouser legs, or sneak out at unpopular hours of the morning specifically to festoon verges with Wotsits bags, two litre bottles of Diamond White cider and Yazoo milkshake cartons. Similarly, I’ve never seen people pin up or remove those ‘Happy 40^th Birthday Shamir / Daz / Fido’ placards and balloons you find tied to roundabout chevrons and bollards.  The dirty work must all be done by inhabitants of a crepuscular demi-monde, driving around in Ford demi-Mondeos.

No. Wrong demographic. My own trash-analysis leads me to believe most litter originates from heavy drinkers and school age kids. You draw your own Venn diagram, but neither group should be driving.

I recycle what I can, I bin what I can’t, I keep what I feel for.

The toys I always wash and house. That’s my rule – if it was loved once, it’s safe. I’m a lanky, latter-day Bagpuss more than a Womble or a Borrower. So if your kids have mislaid  a dolly with one arm, a wooden rhino, a cyberman’s gun, a car with a Lego brick stuffed inside, ask me. I might have it.

And if you’ve a can of cold beer to hand, I’ll be very grateful. Just don’t ask me about my anatomical dimensions.

CLOCKWISE TO TITAN is out now – find out more about Elon on Facebook and follow him on twitter! 

Throwing Paper Planes…an ode to a friendship

As I’m sure you won’t have failed to notice – Journalist, documentary maker and TV presenter Dawn O’Porter has written her first YA novel, which officially came out yesterday.

There is so much online chatter about this book due to Dawn’s career so far, and this has been amazing for us as a new(ish) publisher to see. Sure, it’s felt pretty glamorous for us to be listening to Dawn talk on the radio, or TV, or in magazines about a book we publish.

But, all this aside, besides all the hype and chatter, we have a book. And a stunning book at that. A story, of a friendship. If you’ve ever been a teenage girl – and I have – you will remember how genuinely crap you can feel sometimes, how all over the place your emotions are, how friendships can feel so fragile and how those first “loves” take over your life. When I first read Dawn’s novel, I went on a massive nostalgia trip – all those feelings I’d put away came rushing back. I tell you now – I’d never want to be a teenager again!

When we were thinking about Paper Aeroplanes, and how to get across those teenage feelings, we thought of music. How many times did I close the door to my bedroom and play music so loud to wallow in teen angst? I can only imagine what my parents thought to me singing at the top of my voice to Whitney Houston over and over again. *hangs head* So, when we discovered The Bookshop Band, and heard their songs about books, we thought – what better thing? We commissioned an Ode to a Friendship, for Renee and Flo, and when I listen to this, it takes me back to my teenage years. And it made Dawn WEEP. (Honest).

So – here is the WORLD PREMIERE, of Throwing Paper Planes, by the very, very talented Bookshop Band – we hope you enjoy it…and go on, wallow a little.

Fleur Hitchcock introduces…THE TROUBLE WITH MUMMIES

Yet another exciting release this week! Fleur Hitchcock’s THE TROUBLE WITH MUMMIES will be hitting shelves and ereaders across the UK and the world. To give you a little taste of this fantastic story, here’s the first few pages of chapter one, read by Fleur herself!

The beautiful or the cursed?

In THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED by Page Morgan, gargoyles are far more than deliberately ugly stone statues attached to the side of churches, cathedrals and abbeys. Yes, some are troubled and have stone forms (some of the time) but they also act as the guardians of the buildings they decorate.

(And decorate they do – they’re also beautiful. As in, bizarre creature hot-beautiful. As in I may have a tiny bit of a book boy crush on a gargoyle. Never thought I’d write that).

These fantastical stone beasts have fascinated Page Morgan ever since she first went to Paris and saw the famous gargoyles adorning Notre Dame:

Like this…

and this…(though he looks a bit bored)

It’s very difficult to separate gargoyles from their ecclesiastical setting (especially if you studied Theology) and so I have always thought that gargoyles were meant to symbolise the dangers of evil and sin, to act as a didactic, visual warning and deterrent to congregations. After all, isn’t there something eerily recognisable about them?  They are monstrous distortions of things we recognise: animals, emotions, our own faces even?

However, in THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED Page Morgan has created a cast of gargoyle characters who act as guardians and protectors of the buildings they adorn in their stone form, and the people who live within them. A little bit of internet procrastination later, and I’d discovered that actually, in a way, the fundamental role of a gargoyle was to protect – they’re super sophisticated-looking gutters that prevent rainwater eroding mortar and stone. They’re not screaming, but draining.  I honestly think this is one of the coolest things – just look at this example of a gargoyle from Wawel Cathedral in Krakow.

A gargoyle from Wawel Cathedral, Krakow

Moreover, many suggest that gargoyles do not act as a deterrent towards people, but towards evil itself. Just look at the images above of the Notre Dame gargoyles nestled over the city; there’s an alertness and battle-ready feeling to them. They’re up in the heavens, encircling the cathedral and the congregation therein; manning their particular look out post, almost taunting any evil forces stupid enough to come near. I look at them and think you’re strong, and strangely elegant, and I need some new gutters so you’re coming home with me to keep me safe, thanks.

Look out for THE BEAUTIFUL AND THE CURSED out this week at bookstores everywhere!

Making the invisible visible

Today’s blog comes from Natalie Whipple, the author of TRANSPARENT. This fabulous novel comes out in just a few weeks — and trust us when we say you won’t want to miss it! Aside from being a brilliant writer and Natalie is also a very talented artist. She even made a special drawing for today’s blog. Check out her thoughts in words and pictures below.

Hello! I’m Natalie. And this is my novel TRANSPARENT. We’re both really happy that Hot Key Books has decided to bring us (okay not me, just TRANSPARENT) to the UK! Of all the places overseas that I’d hoped to sell to, the UK was number one. First because you guys are awesome, of course, and also because half my family lives in New Zealand. Now they will get to see my book on a shelf, too, which makes me very happy.

TRANSPARENT will be coming to you May 16th, and that day will be huge for me because I’ll finally be a published author—something I’ve been trying to become for the majority of the last decade. Though it is my first published novel, it is actually the 10th novel I’ve written. And I had to write it twice to get it right, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do as an author. It was worth it to be able to have this moment now, where my dreams have been realized.

And it will be a big day for you because you’ll get to read TRANSPARENT and love it and make it your own! At least I hope so. I think it’s a pretty awesome book. I might be biased, but how could you not love a story featuring an invisible main character? Fiona is still one of the most challenging and interesting characters I’ve ever written, and I’m so glad the world gets to meet her.

Fiona lives in a world where everyone knows about superpowers and mutations, and not everyone uses those abilities for good. Okay, most people don’t. Like Fiona’s dad, for example, who uses his addictive scent to control women and build a cutthroat crime syndicate. In the scene I’ve drawn for this post, invisible Fiona and her telekinetic mother are out on a job for said father. A job that will change the course of their lives.

I would tell you more, but I don’t like to spoil things. If you decide to pick up TRANSPARENT, I really hope you love it as much as I do. Thanks to Hot Key for hosting me today.

Let the characters be your guide

Today’s blog is by DJ McCune, the author of DEATH & CO, which comes out this week! Her novel tells the story of a boy named Adam, who is forced to go into the family business. That would be fine, except that the family business is escorting people into the afterlife, which seriously gets in the way of homework and teenage normalcy. When Adam gets a terrible premonition he realises that he must make a devastating choice, risking his life, his family and his destiny.

As you can tell, this is a rather character-driven story. So to celebrate her publication day, Debbie (DJ) wrote a bit about how these characters kept her going throughout the writing process.

There are lots of good things about being a writer. You can work anywhere. You can live inside your own head for hours at a time without anyone thinking you’re a nutter. Other people think it’s wildly glamorous (because they never see you sitting at midnight in mismatched pyjamas, muttering and cursing because the words won’t come).

But the best bit of all, by a long way, is getting to know your characters.

I love my characters. Every single one of them. It’s hard to explain how real they feel – writing a character into existence is as close as you’ll ever come to playing God. For me the main characters usually arrive first. In Death & Co. Adam was the first one to step onto the screen – sandy haired, awkward, funny, old beyond his years. His family appeared fast on his heels in varying degrees of vivid. Nathanial and Auntie Jo were explosively bright in my mind; Luc made me smile. Elise was thin and French and a chain smoking perfectionist – that was all I knew to begin with. And Aron and Chloe, although they play cameo roles in Book 1 are fleshing out nicely in Book 2.

I love the rest of my characters too. I love seeing what they’re becoming as I write them; the qualities they possess that even I don’t know yet. I love Dan’s geeky enthusiasm and The Beast’s real nastiness and Melissa’s incredible kindness and resilience (that girl is in for a really hard time).

There are times when every writer will get stuck. It’s hard to explain that feeling of throwing yourself against a mental wall and bouncing back, bruised and battered. I’m fortunate enough to live beside a lovely beach and I can spend hours stomping along, snarling to myself that none of it is working!

Guess what? Often when I’m stuck it’s because I’m trying too hard to be clever. I’m trying to look ahead and put characters in places they don’t want to be. Instead of letting events unfold in their own sweet time I’m putting the proverbial rocket up them and frogmarching characters from A to B.

And sometimes, if I’m lucky, I realise this is what I’m doing. And that’s the point to stop and take a deep breath and go back to the basics: go back to the characters. What would they do in this situation? How would they deal with it? Instead of cracking an imaginary whip I hold up my hands, surrender and let them take me where they want to go.

I can’t wait for the launch of Death & Co. Most of all, I can’t wait for you to get to know Adam and his family, friends and enemies. I hope you love them as much as I do.

Check out our gallery of Death & Co. character profiles, and look out for Debbie’s book in your local bookstore this week!

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Dress your mummy like a mummy…and win!

Next week, THE TROUBLE WITH MUMMIES by  Fleur Hitchcock will be released into the hands of excited kids everywhere. In case you haven’t heard about this book yet, here’s the summary:

Sam comes home one day to find his family turning a little bit loopy – his mum is redecorating using hieroglyphics and his dad is building a pyramid in the back garden. He hopes it’s just a weird new fashion… but then the strangeness starts to spread. With the help of his friends Ursula, Henry and Lucy the Goat, Sam must save his town from rampaging Roman rugby players, hairdressers turned cavewomen, and a teacher who used to be a ‘basket of kittens’ but now wants to sacrifice the Year Ones to the Aztec sun god. As history invades Sam’s world, will he be able to keep the Greeks away from the Egyptians and discover the cause of the Mummy madness?

Hilarious, right? So to celebrate the release of this book, we are running an equally hilarious contest. We are challenging young UK citizens to dress their mummies (or willing family members) up like ancient Egyptian mummies! Prizes will be awarded for Best Effort, Most Creative Mummy, Cutest Mummy, and Best Overall Mummy. All winners will receive signed copies of THE TROUBLE WITH MUMMIES. Best Overall Mummy winner will take home a HUGE prize pack including a £25 voucher for the “mummy” and ancient Egyptian-themed goodies from The British Museum. See details below, and for full T’s and C’s, visit click here.