Meeting Tessa Gratton

When I was offered the chance to meet Tessa Gratton (author of Blood Magic and The Blood Keeper) recently in London, I jumped at the chance.  I really enjoyed Blood Magic (review: here) and have talked to Tessa online since before her book was published.  She's very funny and talented (have you seen her perform any Shakespeare?) and she probably should have been an actress if the writing hadn't worked out so well for her.

Seriously, she's amazing

Anyway, I requested the time off work and even though I'd worked a night shift the night before, I stayed awake and traveled into London to do some book shopping before going off to meet her.  As an aside, some random guy in the book shop started asking me about whether Twilight was any good and said that he was writing his first novel as he'd been inspired by Fifty Shades of Grey (I don't even know what to say about this) and when I asked him about Fifty Shades, he said he'd only read up to chapter 14 LOL.  I wanted to be encouraging, I really did so I just wished him luck and left it at that. 

Back to the meeting...admittedly Tessa probably didn't see the best version of me because of being exhausted and all and I'm also carrying a little bit of holiday weight but no matter, nothing would stop me from getting there.  As an added bonus, Karen Mahoney (author of The Iron Witch, The Wood Queen and Falling to Ash) was there together with Natalie C. Parker (upcoming author of Beware the Wild).  I've met Karen before (seriously, this woman can pose for silly photographs for hours) and it was really nice to meet Natalie as I've also interacted with her online.

We ended up having a cocktail at a little place called Drink, Shop, Do in London which incidentally is where I met Lauren Oliver last year.  The cocktails had some amusing names and I think I was the only one who snickered when Tessa ordered a "Front Garden".  Nurses have a warped sense of humour, let me tell you.  Or maybe it has to do with some naughty books I've been reading recently ;)

We talked about books (obviously) and writing as well as other things and Tessa looked young and carefree although she claimed to be a bit jet lagged.  I'm so grateful that I got a chance to meet her and get my books signed.  It was also really interesting to hear about Natalie's upcoming novel Beware the Wild (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13639182-beware-the-wild) which quite frankly sounds AH-MAZING but we have to wait until 2014 for it so keep an eye out for that one!  Maybe she'll let me read an ARC of it one day ;)

All in all, it was definitely worth going and even though I wasn't quite as bubbly as I might have been (cos I was KNACKERED) I'm glad I got a chance to hang out with some really cool ladies for the evening.  Thank you to Random House for organising the event.