Guest Post - Skulduggery Pleasant: Kingdom of the Wicked Launch

Recently, the fab Inis Magazine ran a competition where a handful of lucky winners would be able to meet Derek Landy at an exclusive fan event set up to launch the latest Skulduggery Pleasant book, Kingdom of the Wicked. One of the winners, superfan Colleen McGuigan from Armagh, wrote this piece about the event for us and took some photos as well:

I couldn't believe that I had won the Inis competition and was ecstatic to have the chance to meet Derek. When I arrived at Easons the excitement was already building as preparations were taking place for the book signing - the queue was already huge!

I was waiting in the cafe upstairs when Derek arrived and I was introduced to him as the competition winner. I hadn’t expected my meeting with him to be so intimate - we sat down at a table and I got to interview talk to him for twenty minutes!

Derek was funny and friendly and more than happy to answer my questions. I was a little star struck but he was so down to earth and normal he made it easy to talk to him.

The first thing I asked about was the movie - and where things stood with it? The good news is there's a movie deal about to be announced in the next few weeks and that Derek would like it if an unknown actress could play Valkyrie.

I couldn't resist asking about what other actors he had in mind for other his characters! “I would have said Catherine Zeta Jones or Olivia Wilde as China Sorrows”.

I asked Derek if he preferred writing the good or the evil characters? “The evil characters are fun to write about, but if I didn’t enjoy writing about Skulduggery and Valkyrie the books wouldn’t be any good!”

We continued to chat and as my time with him was nearly up I asked what he would continue to write once the Skulduggery series ended. “There will be more books, I just don’t know what they will be yet. But they will be really well written. Of course.”

Derek gave me a signed copy of Kingdom of the Wicked - it's so good! - and I showed him some of my Skulduggery artwork; he thought they were pretty good! (The man has good taste after all.)

It was soon time for the book signing to start downstairs, so we said goodbye and shook hands, took a few dozen pictures and Derek headed down to meet the hundreds of fans waiting for him.

A huge thank you to Inis, Easons, Harpercollins and especially to Derek - it was one of the best experiences of my life and an incredible pleasure to meet him!”