Lord Sunday & Waterstones

So, I'm going out of the country for a week at the beginning of March. And the last book in the Keys to the Kingdom series - Lord Sunday - written by Garth Nix, will come out in the UK the day AFTER I leave the country (sobs!). And I really want to it to be a holiday read! So, as a joke (kinda), I tweeted the following tweet

Dear @waterstones, am going out of the country on March 3rd. Could you give me LORD SUNDAY by Garth Nix a day or two before release date?

Within minutes, to my shock, they wrote back - Afraid not as it's an embargoed title (aka, it's going to be released on a set date. No way getting round it!)

I tweeted back (not sounding upset. It was a stupid LONG shot!) - @Waterstones Oh well, will have to wait till I get back. I hope it ends well! Did you hear the first 2 chapters via Oz publishers podcast?

Waterstones Twitter (again!) repelied - Not heard the podcast - will go and seek it out...

So, being the good, kind person that I am (though I still wanted the book. I mean, how you seen the UK cover. Lush!), I wrote two tweets. First with "it's really good. Love chapter 2". Then, rediscovering podcast link on this blog, I tweeted the link (all links are below! PROMISE!!!)

Ok, I know I am going to a country that will have a copy of the book written in English so I'm acting a bit OTT over this, BUT I am a bit shocked when big companies like Waterstones and Atom Books and others (this includes authors like ) actually take time to write a reply. That shocks me.

Sorry, rambling Lord Sunday/Waterstones blog over. Here are the links (and rough drawing of The House, drawn by Garth Nix when he first started writing the series!) and a very funny review vlog of one woman's mission to review the rest of the Keys to the Kingdom series in the style of the VlogBrothers.

Chapter 1 Extract - http://www.keystothekingdom.com.au/files/LordSundayextract.pdf

Podcast (First 2 Chapters read by Garth Nix himself!) - http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=350710673&subMediaType=Audio