I got invited last week to a special event for the UK dvd release of Dexter’s forth season. To be honest, I wasn’t really expecting much of it. I thought it would just be the usual: a screening of one of the episodes, hang around a bit with other bloggers and enjoy some free food. I was even thinking of cancelling, but then the day before the event I got an email finally revealing where the screening was held…

The Old Abattoir. Ooh, spooky. So last Thursday I made my way up to Farringdon (surprisingly the same street as where we held BarCampLondon 8 a couple of weeks ago) to the Old Abattoir. The fun already started at the entrance when we had to duck under yellow crime scene tape and plastic sheets to get into the building. Led by a friendly “cop” with a torch, we were led down the stairs into the basement where a murder was just committed.

The atmosphere was awesomingly spot on. The entire place was dimly lit with tons of smoke half obscuring the body in the corner and the CSI agents working on analyzing the murder. Cuban music, red wine, donuts and a hot dog stand were all provided for and fitted so well in the Dexter theme. After half an hour we all settled down to watch the final episode of season 4. It was great seeing the episode again, but seeing it in that environment made it so much creepier!

The night wasn’t over though. Within seconds of the episode ending, a woman suddenly started shrieking. Someone had been killed! It turned out to be a guy who I’d been talking to earlier who was a huge Dexter fan and had been so happy that he had won tickets to this evening!

Here’s a video about the event:

I can’t believe the amount of effort the PR team put into this event! It was so much fun and not what I was expecting at all. More screenings should be like this!

Update: I’ve extended the signup date till Tuesday 14th (mainly because I won’t have time to send out the emails before then anyway). Don’t forget to fill in the signup form!

Some of you might remember that last year I organized a last minute Secret Santa for bloggers, and it turned out to be a lot of fun. There were about 16 people signed up and it was great reading about the different gifts people had received. Well, let’s do the same this year, but on Twitter!

So here’s the plan (for those of you who don’t know what Secret Santa is): all of the participants will be randomly assigned another Twitterer to send a gift to, and these assignments are kept secret until the gift has been delivered. So no one knows who their gift is coming from! The idea is to get inspired by your assigned person’s twitter/blog/whatever presence that person has online and get them a suitable gift.

Here are the “rules”:

1. Sign up and fill in all your details in this form before Sunday 12th 23:00 Tuesday 14th. Only sign up if you really plan to do this; I’d hate someone not ending up with a gift.

2. You must be a UK Twitterer with a public account. There should be enough “info” about you online for your secret santa to get you a present.

3. Gifts should be kept under £15 including shipping costs.

4. You’ll get an email around Monday 13th Tuesday 14th with the details of your assigned Twitterer.

5. Make sure your gift(s) are sent out before Christmas. They don’t necessarily have to arrive before Christmas, just sometime during the Christmas holidays.

6. Tweet about the cool gifts you receive! Use the hashtag #SecretSantaUK so that we can see the different presents people have received. If you have a blog, blog about your presents and tweet me (@mseckington) or email me a link (melinda@missgeeky.com). Also if you haven’t received anything by the 1st of January, email me and I’ll try to sort something out.

7. After your person has received and tweeted about their presents, feel free to reveal your identity. You don’t have to, if you don’t want to, but it would make it so much more fun if you get to connect with this person!

8. If you have any questions, email me at melinda@missgeeky.com.

That’s it! Feel free to Tweet, blog, spread the word about this; it would be great to have as many people as possible participating.

I’ll also be joining in on the fun of this. We’ve got a piece of software that should sort out the assignments automatically and send everybody the right emails. Plus I’ve got a Christmas Elf on hand to help out with the background details and check if everything runs smoothly; I won’t see who’s paired up with who or who has gotten me.

Have fun!

One of my favourite books this year has been Feed from Mira Grant (here’s my review). Well, the cover of the sequel has been released and it looks awesome!

I don’t want to mention anything of the plot here, cause otherwise I’m just going to spoil the first book for you. So go read the first book if you haven’t already!