Happy Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Thursday!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone who celebrates, whether Americans, expats or people who love to join in on the 4th Thursday in November. Thanksgiving is the one day of the year when I’m truly homesick. Living in London for seven years, I’ve learned to do without fireworks on Independence Day, but making due without pumpkin pie and my grandmother’s delicious secret stuffing (which she makes in the dead of night to make so that none of us can write down the recipe!) and mashed potatoes (the lumpy bits are made of love) is far more difficult. Because, really, home is what Thanksgiving is all about: those millions of moments throughout the course of the day that make a tapestry of love, tradition, and family. Usually, I take the day off, live stream the parade and put up my Christmas tree with my husband and those have become my new Thanksgiving traditions. I’ve found it’s vitally important to make new traditions as life changes  which this buzzfeed probably explains far better than I could: http://www.buzzfeed.com/rachelysanders/why-thanksgiving-is-the-best-day-of-the-year.

And because it’s Thanksgiving, I’d like to share a little blog post about the things I’m thankful for. And no, it’s not just  that you can put bacon in pretty much everything you eat at a Thanksgiving feast (you can, and here’s how: http://www.buzzfeed.com/emofly/bacon-for-thanksgiving).

I’m thankful for my cohort in Team Gollancz Geeks, the incredible Hannah Atkinson. For everyone in the brilliant Gollancz Team, who help make Gollancz everything it is. I’m thankful for my fantastic co-workers at Orion House (especially the marketing team). I’m thankful for our guest bloggers, especially Marc at Fantasy Faction who lead our Lies of Locke Lamora read-along this year. But, I’m especially thankful for all our authors who are hands down incredible, a joy to work with and fill our blog with some of the best content on the interwebs (yeah, I said it, and here’s a Thanksgiving cat pic if you disagree).

cat giving

It’s hard to disagree with that cat; Thanksgiving fact.

I’m also thankful to all our blog readers. We love hearing from you in the comments, on Twitter and on Facebook. Thank you for all your support.

And because everyone knows Father Christmas arrives at the end of the Thanksgiving Parade (I know, it’s weird, but it’s also kind of fantastic), I wanted to take this moment to share how we want to say THANK YOU with a Christmas present:

Next week we’ll be launching our 12 Days of Christmas giveaways. Starting on Monday we’ll be counting down to Christmas in an epic fashion with a chance to win each of our featured books daily in addition to running a bumper prize draw for one reader to win all of our promoted books in one bumper bundle! Every day we will be revealing another title in our countdown, building another layer of our book tree (yes, we’re making a book tree) and sharing some of our favourite reads of 2013 with you.

So a Happy Turkey Day to those who celebrate, a very Happy Hanukkah, and to all of our readers: Happy Thursday! We’re thankful for each and everyone one of you.