Mark Walden H.I.V.E Blog Tour: Guest Post & UK Giveaway - NOW CLOSED

* UPDATE - THIS GIVEAWAY HAS NOW ENDED - Winners announced here & here *

Click here to see the full tour schedule


I was very excited to be invited to take part in the blog tour to celebrate the release of the final book in Mark Walden's H.I.V.E series - Aftershock.  I haven't actually started this series yet but it sounds like so much fun and I'm looking forward to trying it.  Imagine a school for super villains - such an inspired idea!!  Today I'm going to be sharing a guest post from Mark where he talks about how he got the idea for the series and if you're in the UK you can enter a fabulous giveaway for the chance to win one of 3 sets of the entire H.I.V.E series along with a t-shirt, rucksack and wristband!

I'm going to hand you over to Mark now so he can tell you all about how he came up with the idea for H.I.V.E, thanks for a fab guest post Mark!

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Mark Walden

Creating HIVE

I've visited lots of schools over the past few years and talked about my books and there's one questions that come up more often than any other.

“Are you wearing that for a bet?”

The second most common question is “Where did the idea for HIVE come from?” It's an interesting question and hopefully you'll find the answer interesting too. If not, please accept my apologies in advance for wasting the next few minutes of your life.

The truth is that the idea for HIVE came from my best friend's cat. No, he didn't talk to me, because animals don't talk. At least as long as I get my medication doses right they don't. You see, my best friends cat is a breed called a Persian Blue and for those of you who don't know what that means just think of the fluffy, white cat that sits on Blofeld's lap in the James Bond movies from the 1960s. He looks so much like that particular cat that it got me and my best friend talking about James Bond villains and how it's never explained where they learned how to build oil tankers that could swallow nuclear submarines or construct and launch orbital laser death ray satellites. That got me thinking about how there had to be somewhere that those people went to school. An establishment that would specialise in the education of people with an obvious potential for trans-global super villainy.

That idea bounced around inside my skull for a few days and eventually struck the area of my brain responsible for acronym generation and suddenly the Higher Institute of Villainous Education was born. All I needed then was a really good, suitably villainous name for my central character. Once again my best friend's cat leapt to the rescue. His name was Otto. The rest, as they say, was easy...

Well, when I say easy, what I mean is hard. The next step was to come up with a location for the school. Ask any self respecting super villain what the first choice is for lair locations and they will tell you straight away that there is only really one choice. Volcano! I know, a touch cliché perhaps but, sometimes you've just got to go with the classics. HIVE was born of my love for 1960s era James Bond after all and what some may call a shameless rip-off I prefer to think of as affectionate parody. That's what my lawyers have told me to say anyway.

So it was all starting to come together, all that I needed now was a martial arts expert, a computer hacker and an international jewel thief and I would be able to break into Bloomsbury's offices and steal the manuscript for the next Harry Potter book (this was 2005 remember) and blackmail them into publishing my book. These particular people proved harder than expected to recruit but, they did give me an idea for Otto's best friends at HIVE. Soon they would be known as Wing, Laura and Shelby and Bloomsbury agreed to publish the book anyway if I stopped sending the threatening letters.

And that, in a nutshell, is how HIVE came to be. Simple really.

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Otto Malpense is a pupil at H.I.V.E the top secret school of villainy.  Otto and the rest of the elite Alpha stream have been sent on their most dangerous exercise yet: The Hunt.  But when Otto and the Alphas arrive in the icy wastes of Siberia it becomes clear that something is wrong.

Dr Nero, the head of the school, has made some powerful enemies at the Global League of Villainous Enterprises.

In a shocking twist, the first strike against Nero will be a strike against the Alpha stream.  There's a traitor in their midst . . . and time is running out to discover who it is.

For more information about the H.I.V.E series you can visit the H.I.V.E website, Mark's Facebook page (you really do want to have a look at it - there is currently a giveaway where you can win an iPad 2!), Mark's website or you can even follow Mark on Twitter

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Now it's time for the giveaway!  If you'd like to win all seven books in the H.I.V.E series (Higher Institute of Villainous Education, Overlord Protocol, Escape Velocity, Dreadnought, Zero Hour and Aftershock) along with a fab Villain in Training t-shirt, rucksack and wristband just fill in the form below.  Thanks to Bloomsbury I have 3 sets to giveaway but please note the giveaway is for UK entrants only.

What you could win!

Giveaway Details:

• Courtesy of Bloomsbury I have 3 sets of the prize pictured above to give away (UK entrants only please)
• The Winners prizes will be sent out directly by my contact at Bloomsbury so winners must give me permission to pass their address on.
• Winners will be chosen at random from all entries received. 
• Only 1 entry per person please, multiple entries will be deleted.
• To enter please fill in your name and email address in the form below and confirm you are a UK resident.
• Because I'm away for the next couple of weeks the giveaway will close on the 31st August 2011 and winners will be contacted soon afterwards.  You will have 48 hours to contact me with your address or new winners will be chosen.