This evening (Monday 20th February 2012) in London the annual Orion Author Party will take place. A wonderful way for authors to meet each other, to feel part of the company as a whole, to meet all the people at the company who work on our books – not just editorial, but sales, production, publicity, marketing, administration, digital, audio, merchandising – every year there are jokes about the ratio of authors to agents present at the party. On some occasions, it's been said that agents even outnumber the authors ...

Tonight, though, the focus will be on the fact that 2012 marks the twentieth anniversary of the founding of Orion. To commemorate this, Orion has repackaged some of the titles - each with a new 'china' cover (china representing a twentieth celebration) that help tell the story of Orion: they include Maeve Binchy's The Copper Beech, Ian Rankin's Black and Blue and Francesca Simon's Horrid Henry (the full list here). Some authors, of course, have a stronger link to their publishers than others. Some have worked with more than one publisher, particularly those writing for children and in the YA market. But many of us do feel a strong link to Orion and, partly because it is one of the smallest of the 'big' publishers, do feel a connection with the other authors published by Orion too.

I love my new edition and, though I know a film tie-in edition of Labyrinth will be coming later in the year (see www.labyrinth-tv.com for details), for now it's great to be a visible part of the birthday celebrations in this way.