FEB 28 UPDATE : We announced to visitors to our chat room today that we’ll be joined by THREE cast members for this special Castle Anniversary chat.

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It’s hard to believe that it’s almost a year since “Castle” first went to air back in March 2009.  In that time we watched as a short Season 1 gave way to Season 2 and the audience grew week by week.  ABC showed faith ordering the back 9 episodes in October and then surprised fans by adding an additional two episodes in January bringing the Season 2 total to 24.  The tie in novel “Heat Wave” by Richard Castle was released in September and shot straight onto the New York Times Bestseller list where it remained in the top 30 for 16 weeks and moved into it’s 8th print run.

This week ABC released new T-Shirt designs and announced the title and release date for the second Nikki Heat novel.

It’s been busy here at CastleTV.net and we’ve enjoyed spreading all the latest “Castle” news,  watching the fan base grow and connecting fans with the Cast and Crew through a number of special chat sessions.  The community has grown quickly forcing us to upgrade servers twice (with another upgrade planned in the near future) as “Castle” has become more and more popular.

We’re very excited to announce that we’ll be celebrating the 1 year anniversary of Castle with a special chat session.  We’ll have a member of the cast stopping by!

But…. we’re not going to tell you who the guest is, we’d like it to be a surprise (yes,  I am evil!).  Questions will be taken in advance (as per the chat rules below) but instead of asking you to submit questions for a particular person we’ll ask you to submit questions for ALL the cast members .

The chat will take place on Monday March 1 beginning at 10pm Eastern time ( There is no Castle scheduled to air this week).

TIME ZONES:
The chat session will be open starting from the following times (half an hour before our guest arrives).
USA: Eastern Time 10:00 pm,  Pacific Time 7:00 pm.  UK: 3:00 am (Tue).  Australia: Eastern DLS: 2:00 pm (Tue)

The following chat rules will apply.

1. Please register before entering the chat room.  If you are not already registered you may do so right away via www.castletv.net/chat
   NOTE ATT Users, there’s an issue with registration emails being blocked, please enter the chat as a guest this week if you have tried to register and did not receive an email.
2. Always remember to be polite to our guest and to others in the room.
3. Important messages from our moderators may be posted throughout the chat session, these messages will be posted in red. If you see a red message, please take the time to read it as it may contain important information.  For this reason, please do not change your text colour during the chat session, all users must use the default black.
4. Questions can be submitted in advance so feel free to start thinking now.  You can submit questions via our forums at http://castletv.net/forums/events/anniversary-chat any time or in the Question Room in chat an hour before the chat session begins.
5. There will be three rooms running during the special guest chat session.  The Lobby is the default chat room where you can chat with others about anything before the scheduled  chat session begins. The Question Room will be for people to submit their questions and the Guest Room will be where the actual chat with the guest takes place (this is different to our usual chat room set up).
6. The chat room will be open for 30 minutes before the chat begins to enable people to start submitting questions in the Question Room.  Our moderators will track all the submitted questions to be asked once our guest arrives.
7. Once our guest arrives everyone will be invited to move over to the Guest Room. Once in the guest room visitors will be “silenced” by our moderators to prevent people interrupting our guest’s Q&A time.  This is a new feature we are trialling to help the chat run more smoothly for everyone.
8. A moderator will post the questions and our guest will be invited to answer them.  If time allows and our guest is willing we will open the floor for direct questions and general chat after the formal Q&A has finished.  At this time visitors will be un-silenced by our moderators.
9. Think of this chat session as a Q&A with a guest on stage (like at a convention).  It is important that when someone is speaking – either to ask a question or our guest answering one do NOT interrupt.  You may only post during the actual Q&A session if our guest or a moderator asks you a direct question.
10. If our guest chooses to remain for an open chat session after the Q&A, please do not ask inappropriate questions, do not ask for favours (eg, can I have an autograph, can I visit the set, etc) and at all times remain respectful.  Anyone not abiding by these rules may be removed and banned from future guest chats.
11. DO NOT send private messages to our guest.  Anyone caught doing so will be removed for the remainder of the chat session and may be banned from future guest chats.  Please respect our guest’s privacy.
12. During the chat session please avoid intentionally using smileys as they can be disruptive.
13. If the guest agrees a transcript of the chat session may be posted to our site after the chat is over.
14. While every effort will be made to ensure the chat goes ahead we ask you to understand that there may be circumstances under which the chat will be rescheduled.