Bea Blatherings

I've been reading everyone's posts on BEA and have been reliving my experience through them.  I am such a bad blogger that I neglected to take ANY pictures!  The one picture I have I believe is from TiffanyE who is a high school librarian in PA.  And I can't seem to find it, but it's the picture of the Vlad Tod stairs at the Javits.  They were just so cool.

I drove into NYC leaving my house at 4.45am because I was so excited to get on the road and I wanted to try to miss as much traffic as possible.  My ride down was completely uneventful until I hit RT 15 in CT and I got stuck in traffic.  For. An. Hour.  My goal was to hopefully get to NYC by 9.30 and the BEA by 10.  I made my goal, but one thing I forgot is that all the GREAT books are given out at 9am!!! I finally get my car to the hotel and leave it there and hop on the shuttle bus.

Once I get my press pass, I'm told that I have to go to the Press Office, but it is not explained why.  So I go up the Vlad Tod stairs to the press room where I'm clueless as to what I'm to do now!  Thankfully, I recognized a blogger from Twitter!  Sally!  She kinda took me under her wing for a half hour and acclimate myself to the convention.  I had been texting Carol and Gail to find out where they were.  Gail texted me back that she was in line for Adriana Trigiani (ticketed).  I walked around for a bit, trying to see where everything was and if there were any galleys, ARCs or authors just hanging around.  Because the first day was completely nuts, I ran into so many people.  The first author I literally bumped into was Maria V. Snyder! What was so funny is that she was in line for the Duchess of York, Sarah Ferguson, last year when I met Maria, she was in line with me for Justina Larbalestier LIAR signing.  I talked to her for a bit, and I asked her she was signing, she was indeed at the Harlequin booth!  The Duchess was running very late, so I left Maria in her very long line and moved on.  Honestly, from then on, the rest of the day was such a blur.  I met up with Sharon and we pretty much hung out together for the rest of the day.  With the exception of a few signings that I wanted to partake of.  She went to lunch with Sarah Darer Litman

After BEA, Sharon came back to the hotel with me while I checked in and left her books in my room.  Technically she was gonna stay with me, but opted to go home.  We then headed to the Algonquin Hotel for drinks with Harper Collins.  There was also a Kidlit drinks session going on as well that I was kinda itching to go to, but did not.  (I regret that because Barry Lyga was there and he's my hero!)  After the Harper Collins, I brought Sharon back to my hotel to gather her books and go home, I then took a cab to Max Brenner's to meet up with, Alea, Erika, Gail, April, Lenore, Carol and Donna!  It was so much fun and the food was very good.

I was so sore after day one of BEA.  Books are heavy people!  BEA really is a great way to meet with authors, bloggers, publishers, publicists and book lovers.  Why people say that Publishing is a dinosaur that is going away are crazy!  I love my books and I love attending this convention!

The authors I met on Day 1:

Richelle Mead
Beth Fantaskey
Heather Brewer
Chelsea Campbell
Jane O'Connor
Maria V. Snyder
Artist Arthur
Earl Sewell
Sarah Beth Durst
Rachel Vincent
Sarah Cross