BEA Recap Post: Days 3 & 4

Tuesday – May 24:

FIRST ACTUAL DAY OF BEA!! I had a day and a half of hanging out with some of my best blogging buddies and attending wonderful events at publishers under my belt but I knew that BEA was going to be a drastically different experience. I dragged my butt out of bed at 5am to begin getting ready for the Children’s Author Breakfast and made my way over to the Javits by myself as I threw hate daggers at my still sleeping roomies April and Shanyn. I got into line where I met up with the wonderful ladies at I Eat Words, Heidi from YA Bibliophile and Kristi from The Story Siren. Our table from the breakfast was awesomesauce—all the ladies mentioned above plus Melanie, Anna, Tara, Tara, and author Amanda Havard. The lineup was great at the breakfast but I was most excited for Sarah Dessen and the ever so beautiful Julianne Moore!

After breakfast we made our way to the BEA floor and I’m sure I looked like a deer in headlights. The Javits Center is ridiculously huge and there were booths everywhere. The event had already started 30 minutes previously so we didn’t have to fight any crazy mobs to get in. I kind of imagined that I would walk in and people would be shoving books in my tote bag and using slingshots to hand them out. Ok, I had a lot of random BEA dreams.However, that was not the reality. Most booths didn’t have anything out after the mad rush. They would do random drops throughout the day but there weren’t piles and piles of books everywhere like I had imagined…which was good as my plan was to be selective and only take what I realistically could read.

Our first booth that we ventured over to was the Scholastic booth and what do you know…they had ARCs of The Scorpio Races. HOLLA. And then the wonderful publicist from Scholastic handed us a copy of Forever and we pretty much were walking on cloud nine having struck gold at our first booth. We wandered to some other booths and said hello to familiar faces at the Harper Teen and Simon and Schuster booths and talked to other publicity/marketing people from other publishers about the books to look forward to this Fall! We then made our way to the autographing session for Alexandra Bracken and Cindy Pon. The autographing is pure insanity. LONG lines and a general mob scene since they are all close together. However, if you are in the line with some great blogging friends..you can pretty much manage to still have a great time and not think about the fact that you are standing in a line. Then I stood in a ridiculous line and feared for my life at a Richelle Mead signing because people were CRAZY. She was all cute with her baby bump though.

After a long day of fighting crowds and talking to publishers and bloggers, we made our way over a few blocks to a post office. A BIG ASS post office. My shoulders were bruised and my feet hurt like a mofo but it was SO worth spending $8 on shipping as compared to the crazypants prices they had at the Javits. While I like convenience, not that much. Then an AWESOME group of some of my fave people went out to TGIFridays for dinner in Times Square — Kristi of The Story Siren, April from Good Books and Good Wine, Shanyn from Chick Love Lit and Carla from The Crooked Shelf.  WHAT a riot this dinner was. All of these ladies are seriously awesome people and I loved talking about books, life and the most random crap with them!

Wednesday – May 25

My feet were killing me before I even woke up…but like any good warrior..I awoke early to catch the subway and make my way towards the Javits. I was excited because I was having my first good hair day of the week because Mother Nature decided not to be a royal bitch and make it drizzle rain or infuse humidity into my hair. I have a hair obsession…lay off 😛 Anywho, I felt more prepared going into this day. I stood in lines (hello crazy Crossed line!) and I talked to more pubs and wrote down a lot of good titles to look out for! Today we actually decided to get some lunch and went out to the hot dog cart and just had fun eating, talking and enjoying the beautiful weather. We went back in and did some more perusing and standing in line. AND THEN…Carla, April and Anna and I made the best decision of our BEA lives…we went to a cocktail panel with the crazy awesome chicas from Forever Young Adult! Seriously..there was alcohol, book talk, LOLS and pretty much a whole lot of awesomeness at our table. These girls were SO kickass and genuine and I pretty much want to move to Texas to be friends with them!

After the good time at the cocktail panel, we got some Good Burger before the Harper Perennial cocktail party. I loved that we all started reciting, “Welcome to Good Burger. Home of the Good Burger. Can I take your order pleaaase?” It makes me happy that the genius of Kenan and Kel made its way over to England. We then went over to the cocktail party. SO MUCH FUN. I met some people I’ve talked to for FOREVER and met some new really awesome people. And umm holllaaa OPEN BAR. I looove you. We then drug our buzzed (tipsy for some) little butts to Pinkberry…because that’s always a good idea. We might have been really loud and texted silly things to Jen of Makeshift Bookmark. And we might have made a good friend in our cashier who happens to also love books! It was a GOOOOD DAY but we were so tired after that that we all called it a night.

BUT NEVER…EVER…is something as simple as going back to our hotel SIMPLE for me. Now, I’m going to preface this with the fact that I go to NYC a lot..I live near Philadelphia and use public transportation on occasion. I’m city savvy. I ride the subways like a champ. So..it’s not like I’m new to the subway thing. So..April, Shanyn and I were on the subway…chatting like crazy about our day. We realize at the last second that we were at our stop. We all dart to the doors — Shanyn to one and April and I to another. And THEN…I don’t know what happened. I don’t know if I saw the closing door and decided to throw my bag in front of it to make it open or what. BUT..next thing I know…my bag is stuck in the door, April and I are STILL on the subway and the door is NOT opening. Meanwhile, Shanyn in on the platform laughing her ass off because my bag is HORIZONTALLY just chilling out the door and hears April and I screaming, “MY BAGGGG.” And then I panic because my hairbrush is in there. (Again, I’m crazy about my hair).  FINALLY the door opens and we run off…not before seeing that Shanyn and the guy behind her are DYING of laughter. The whole walk home to our hotel we couldn’t stop laughing. It was that ready-to-be-your-pants, snorty kind of laughter. OH god. It was hilarious.

DAY 1 & 2 Recap + Giveaway of Forever