My Adventure at #BEA15

First let me say this is going to be a very long post with lots of reading, you can skim it or read the entire thing, I do hope you will read the entire thing…Thank you 🙂

This is my third time at BEA and I had so much fun. This year was a lot different and it seemed a lot more organized than the last two years. It was nice that the lines to get authors signatures wasn’t to bad and you really got a chance to walk around. I wish I would have scheduled a lot better but I was very happy with my book haul from the event and found a few books I might have never picked up. Might have found my next favorite read or my new favorite author. You would have thought I took a TON of pictures but sadly I did not. Why? I have no idea, sometimes I think the excitement of it all makes me forget I can take pictures but since I myself don’t like pictures of me I tend to stay away from them but I did take pictures of all the books I got. So lets start from the beginning and pray I don’t bore you all to tears.

I love going to BEA with my sister, she is more of a Time Travel Romance reader and I have been trying to get her to read OTHER books but she is very stubborn. She is also my if I grab it you grab it girl so I can have an extra copy of stuff to giveaway during COYER. If you follow my blog you know Real life has been rather hard on me and my family so this was the perfect distraction to get out and just do what I love, get books and meet authors. We only attended one day since I couldn’t get off work and with everything going on I couldn’t be away for to many days either but the Friday was perfect.

The day started with my sister getting to my house at about 7am it only takes 15 minutes to get there so we had PLENTY of time. We stopped for breakfast at Dunkin Donuts and we were on our way…

Then Route 3 happened and we were stuck in DEAD STOP traffic. I watched the time tick by. 45 minutes we waited in that traffic, it was an accident and I do hope all who were involved was ok but I was not in a panic because we still needed to go through the Lincoln Tunnel and find parking and get inside. I did a panic tweet that we were going to be super late but we got to the event center at 8:55. We ran in and got our passes and jumped in line as it was going inside. We made it and I was so happy the only problem was we were on the wrong side!

The event is set up with a lot of the international books on the side we were on and the other side was Random House, Capstone, Harper Collins, etc. So we hauled ass over to that side to see if we can grab a few galleys before strolling around to check everything out. We did get a few interesting read and I was very happy with that. Once we grabbed what we could I relaxed a bit and it was now time to walk around and explore.

My first stop was Capstone/Switch Press since I had tweeted I was going and they asked me to stop by. I spoke to one publicist over email and I was really looking forward to meeting her. When we first got there we walked around a little but I didn’t see her standing at the booth so my sister and on moved on and figured we would come back later. Do you know what the most awesome thing to hear from a publishing company is? Well, I will tell you. When we went back to the book I was standing in line to get a Dino-Mike book signed for my son, the lady taking the names looked at our badges and said “OH You girls are from Because Reading, so glad you could make it” (side note: my sister isn’t from because reading but she sure acts like it when she is there, lol) I was super happy they realized it was me and when I was getting my books signed I was the lady, April that I had chatted with. I introduced myself and seriously she was very happy to meet me and I couldn’t express how happy it was to finally meet her. I was a little disappointed that I missed Gwenda Bond the author of Lois Lane:Fallout she signed the day before. They said she might be around but they weren’t sure. You must understand Lois Lane: Fallout WAS AMAZING and I absolutely LOVED it. It so far is added to one of my favorite books EVER and the possibilities are endless of how the story could go. After chatting with April for a bit and she said she would send me a few books in the mail. I NEVER GET BOOK MAIL! So I am really excited about that. At one point I thought we were never going to leave the book as my sister found board books to play with and she played with them all.

We headed to find a few more publishing companies that I like. I had heard Spencer Hill was not going to be at BEA so I was so surprised to find and what perfect timing. A signing of a book I have been stalking Never, Never by Brianna R. Shrum was about to start in like 15 minutes. I pretty much grabbed my sister and RAN to the signing area. I was so happy to not only meet her but also grab the book SIGNED!!!

Last year the signing area was at the booths and most of them were all over the place so it was hard to keep track of were you wanted to go this year that had an entire area made up of rows that you line up and the author (obviously) is at the end of. It was pretty cool and they had a HUGE board with all the times people were going to be at each area and signs by each row. I ALMOST fell over when I realized Heidi Shulz was going to be signing Book 2 of her Hook series. I adored the first one after reading it for Dewey’s Readathon so I was so excited to have a copy to have on my shelf with the other one.

The rows were wonderful because not only could you jump on line for the book you wanted but most of the time you can jump on the next line to get another book. So you have time to get a few books in a row instead of running all over the place to find authors.

I was excited to have been able to meet, Colleen Hoover, Lauren Oliver, Heidi Schulz, Rachel Shane, Maggie Stiefvater, Geoff Rodkey & Franco (author of Dino Mike) but I was super sad I still didn’t get to see Gwenda Bond.

It was very fun to chat with them all for a few seconds and get a signed book. I love signed books 🙂 I would have gotten more but apparently I was starving my sister and we went to get a little bit of  Pink-berry for lunch since I needed to get back to standing in line. WE HAD NO TIME FOR EATING, SHE COULD EAT LATER!!!! She told our mother that I was being mean and made her starve but seriously we only had one day to get everything we could and that means no breaks!!! 😉

Once I got Lauren Oliver’s signature, I got a call from my daughters school saying she wasn’t feeling well and my mom had gone to pick her up so I figured that was our cue to leave and we had to beat the NY/NJ traffic out of the city so we started our last walk around and wanted to pass by some of the booths before we left to see if anything else was around me might have missed. We passed by the Capstone booth again and a lot of people were just hanging around so we passed it by and headed for the door….

As we walked pasted two people were sitting at a table going over something and I stopped dead in my tracks. My head was spinning, is that GWENDA BOND??? OMG, IT IS HER!!! Goosebumps ran over my entire body and I almost started shaking. I walked back over to the table and said “Excuse me, are you Gwenda Bond?” I already knew that but it was the only thing that came out of my mouth. She said yes AND TOTAL FANGIRL MODE KICKS IN. Here is how the conversation went I think since most of what I said probably didn’t make sense and I was so excited I am not even sure what happened.

Me: OMG, I am so happy I got to meet you, I LOVED Lois Lane. It is one of my favorite books. It was amazing.
Gwenda: Looking at my badge, Oh your Michelle I read your review, Thank you so much.
Me: *Completely started babbling* with it was amazing, I loved it, I won it from Switch Press, OMG, Lois Lane has her own voice, I love how you added Clark Kent, You did an amazing job, The Possibilities are endless for what can happen, etc, etc.…
Me: I was so happy I got to meet you, I thought I missed you and I was so disappointed that I didn’t get to see you.
Gwenda: Oh that is so sweet of you to say.
Me: Am I blushing because I totally think I am blushing and I don’t think I ever smiled this hard.
Gwenda: Do you want to get a picture?
Me: Oh goodness no, I take awful pictures, trust me I am just happy to have meet you.

THEN SHE HUGGED ME!

I gushed a bunch more and rambled on about the book than told her I was going to go because before I made a bigger fool of myself and my face hurt from smiling. I was so excited and pretty much smiled all the way home. I TOTALLY MEET HER! and I acted like a COMPLETE DORK! But I don’t care because I TOTALLY MEET HER AND SHE HUGGED ME!!!!!!

We drove home on a high and I was so excited to get home and see what books I got. Once I emptied all the bags I caressed each book lovingly, popped them into goodreads and sniffed every one. It was such a great day! I am sorry I didn’t take a few more pictures and maybe I should have taken one with her but I hate ruining pictures with my face.

This is a super duper long post so I am going to post a few pictures and I will post another post with the list and pictures of all the books I got 🙂

Thanks for stopping by and sticking around to read this post.
I do love to write posts like this it was fun.

I hope you have an amazing day!

Happy Reading!

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