BEA 2015 Recap - Day 3 Friday!!

Well, it feels nice blogging a bit more continously now, but I'm sadly too busy with the apartment preparations to even dare to hope to have time to have a minimum of two posts up per week, let alone a more regular posting schedule!

Still, here I am with the recap for BEA Day 3, Friday or the DAY-WHEN-ALL-THINGS-HAPPEN-AT-THE-SAME-TIME!!

Once again, I owe all my awesome bloggy & bookish friends for being kind enough to send me all the pics because my phone is a piece of sh*te! THANK YOU!

FRIDAY

Once again, we decided to get up early to be at the Javits when the lines are just beginning to form, which means that in the morning I wake up, get up and get ready, and wait for the rest of my roomies to get up while having my tea (which is a rather so-so kinda tea because there's no kettle and I made it every morning with the scalding water from the shower, so... well, yeah). Once again, breakfast from the deli (cream cheese icing bagels for the win, I miss having them for breakfast!).

This time our big group of ducklings was divided between Black Widow and Six of Crows, so our crew was split gone to line up at two different entries to the BEA floor. The Six of Crows line (closer to the authographing area) was Britt, Sarah, Cassie, Melissa, Cristina and myself. This line was a lil better organized, even if we were told to squish together several times, there were no other weird shenanigans!

Once we got in, the pre-line for Leigh Bardugo got started by the great staff at the authographing area, those ladies in the neon green tees knew what to do!

While waiting in line I was hoping to spot Kim and Layla from The Midnight Garden and author Jen Ellision, but no such luck, too many people all over the place, so that's the one big bummer from BEA, not being able to meet these wonderful ladies!

But I got to meet the very lovely and purple-haired and super awesome Melissa Grey that was nice enough to take pics with us and sign bookmarks!! *squeal*

The line for Six of Crows was rather insane, because loads of people used their "first in line" passes for it, so they realized they had miscounted the about of ARCs they had, and had to cut the line early. We were lucky enough to get ours signed and Leigh Bardugo was brilliant! She was super nice and lovely and took time to talk and sign even when she was being hurried! Also, some sort of magical powers because look at her hair being flawless even with the NYC humidity!!

And after Leigh Bardugo I was good till the Soundless signing, so I just roamed around a bit, hang out with my roomies, met with Jenny from Supernatural Snark again, had lunch with Britt, Sarah and the adorable Xander from Forever Bookish (he was doing BEA with his mum and both were beyond adorable!).

Right now, as I'm writing this recap, I'm wondering if I got just two book on Friday or if I got three as my brain seems to be telling me, but I cannot for the life of me remember what other could have been that third book? So yeah, let's just assume I just got Six of Crows and Soundless!

I used my "first in line" pass for Soundless but was a lil disappointed when we were told "no photos and no personalization" and that bummed out feeling along with the fact that we were saying bye to a lot of our bookish friends meant that I didn't have the energy to try and stay for the Rae Carson line (I already had the ARC but wanted to meet Rae) so we left soon after...

BEA was an amazing experince but it also left me so very tired!!
Some lessons learnt on how to make BEA better for myself: Plan differenly next year and make sure you arrive a few days before BEA so the bloody jet lag doesn't kill you as much! Add extra maybes to your schedule so if you get out of a line early you know what you might want to try for and not just wander aimlessly and end up missing things!

I'm really REALLY looking forward to attending BEA16 because I'm already planning and plotting with my bloggy/bookish friends and it's gonna be EPIC!!

BEA 2015 Recap: Thursday - Day 2!!

Hello again guys!

I'm still damned busy but I want to try and work on the recaps for all 3 days of BEA for this week, so here I am again!

Today it's all about BEA Day 2 - Thursday!

Once again, thank you everyone for allowing me to steal your pics for this recap!!

THURSDAY

Me and the roomies had agreed on waking up super early to be at the queue so we'd get a good spot to try and make it to the Passenger signing! My #1 priority was the Firewalker signing by Josephine Angelini, but my roomies were so excited about Passenger and so sure of our BEA game, that they convinced me to go with them to the Passenger signing and then run to the Firewalker line at the authographing area (which was much better organized than the entering BEA line by faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar!).

Waking up early for me was a piece of cake, because JET LAG! but everyone else had a bit of a harder time, we then went to grab our breakfast at a deli (YAY for cream cheese bagels!), took an Uber and parked ourselves in the line for BEA around 6:45, mission acomplished!

We were joined by the rest of our crew aka the ducklings, Octavia (Mama Duck!), Nikki, Christina, Cassi, Melissa, Cristina (and her brother) and Dan! Having breakfast, chatting, plotting, sharing info, dancing to Christina's music... the works!

Meeting people at the line is fantastic because it's when you have the most time to chat! But BEA staff are a real disaster when it come to organizing lines, like bringing a part of the line from behind to the front to make rows of four, like WHAT IN THE BLOODY F!?!

Before being allowed to get in at 9 am we were repeatedly admonished "DO NOT RUN!", they must have been scared of having a repeat of the Truthwitch avalanche! ;) As such, I didn't run, just walked briskly and made it at a very decent spot for the Passenger line with Britt and Sarah. We chatted with Jamie, I met the lovely Gillian from Writer of Wrongs (I couldn't believe she knew who I am!) and had a barrels of laughs with the very unique Marlon from We Live & Breathe Books.

Meeting Alexandra Bracken was simply amazing! She's freaking adorable and so wonderful to chat with! She was telling me all about how she wants to come to Spain on vacation!! Resisting reading Passenger early will be VERY hard!!

And in case you were wondering, that's my TARDIS cardigan and my custom made Piwicakes tote that Becca painted for me! I got a lot of people complimenting my tote, my R2D2 bag and my TARDIS cardigan! Clearly bookish peeps are my people! ;)

Right after getting my book signed I parted ways with my roomies to head to the authographing area while they went to another drop. The line for Josephine Angelini was not too bad and my roomies soon joined me! Josie was adorable and her publicist commented that I was the person coming from father away they'd had!

Proof that my roomies are the bestest, Becca grabbed me an ARC of A Curious Tale of the In-Between by Lauren DeStefano because she knew I wanted it!

Then I decided I wanted to stay around the authographing area because I wanted to meet & hopefully get a pic with Wendy Higgins and Sara Raasch! I planned to wait till their lines were over to approach them, and while I was around the Wendy Higgins line I met Jenny from Supernatural Snark!!

Jenny and I have been commenting and chatting in each other blog comments for a long time and I was super excited to meet her at BEA! We spent the time at Wendy's line chatting and she's as adorable in person as in her blog and Twitter!

Wendy was also an absolute sweetheart and I was beyond happy to get to meet her!! My phone failed but Wendy took a pic of us with her phone and I'm still overwhelmingly happy that she has that photo as her Twitter avatar!! *hyperventilates*

I also got to meet and say hello to Sara that was lovely, but no photo because my phone sucks...

And then joined the line for Heather Demetrios that was lovely as well! I got a super cute hamsa charm along with a lovely postcard and my signed copy of Blood Passage! Now I can read book 1 and survive the awful cliffhanger I read about! If Heather Demetrios made me love her contemporary books, I cannot wait to read her fantasy series!

I spent some more time hanging around with Jenny and her absolutely adorable mum, then joined the roomies for a lil while, but then they went for the Libba Bray signing and I had nothing in my schedule till the Fall Out by Gwenda Bond signing, that was my other priority for the day!

I decided to go to the Disney booth and get in line to get the Magnus Chase sampler and the shield! for Sarah, I got there super early, joined the by then tiny line thanks to Melissa (thanks girl!) and spent the time chatting with Jon and Nori and also met the lovely Hazel from Stay Bookish! She made feel a lil bad for my poor camera at the hotel room, since she had her DSLR with her like a total pro!

And not only did we get the shield and the sampler (that I gave to Sarah) but we also got a totally tasty cupcake that I obviously ate as a reward! ;)

Still munching on my cupcake I dropped by the Capstone booth and saw that the line for Gwenda Bond was already forming, so I stayed there!

Gwenda recognized me by my Twitter handle and promised that she would write a sequel for The Woken Gods one day just for me (which probably means, so I can stop bugging her about it!). She was awesome all around and rocked her leather skirt as Lois herself would have! ;)

After that I joined my roomies and soon after that we headed back to our hotel room, so Becca could get ready for the Mcmillan party! While she was there mingling and having a blast, Britt, Sarah and I stayed in our room, had some nice NYC pizza and tried to recover! I decided to stay up till Becca returned and soon after she returned, I crashed the first one, once again!

My loot for Day 2! I did pretty well on restraining myself so these fit very well on my tote! One advantage of limiting yourself because of flight restrictions is that you don't need to take a rolling suitcase to the Javits, because books must fit in your tote!

More to come in the final day of BEA, stay tuned!

BEA 2015 Recap: Tuesday & Wednesday!!

Hello everyone!!

I know I'm being really sparse as of late, and I miss blogging and interacting with you guys more, but this whole apartment thing and now that I'm back to work... I am having a very hard time to find the time and motivation to blog, so until I'm finally settled for good in the apartment, I will continue to blog sporadically only.

Today I'm FINALLY going to start by BEA recap! The first post is gonna be about pre-BEA and the first half-day of BEA AKA Tuesday & Wednesday!

First things first, none of these pictures are mine. I took my camera with me, but didn't take it with me anywhere, I needed the extra space and was a bit overwhelmed for it. I got them all from my lovely roommates and fellow wonderful bloggy friends! So THANK YOU Britt, Sarah, Cassie, Melissa and everyone else that sent me pics!!

TUESDAY

I arrived at JFK airport on Tuesday and my preparation for BEA started before even leaving the airport, because we were in line for immigration processing for at least one hour!! I started getting nervous because I had landed at 2'30 pm, I kept hearing calls over the P.E. that our luggage was being take off the belt because too many suitcases, and I wanted to arrive to the hotel, get freshened up and then got to the Jenny Han book launch, and it was nearly 4 pm already!!

Then of course was the traffic from JFK to the city, but luckily I was the second person to be dropped by the shuttle, so it wasn't too bad!

First highlight of the trip? Meeting my roomies!! Becca from Pivot Book Reviews & Reading Teen, Britt from Please Feed The Bookworm & Winterhaven Books and Sarah from Words With Sarah!!

After all the squealing and jumping and OMG-ing, Britt gave me her ARC of Mechanica because she's a sweetheart and she knew I really wanted to read it and also a book from Alyssa from The Eater of Books! Alyssa sent me a lot of ARCs and some awesome swag and before stepping out of the hotel room I had my first haul of books!! Overwhelmed already here!! THANK YOU!!!

Then we changed, don our bows and left to attend the Jenny Han book launch in Brooklyn! We were sad because Becca was going to attend the Teen Author Carnival at the Jefferson Market Library and not coming with us...

The Jenny Han launch was very stylish, with a candy bar with macarons, cupcakes, cookies and even champagne! We meet even more awesome bloggers there because Octavia, Nikki and Christina also arrived there! I was so happy to finally get to meet & tackle hug Octavia and Nikki! Also met Sajda, Melissa, Cristina and Jamie! It was so exciting! Jenny read from the book, took questions and then started signing!

There was a nail artist and a make up artist and also a nice photocall made to look like Lara Jean's bedroom, and even the cover mode was there to pose with people! We totally too advantage of that, and I got to keep the original polaroid, because these ladies are too kind!

Then with our signed books we took the tube back to our respective hotels to try and get some rest to be ready to day 1 at BEA!

WEDNESDAY

The start of Wednesday can be summed up as: "YAY jet lag!". I woke up at 3 am, then tried to go back to sleep and then dozed off a bit here and there and finally gave up around 5 am and got up and got ready and made myself a cuppa tea while I waiting for my roomies to get up. I must confess the jet lag was a bit advantage for me, because I am NOT a morning person, so making me wake up at 4'30 am would mean risking a limb being bitten off...

After the whole morning process happened, we got to the Javits, my roomies with their rolling suitcase and me with just my Pivot Book Tote and my R2D2 messenger bag!

We went to Blogger Con to get our badges and then decided to roam around to get the layout of the place and then decide what panels to attend.

The most awesome stairs ever!! The Illuminae stairs!!

But then we saw that the line for BEA was already forming and we panicked about the Truthwitch tickets, so we decided to forego BloggerCon and stay in line!

Being in line, soon we were joined by Octavia, Nikki and Christina once again! Also joined us Melissa and Cassie!

 From before 9 am till 1 pm we stayed in line, sat around, chatted, had some Starbucks overpriced lunch boxes, saw Susan Dennard pass (I waved at her and she waved baaack!). Sarah and Christina were my dance-in-line buddies because while waiting it's more fun to dance than just stand up! We plotted and planned our route to the Macmillan booth, saw what drops were announced on the BEA PW magazine and checked out schedules. We also met Katie from Katie's Book Blog, Nori from ReadWriteLove28, Jon from Bookish Antics and the lovely Dana from Danasquare! I probably met more people that I can't place right now, but probably will once I sort all the cards I got!

The way the BEA staff organize the lines isn't exactly the best but oh well... once 1 pm arrived we had our plan ready and we planned to follow Octavia, the yellow bullet! We ran and there was a veritable avalanche that shocked people on the booths! But YAY I managed to get my golden ticket!!

 Right after grabbing my golden ticket, I went to the Penguin Random House (I agree with Nikki, it should be Random Penguin!) to grab my copy of Illuminae (another one of my must-haves!), and then started going here and there for ARC drops! Octavia managed to start the line for the drop of Tonight the Streets Are Ours and a pair of them more! I grabbed quite a few books that I didn't have in my list of "must-haves" but I also got a few ARCs in drops that freed my Friday schedule a bit! I grabbed a pair of books I didn't want for my roomies, because that's how it goes, the buddy system is the way to go! While waiting and "not-forming-a-line" for an ARC drop to happen I met Rashika from The Social Potato and Giselle from Xpresso Reads so YAY for meeting bloggy friends!

During our roaming around and line starting we met Daniel from The Couch Potatoes Digest and he joined our ducklings team! ;)

Then it was time for the Truthwitch signing and meeting Susan was simply amazing! She's just the sweetest and most adorable person ever! She was so excited and seeing her so happy and overwhelmed by the response was a reward for us too!

After the signing with Susan we just grabbed a few more books and then were ready to leave and go back to our hotel! We were supposed to go to Shake Shack with Octavia, Nikki and Christina, but were all wiped and my jet lag kicked again so I was the first in bed again!

More tomorrow for BEA day 2!!