BEA Recap: Day One/Two

Woohoo! I'm finally back here with an actual post for you guys! I decided I needed to post a BEA RECAP, because I know I love reading everyone else's so I'm sure you guys love reading them too! Plus I want to be able to look back in the future and remember this, which means I need to have it all typed up! 
I suppose I should've titled this MONDAY, TUESDAY, and WEDNESDAY, but oh wells. 

MONDAY: 
I planned and planned and yup, planned for months for this week. When Monday, May 25th, 2015 finally rolled around, I couldn't believe it was actually the day I was supposed to head to Book Expo America- the disney world for book lovers! 
I had originally made plans with another blogger to drive down to Dallas and fly out from DFW, because it was cheaper for the both of us to do that. Unfortunately, some things came up for her last minute, and she wasn't able to make it, which was a total bummer and also left me to figure out how I was going to do this all by myself. Needless to say, my mom was pretty freaked out about me driving all the way to Dallas by myself, mostly because this was my first time going on a trip by myself, and it didn't help that we were expected to get majorly severe weather that day. Luck had turned out for me though, because my best friend, Mary, just happened to ask where I was staying overnight since my flight didn't leave until early Tuesday morning, and offered to let me stay the night with her/drive me to the airport. That girl is a freaking lifesaver!

TORCHYS NOMS

Packing was a chore. It felt like I would never ever finish, but when I went to go put all of my bags in my car, my big suitcase decided to break on me, which put me behind schedule since I had to switch suitcases last minute. Shout out to Moms and Pops for letting me borrow theirs! The first half of the drive was pretty normal and boring as far as driving 3 1/2 hrs goes, but right before I hit the Oklahoma/Texas border is when all went to hell. I ran into some severe storms, with driving heavy rain and of course, tornadoes. Normally tornadoes don't freak me out that much, but it did this time, because I had no idea what county I was in/near and those were the only things they were naming on the radio. I pulled off the interstate, and ran inside a gas station to wait it out. I was freaking out pretty hardcore, because right before I got out of my car, it was rocking side to side. Turned out the tornado touched down on just the opposite side of the interstate than the one I was on. I decided to wait out the rain for a bit, and then got back on the road, but due to the atmospheric change, my tires lost air pressure about 10 miles down the road so I

BIGGEST HPB EVER!

had to stop AGAIN, and find someone who was willing to check my tire pressure and help me air them all back up. The rest of the drive was full of crazy drivers and more rain, but after about 5 hours on the road, I FINALLY pulled up to Mary's house, and lots of squealing and hugging commenced. We sat and talked for about an hour before we decided to go out to eat. She took me to this AMAZING taco place called TORCHY's and holy crap! I MISS THOSE TACOS! SO GOOD! And then, as if I needed to buy any books before going to BEA, Mary drove me to the biggest  Half Price Books I've ever seen and then to their local B&N, which was also ginormous compared to ours! I was a good girl though, and only bought one book-- The Royal We. The rest of the night was spent fangirl-ing/gossiping/squealing over all things books and blogging, but before I knew it, it was super late, and I had to be up in about 4 hours to get ready to head to the airport. That night went way too fast! 
TUESDAY:

1st TAXI w/ Sarah!

Morning came way too early (it did everyday this week!) Mary dropped me off at the airport, and I felt like a little kid being dropped off on my first day of kindergarten all over again, not even kidding! Of course, my little bout of bad luck continued, and I had a hell of a time even getting on my plane. Screw you DELTA for overbooking. I was one of the lucky (HA!) people who wasn't assigned a seat, so since they were overbooked, they had to start trying to auction off people's seats. They were going for $1300 a pop! Crazy that no one took up on that offer! I would've been considering it if I were one of them, but about 4 minutes before the plane was scheduled to take off, they let us on the plane, because a bunch of people ended up not showing up, thank goodness. I was close to tears because I didn't think I was going to be on that plane. Turns out, after we took off, a giant sinkhole appeared on one of the runways at DFW due to the massive flooding TX had been dealing with for the month of May, so if I wouldn't have gotten on, I probably wouldn't have even made it out of Dallas that day. The plane ride went pretty smooth, and I ended up next to a guy who is an audiobook narrator, which was pretty neat to talk about. We discussed all the book things in the world, and it was great sitting to someone I could talk to.

Times Square w/ Sarah

When we finally landed at LGA, I was bursting with excitement because my bestie brah, Sarah, had been there for a little over an hour waiting for me to land. She met me at the luggage pick-up, and lots of hugging and squealing happened. People probably thought we were weirdos, but WHO CARES?! It was such an amazing feeling getting to meet one of the people I talk to 24/7 face to face for the first time. After I got my bags, we hopped in a cab and made our way into Manhattan, where our hostel was. IT WAS SO HOT TOO! OMG! Usually by this time of year, I'm used to scorching temps but with all the rains, it's been pretty mild temperature wise in OK lately, so I was dying from the humid heat. Of course, we got to our hotel way before check in time & our room wasn't ready, so we decided to check our bags, grab a map, and start wandering around the city. I was pretty nervous about it at first, but it was pretty easy to navigate. We made our way to Times Square, and saw some of the sights, while we not-so-patiently willed time to go by faster so we could get in our air conditioned room and wait for our other two roomies to arrive! After some naked old cowgirl lady tried to put her arm around me (and Sarah saved me from her by dragging me into a nearby store), we decided to start making our way back to the hostel. Fortunately, our room was finally ready. The not so fortunate part is that we had a ton of stairs to lug our suitcases up, because there was no elevator whatsoever. Sarah and I lounged around our HUGE suite, until Britt finally got there. We met her outside and of course, more flails and squeals happened! Then it was Pili's turn! *repeat* 

Me, Sarah, Pili

By this time, it was getting close to time for us to leave for our events. Sarah, Pili, and Britt headed over to Jenny Han's signing, while I decided to go to Teen Author Carnival, because I had another event to go to after, and I didn't think I'd be able to make it in time coming from Brooklyn had I gone to Jenny Han. I was sad to leave them all behind after only getting to see Britt and Pili for a little bit, but TAC was an absolute blast. Right away, I ran into Xander and Grace, and we decided to go to the Hulk Smash Emotions (Katie

McGarry, Kody Keplinger, Tiffany Schmidt, Elizabeth Eulberg, Adam Silvera,  and Jesse Andrews) panel that Andye was moderating. I can't even remember how many people that I know I ran into at TAC, so instead of naming the ones I remember and potentially forgetting half of them, I won't list them, but just know if we did meet that night, that I loved meeting you and you rock!!! I gave Andye air hugs since I was stuck in the middle of the group, and talked to Liza who happened to be sitting in front of me, before the

HULK SMASH

Me & Grace

  most hilarious panel I've ever been to started. Seriously Andye rocked it! I ended up asking a question to the group of authors (I think it was, if you could meet any author -dead or alive- who would it be?), and apparently if you ask a question, you get a goodie bag so that was pretty cool!! I said my quick hello-goodbye to Andye and then when to the 2nd panel which I don't remember the name of, but it had Claire LeGrand moderating with Melissa Grey, Virginia Boecker, Alexander London, JLA, Alexandra Bracken, and Susan Dennard! What a great panel that was! If you go to BEA next year, make sure you attend TAC. It is so worth it. I was worried it was going to be a madhouse, but it really wasn't that bad. After the panels, I got a few books signed by Alex, Kody, and Tiffany, talked to a few more bloggers that I recognized, and then headed out to the Rooftop Party! 

Andye's tote

Hannah's bag

Liza's tote!

This party was the bomb dot com. Andye, Hannah, and Liza put it together, and it was just so much fun getting to socialize with a bunch of bloggers, authors, and publicists one on one without being on the BEA floor. This party was especially special because it was Liza's first signing of her debut Hello?, which I am so excited to read!! I've heard so many great things, and Liza is the sweetest person ever. Little did Liza know, Kelly and I had put together a little surprise for her! I had painted a tote with the cover of Hello? on it, and I made her cry when she saw it. But then, I had a few more surprises up my sleeve for the night, because I had actually painted totes for Andye and Hannah with their blog designs on them, and they cried too! It was so awesome! BEST SURPRISES EVER!!! I'm so glad that I planned that for them, and was able to squeeze in the time to paint them for them during my hectic May schedule. I was also able to sneak in a Jenuine Cupcake, which was hands down the best cupcake I've ever had in my entire life (it was cookie dough btw)! I also gave away two totes that night to two lucky people, Kim & Katie, and I'm so glad that they won, because I spent most of the night talking to them! Too soon the night had come to an end, and I had to make my way back to the hostel and my roomies. I grabbed a bursting goodie bag (SERIOUSLY EPIC GOODIE BAG!), said my goodbyes until the next day, and ubered back to the hostel, where I gorged on NYC pizza, traded stories of each of our nights with my roomies, planned our attack for Wednesday, and caught some much needed zzzzz's!

HIGHLIGHT OF TUESDAY:
Meeting my co-blogger Andye for the 1st time!

WEDNESDAY:

bright & early WED

MY ROOMIES <3

I think this was the only day that we all decided not to get up super early, because BloggerCon was going on, and we weren't too interested in that, so we all got ready, and made our way to the Javitz, which is HUGE! After we got our badges, we took some photos, checked our bags, grabbed some starbucks, and started wandering around since the floor didn't open until 1 p.m. I think it was about 9ish, and we saw that people were already starting a line to get in the doors. Our main priority for Wednesday was Truthwitch (wasn't everybody's), so we decided if we really wanted to get our hands on one of those 100 tickets that we better sit our booties down and wait it out. You would think that 4 hours would drag by when you're sitting on concrete, with security constantly moving you because they don't have their crap together when it comes to lines, but it went by so quick! We were joined by the crew of people who basically became our group for the rest of the week...Octavia, Nikki, Katie, Christina, Cristina (and her brother, Bobby!), Melissa, Cassi, & Daniel! We spent the time taking pics, planning our schedules with all the new drops, dancing, eating breakfast, and talking! I think this was my favorite part of each day, because there's not much time to talk to anyone while you're on the floor unless you end up in the same lines, because everyone is on a mission. 

PHOTOBOMB

GOLDEN TICKET

Finally, they let us through the gate, and it was a cluster-you-know-what. I'm going to address something that apparently no one wants to admit to, but literally everyone ran to the Macmillan booth to get a Truthwitch ticket. It was like the opening scene to The Hunger Games, I'm not even joking. Swarms of people were just bypassing all of these booths to get to the very back of the floor where the booth was. Some people were literally running like their lives depended on it, and some were just fast-walking/jogging. Basically if you were lucky enought to snag a ticket for Truthwitch, you ran. That's how it went down. I fast-walked my way over there, because people that were at the back of the line instantly ran once they got inside and there was no way in hades that someone who had been waiting half the time that I did in line was going to get a ticket and make me not get one. I snagged golden ticket #37 and it was like a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. As far as the rest of the day went, I could've gotten nothing and still been happy. Of course, that didn't happen because there were drops everywhere. I remember grabbing Illuminae and a few other books before heading to the Amy Ewing signing. After that, I think we wandered around while we waited for Susan's actual signing. It's all a blur now, haha. Once we finally got up to Susan, it was amazing. She is seriously one of the sweetest authors I've had the pleasure of meeting. She wrote something special in each of our books, not just the same thing over and over, which was epic!! I was even lucky enough to snag a pic before my turn was over, which made it even better!!!! I hugged my copy of Truthwitch to my body for the rest of the day, because there was no way I was letting my baby out of my sight! I think the last thing we did on the floor that day was hit a HarperTeen galley drop, and then by that time, we were all thoroughly exhausted. Some of our group wanted us to meet up with them at Shake Shack but once we made it back to the hostel, we were all pooped, and ended up not going. We grabbed some food from Subway, and ended up having the best bookish sleepover of the week. We stayed up late going over the highlights of the day, petting all of our pretty new books, and putting together our game plan for Thursday! 

SUSAN DENNARD

Anyways, that's what happened on the first half of my BEA trip! Stay tuned this week for the second half! SORRY this turned out so long! I was not expecting it to but what can ya do?! The next one will probably be longer, because LOTS happened! But if you stuck through this long one, props to you! You're a trooper! MWAH!