Some BEA Highlights!

Well, I'm probably the LAST person to blog about BEA that was there, but the weekend totally and completely wore me out! I figured out that I got about 7 hours of sleep over the entire weekend...so it's no surprise that I slept my entire flight home and that when I finally got home (at 1 p.m.) I went to bed and didn't wake up until it was time to go to work!

There were some definite highlights! Of course, meeting so many fantastic book bloggers was one of them. I was thrilled to meet so many of you and only wish you all could have been there...and that I could have found all of you who were there! I will share more about this later.

Some specific little highlights...

While at our blogger signing on Friday, I learned of the existence of Stone Bridge Press which, incidentally, publishes books about Japan. That's how it was introduced to me, which naturally captured my interest. What captured my interest even more was the ARC plunked down in front of me. Hidden Buddhas: A Novel of Karma and Chaos by Liza Dalby. Liza Dalby is one of those fascinating people who actually became a geisha and lived among them even though she's a Westerner. So to me, this was instant excitement. I looked through Stone Bridge Press's catalog that night and have to admit a lot of their backlist looks fantastic. To me this is what BEA is all about...discovering what I might not have ever discovered on my own. Hidden Buddhas is at the top of my list of ARCs I can't wait to read, and so a special thank you to (sorry your card is stuck in the ARC which is stuck in the box being mailed to me!) the gentleman who took the time to come by and see Julie and me while we were signing!

Chatting books and blogging with Hachette publicists at dinner! I really loved getting to meet so many publicists I work with face to face, but the publicists at Hachette took the time to go to dinner with us. I sat at a table with Kelly (@springbaby31 on Twitter) and Brianna (so sorry if that's not how you spell your name!), Lenore, Steph, and Daniel (Lenore's husband), and Steph's mom. The food was yummy, but let me just tell you I love these four gals to pieces! Kelly is just every bit as awesome as I imagined she would be. Seriously, I doubt book bloggers have a bigger advocate and friend. And yes Steph is really as gorgeous as she looks in her photos and Lenore was already a favorite and I think if we lived close to each other we'd be good friends. Pretty much every topic under the sun related to books and blogging we covered.

Scoring an ARC of Catching Fire. Loved the Hunger Games. Was super excited to join in the excitement for this one as well.

The Book Blogger Panel.
Due to the fact that our panel was not mentioned in the official BEA book, we were fairly certain we'd have about 10 people show up...all our book blogging buddies. We were blown away to have a full room! And what an attentive and interested audience! While we definitely got off on some tangents (blog tours and comments anyone?) I do think we covered a lot of things. You can listen to our panel below. Please keep in mind, that for every blogger, there's a different opinion. I think we did a fairly good job of covering the basics, though, and I sincerely thank everyone who came to the panel and also who came to meet us afterwards!




I'll blog some later about the titles I'm looking forward to reading, meeting other book bloggers, etc. For now, well, I've got to go to bed again!