Book Expo

BEA. The crowds. The lines. The buzz. And it's all about books. So many books, mostly ARCs, and I plan to give them away on this site. Yes, that's FREE BOOKS. (More on that later)

It was over two weeks ago, and in some ways, I feel like I'm still recovering. The sixteen hour days. The endless rushing. The aching feet. And the commutes into NYC that ended with hauling at least seventy pounds of books down four flights of stairs through the subway and port authority (Luckily, I only had to do three steps up).


As my guides, I had Shana Silver who provided an hour by hour priority list, heavy on the YA. Denise Jaden, who introduced us to some of her fellow debut authors from 10'ers. Shelli Johannes-Wells who offered much-needed marketing advice to me, the newbie blogger. And Jen Hayley who helped fill in our wait times with commiserating stories about being on submission and lively talk about books.

Well, we all talked about books. And I learned that, despite listening to around 150 audiobooks a year, I lose out on a lot of new releases and debut writers since they don't come out in audio right away...now I have seventy pounds worth of books that will help me solve that dilemma :)

I got to meet Kody Keplinger, whose incredible book, THE DUFF, was the first one I read out of my stash. I'm keeping my signed copy, but I managed to snag a few extras to give away on here. I also got a signed audiobook (MP3-CD) of THE RED PYRAMID, Rick Riordan's new series, which I'll also be giving away.  Other contests will include GIRL PARTS, SHADOW HILLS, MATCHED, REVOLUTION, PERFECT CHEMISTRY, DELIRIUM, GUARDIAN OF THE GATE, ASCENDANT, SAPPHIQUE, MONSTER HIGH, CLOCKWORK ANGEL and many more.

I met bloggers, Amy Reads and Bloody Bookaholic and chatted with the very sweet 10'er author, Holly Cupula, whose book TELL ME A SECRET comes out June 22nd. Most important, I got to meet my wonderfully amazing agent Suzie Townsend in person for the first time.

I want to thank Critique Circle, the writer's organization that got me into BEA (I still owe them a discussion thread, which I'll get to soon). I met Shana and Denise through this supportive group and would encourage writers of any experience level to check it out.