My small but perfect piece of Forever.: Day 2 of BookCon 2015

My final day in NYC started off more stressful than the rest. My mother and I had decided there was no advantage to getting into the chutes down in Queue Hall since our first objective was to get into autographing lines. I checked my Twitter account (@amp2004) around 8:30 only to find that the autographing line for Sarah J. Maas was capped! This was inconceivable to me! Her autographing session was scheduled to begin at 11 and during the previous morning, no autographing lines were started until 10. The chutes for the autographing session lines were the same chutes that they use to lined up early birds for the showfloor. Once I arrived at Javit's, I bee-lined it to MacMillan while Mom checked our luggage. I asked a very nice man what could possibly be done to get a chance to meet Sarah. He directed me to the Bloomsbury booth (which slipped my brain in the mad rush) on the other side of their wall. I turned the corner and there she was! After weeks of limited sleep and knowing this was the last day of my epic book event, I may have been a little weepy after my encounter with Sarah. She was so gracious and beautiful! I had brought two books for her to sign, my copy of Heir of Fire and my friend Samantha's copy of A Court of Thorns and Roses. Samantha is a SUPER fan and a part of my book club at the library.

The beautiful Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass)

Sarah's reply to my tweet!

After walking away from the Bloomsbury booth in a daze, I got pulled into a booth signing and then ran into my BookCon App Twiin, Emily!

I met up with Mom at the line for Throne of Glass swag. MacMillan was doing a YA trivia contest on the other side of the curtain where we waited. It was tempting to shout the answers through the material!

Since I had missed Adi Alsaid's in-booth signing the previous two days, I headed over to the Harlequin Teen booth. The line had already begun an hour ahead and I happily joined. Mom held my spot while I raced over to Simon & Schuster to get the Shadowhunter swag. While in line, I was photographed by UpFrontNY.

After Adi signed my copy of Let's Get Lost, one of his people gave me an ARC of his new book: Never Always Sometimes! This book kept eluding me the two days before.

On the way down to the Fierce is my Middle Name panel, I got stopped by the Galactic Hot Dog guys. This is my 5 year old son's favorite book that I brought back for him!

The line for the Fierce panel had already begun and I rested my legs by sitting on my collapsible fishing stool that I'd been dragging around. Mom was smart enough to add a travel pillow and I was fit to be queen ;)

While in the panel line, I ate lunch and checked my Twitter feed. Turns out that the line for Sarah J. Maas' poster signing at Litographs had already begun 2 hours in advance. I grudgingly accepted that I would miss this event since I really wanted to see Rae Carson, Charlaine Harris and Sarah J. Maas in panel. About a half hour later, one of my friends texted that she had an extra ticket for the poster signing and asked if I was interested. YOU BET I WAS! T.J. is a co-founder of WeSoNerdy and we met at the Twilight Forever event in NYC at The Hard Rock Cafe in November 2013.

Here are my notes from the amazingly Fierce panel:

Rae Carson (Walk on Earth a Stranger), Charlaine Harris (Day Shift) and

Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses)

"Why do you chose to write fierce female characters?"

~Sarah: she was a girly girl and a tomboy. She pretended to be Indiana Jones and Han Solo. She saw Buffy (the Vampire Slayer film) and wanted to be her.

~Charlaine: when she was young, Cosmo (and other girls' magazines) had articles about how to keep your date entertained and to never argue with your date. Her mom told her that women are stronger then men but our culture wanted outwardly weak females. That conflict was a constant struggle.

~Rae: while she was dating "Jerkface" he would ask "are you sure you want to eat that? You might gain weight..." ***GASP*** needless to say he was kicked to the curb ***cheers*** She wanted to write about a girl who wasn't society's perfection but still saved the world.

"Are your characters good role models?"

~Charlaine: everyone should be Sookie

~Rae: when a guy is awful, kick him to the curb

~Sarah: my characters are loyal to a fault. Feyre is self sacrificing for family but also learns self love

"Sometimes characters make bad decisions, are flawed; how did you choose?"

~Charlaine: personal life experiences

~Sarah: Scarlett O'Hara (Gone with the Wind) was an inspiration. Decision making is important. Too many goody-two-shoes out there.

~Rae: had terrible self-esteem when younger but grew out of it with help from friends. It was very challenging to write the first 1/3 of her novel. Lee loses trust in the world and works to gain it back.

"What do you think about love stories?"

~Sarah: LOVE adult romance! The smuttier the better ;) Fun to write about characters "banging"

~Charlaine: enjoys writing about the search for love. She has been married for 36 years! Never settle!

~Rae: LOVE romance! She especially enjoys the slow build that Grace Burrowes writes.

~Sarah: married her first boyfriend who she met on the first day of college and has been married for 5 years.

"Do you have a target age group for your audience?"

~Charlaine: no, I write for myself!

~Sarah: wrote fanfic for a Sailor Moon/Harry Potter crossover. High school sucked and writing was an escape. I write for me!

~Rae: I write for myself.

Charlaine was asked about her characters being all shapes and sizes. She said that it was important to show all people.

Sarah was asked about Feyre and Aelin meeting. She thought that they would be like two cats meeting and would end as allies since they are both survivors and respectful of each other. Women should support women.

Rae was asked about any commonality between her first trilogy (The Girl of Fire and Thorns) and her new series (Walk on Earth a Stranger). They started as short stories.

Charlaine was asked about writing the supernatural. They are entertaining! The next two novels are mysteries.

Sarah was asked about her mega-verse. Parallel worlds, maybe the wryd gates allow travel between ACOTAR and ToG. Each series occurs at around the same time. ACOTAR occurs a couple months later. She spoke about coming back from darkness to get your happily ever after. Now what? Inspired by Hades and Persephone mythology and will be longer. She has secret Pinterest boards to help.

Rae was asked if she would write more in The Girl of Fire and Thorns world. Maybe but it would not follow Elisa and might be just for herself.

"How do you confront the fact that fantasy has been done?"

~Charlaine: I got there first!

~Rae: does not read YA while drafting

~Sarah: writing itself is very different than reading. She has very supportive friends and this is not a competition!

This panel was very empowering. At one point I was so moved that I teared up. After a few audience members asked a couple questions, I quietly and respectfully exited to run upstairs to the poster signing. I met a bunch more people from the BookCon App including Anna of Unquenchable Reads and Sydney in the line at Litographs. The line went quickly once we started and I was over the moon about the poster!

This was the end of my scheduled day and so I met up with Mom and unloaded my haul to her. She had attended the panel for Jodi Picoult and Samantha Van Leer and was done for the day. Luckily she headed back to the apartment before the sky opened up and we all received flash flood warnings on our cell phones. T.J. and I wandered around the showfloor and hit a couple booths that we missed earlier in the event. One must for me was the Scholastic booth where I took this pic:

truth

While we were there, the lovely staff handed us the Brian Selnick's ARC of The Marvels. It is HUGE and gloriously illustrated. They let us know that he was signing soon so we headed down to Queue Hall. While in that line I ran into Melissa from the BookCon App.

Once I got in front of Brian my brain kinda went everywhere... Judy Bloom was signing to my left:

David Levithan was signing to my right, and Nick Bruel had drawn Bad Kitty on the autographing table:

T.J. and I took one more round of the showfloor as they ripped up the carpet in hopes that I would find The Golden Compass graphic novel at Penguin (unsuccessfully) or any other treasure. I was sad to have the best book event of my life come to an end but after three days, my body was done.