BEA 2009 Trip Report (part 4)

Click here to read parts one, two, and three.

Part Four: Saturday at BEA

Slept for three hours and then trotted back to NYC all bright eyed and bushy-tailed. Sort of.

Me after three hours sleep

I visited the Simon & Schuster booth first and then headed over with Justin Chanda (my publisher at S&S) to Holly Black, Cassie Clare, and Scott Westerfeld's Alternate History panel. While waiting for the panel to begin, we discussed the impracticality of Wonder Woman's invisible jet. I'm always bothered by the fact that the jet doesn't make her invisible, and Justin pointed out that the jet is never referred to as soundless. So you have this seated woman zipping through the air to the roar of a jet engine. Not so stealthy.

After the panel, I ran into Marie Rutkoski and Jennifer from the Grand Central Branch of the New York Public Library, who invited me to join them for lunch. Lunch plans expanded to include Ally Carter, Jen Barnes, and Sarah Cross, and then contracted again to just Marie, Jenny, and me, and then expanded again so that the final table was Marie, Jenny, Cassandra Clare, Josh Lewis, Theo Black, Delia Sherman, Ellen Kushner, Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, and me. It was a bit like musical lunch chairs. Everyone kept swapping seats. You never knew who you'd be seating beside next.

For the rest of the afternoon, I alternated between wandering the exhibit hall and hanging out in the S&S booth. I talked with a wide variety of people, from Scholastic's Arthur Levine, to a super-nice Massachusetts librarian who had witnessed my dismal Rock Star abilities at MLA the other weekend, to Olivia. (Olivia didn't talk much.)

Me & Olivia

In the evening, I went out to dinner with the fabulous Wendy Mass and Courtney Sheinmel at a fabulous Italian restaurant. I ordered two appetizers as my entree and worried a little that they'd think that was weird, but then Wendy ordered the same thing, proving herself a kindred spirit, and Courtney was later responsible for the chocolate souffle, proving herself a kindred spirit as well.

Me, Wendy Mass, Courtney Sheinmel, and chocolate souffle

After the souffle, Wendy and I bullied Courtney into agreeing to take a taxi rather than a subway to the YA/MG Drinks Night at a bar in Alphabet City (lower east side of Manhattan). (I'm a total subway coward. I thoroughly expect fights to rage over the roofs of the subway cars like in movies and monstrous worms/dragons to attempt to devour us.) After a stereotypically harrowing taxi ride, we were the first to arrive at the party.

Barry Lyga, Coe Booth, Michael Northrop, Courtney Sheinmel, me, Wendy Mass

We were later joined by Ally Carter, Jen Barnes, Bennett Madison, Megan Crewe, Lisa Greenwald, Tara Altebrando, Christopher Paolini, Eric Luper, G. Neri, Lynn Weingarten, Sarah Mylnowski, and many others.

I stayed as long as I could and then scooted out to catch the last train back to Long Island again. I was home by 2am.

And that, my friends, was BEA! I can't wait for next year!