BEA 2011: Monday

Okay, Reader. This is when I wish I had taken notes on BEA so I could remember everything I wanted to tell you about. Let's start at the beginning. I arrived at the Javits Center on Monday to help set up, which I've never done before. It looked like this:

The booth for Candlewick Press with Scholastic in the distance.

Here is the Midpoint Trade Books booth, still a work in progress. This is where I work during BEA running the author signings for a variety of small publishers. The books for the various signings didn't arrive until late in the day so Monday involved a lot of sitting around and waiting with our fingers crossed.

As you can see, things weren't quite ready on Monday.

BEA doesn't come alive until the floor opens on Tuesday. That's when the Javits Center is flooded with readers, writers, and industry professionals whose life work is making books. I think that's why I was slightly unimpressed on Monday.

After work, I met up with my friend Juliet and her coworker Ailen (who shares my love of Kenshin and Fullmetal Alchemist!!). It's so thrilling to be surrounded by people who talk books all day long. Then we went back to Juliet's apartment to await the arrival of one of her authors Cara Black.

Cara writes the Aimée Leduc mystery series, which is set in Paris. Essentially I had a sleepover with a senior editor and a successful mystery writer (one of these things is not like the other...).

I can't speak to Cara's writing--yet, but I will soon! I got a signed ARC of her latest book MURDER AT THE LANTERNE ROUGE. I even got to cut the signing line to get it so I could rush back to my own booth (thank you kind signing line people!!)The book doesn't come out until March 2012. That plus the fact that I was temporarily Cara's roommate makes me feel very fancy, I must say.So, once I read the book, I will review it. Until then, I can only say that Cara is incredibly lovely, an instantly likable person. She's the kind of person who makes friends with all sorts of people, who then show her all sorts of things in Paris that a regular person will never see. And of course these amazing adventures turn up in her books. To get an insight into her charming personality, listen to her NPR interview from 2009.

Cara arrive sometime around midnight, wearing all black and looking chic. Juliet and I were already in our pjs. The three of us went to bed, and they fell asleep while I stared up at the ceiling and wondered what Tuesday would bring...

Tuesday Preview: It involves some serious book pimping, Rosemary Wells, and a fancy publishing party!