Flo Does BEA 2014!

The Book Nerds are back from BEA 2014! Now that we've had some adequate time to recover and rest our feet, let's dish! I (Flo) will share my adventures here, and you can read about Jacque's in the next post.

Thursday

I flew in Thursday morning and headed straight to the Javits. Did not pass Go, did not collect $200, just straight to the show! I really wanted to be there for this:

Success!

Here's Rainbow signing

Now that I had that, I was free to pursue the rest of my schedule. Unfortunately, Jacque ran into some flight trouble (which she will tell you about I'm sure), so I made sure to pick up one of her "must have" books of the day:

Jacque finally made it around 2:30 -- yay! We both had a successful day one and ran to our hotel to quickly change for the Kensington rooftop party. We were hoping to see our favorite Kensington author Marni Bates there, but she wasn't at BEA. She did, however, cheer us on from the other side of the country via Twitter:

After that was dinner in Times Square and then to bed! A busy Day 2 awaited us. 

Oh wait! How did I forget meeting Nicky Hilton:

Friday

What a busy and great day! My (Flo's) biggest achievement was probably getting the famous Heir of Fire ARC:

Two hours later, here's Sarah J. Mass! She signs my book next :)

I think my days are running together a bit, but I believe it was Friday when we met the super sweet -- and sadly injured! -- Rebecca Serle:

I'm look forward to reading Famous in Love

We also met the super sweet A.G. Howard and got Unhinged:

After running around all day Friday, we had dinner at a beautiful pizza restaurant in Times Square that used to be a church! Check out this ceiling:

Once again, we chose to go to bed early so we could rest our tired feet, aching shoulders, and be prepared for BookCon!

Saturday

BookCon! Yay for soo many people loving books! We spent most of this day in lines...and it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. I met Ann M. Martin, you guys!! The Babysitters Club were my absolute favorite books and my 9 year old self was freaking out:

And then to follow that up, I met another favorite childhood author -- R.L. Stein! He was incredibly nice:

Look how giddy I look! 

I picked up a few more books after that and then met up with my friend Ellie, who is on staff with me at Down With the Capitol. CLEARLY we had to do the Hunger Games trivia. And CLEARLY we had to win. 

...hey, guess what?! We won!

My fellow Amity Hufflepuff!

CLEARLY the day could not get any more awesome after that, so we headed back to our hotel to chill for a bit before flying out that night. And guess who was on my flight back home? Michelle Madow:

My "I slept the whole flight" hair isn't even that bad!

Whew! BEA was a Whirlwind of Awesome. So many great authors. Soo many great books! My 9 year old booknerd self loved it just as much as my {current age} self. (Nice try! You're not getting that info ;-p) And I had so much fun seeing Ellie and Jacque. Finally, here's the total haul:

"I've decided you need more books!" --My boyfriend.