On Thursday I decided to go back to BEA because there was a few author signings I wanted to go to and to do more walking around since the day before I tended to focus on the author signings and nothing else.

Here are three of the author signings I was excited to get to do:
Clinton Kelly. I love watching What Not To Wear so it was super nice to meet him. He is a super sweet guy.

Melissa Anderson. When I heard she was going to be there I had to make sure to get in line to get a book signed. I recently found out that she is living in Montreal now.

Mick Foley. I use to work with a guy who was a super wrestling fan and he would always talk about it when we worked together. So I had to go and meet the guy I heard so much about. It was funny because Avis and I were standing in line for another author and Mick and his publicist were leaving and I pointed him out to Avis and his publicist ran over with a book because she saw me point him out.

Thursday was also the Book Blogger Convention Reception. I decided a few weeks before BEA that I wanted to go and it was there that I got to meet several book bloggers. Check back later this week when I highlight the book bloggers that I met.

I have to say apart from meeting those authors today the highlight of the day was finally getting to sit down and have dinner with Kathy. I have been holding on to the pictures of Kathy until now. We met at the Zen Palate. After dinner we (Avis. Linda, Kathy and myself) decided to go to Time Square for a hot chocolate at Starbucks.

Before we got anywhere I had to get some pictures.
As I went to get a picture with kathy we had to snap this because she said she knew I was short but I guess she wanted to prove how short I am LOL
This is Kathy and I with Time’s Square behind us.

While in Time’s Square we bumped into Pam. For some reason I have no idea why I didn’t think to get a picture with Pam, sorry about that Pam but I did get this one of Pam with the grumpy cop as we so nicknamed him.

I guess us book bloggers looked pretty scary to him.

Then my final picture of the evening was with the US Marine Corp. I have no idea who these guys are but they were super sweet to pose for a picture and it was nice to talk to them briefly and to express my heartful appreciation for what they are doing.

Wednesday was the day that the Exhibit floor officially opened to the public. I was super excited because I was taking part in the Children’s Book & Author Breakfast.

The Master of Ceremonies was Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York. She briefly made a few jokes about what was happening to her outside of BEA, getting to BEA (she encountered a few people in her way) and using some of the titles of her newest books Helping Hands series- Don’t talk to strangers etc about her situation.

She introduced Cory Doctorow, Mitali Perkins and Richard Peck. The each spoke briefly about their books.

I am sure Cory had a few people in tears during his speech because he got emotional talking about his book. Mitali’s talk was beautiful. She spoke about her book Bamboo People and that books can either be a mirror (in which you can see yourself/situation in) or a window (in another world, time or place other then now). Richard had the whole crowd laughing. He was a fantastic speaker.
These are the books I picked up at the breakfast:
-Emily’s First Day of School by Sarah Ferguson
-Bamboo People by Mitali Perkins
-Three Quarters Dead by Richard Peck
-For The Win by Cory Doctorow (not pictured)

During the Children’s Book & Author Breakfast I sat with Kathy-Bermudaonion, Julie-Booking Mama, Alea-Pop Culture Junkie, Gail-Ticket To Anywhere and Shanya-Chick Loves Lit.

After the breakfast I said a quick hi to Natasha-Maw Books and Amy-My Friend Amy before I quickly ran off, I wanted to get to the Sourcebooks booth because I really wanted to get a copy of The Days of Our Lives book signed.

I knew Ken Corday was going to be there and only found out the night before that Kristian Alfonso was going to be there signing too. She was super sweet and so friendly. It was so nice to get to talk to her briefly about the Hope storyline.

The next signing I had to quickly get to was the Rick Springfield one. This was one super long line but it went really quickly.

Rick was super nice. He gave one of the best hugs. We got to briefly speak about his upcoming tour and his stop in Montreal. I am anxiously awaiting for his book to come out this fall.

After I got my cd promo signed (its full of his hit songs) I looked around for a bit but didn’t want to go to far because I was going to be meeting up with Paul from Sourcebooks and some bloggers.

I briefly got to speak with Paul in the morning and was really looking forward to going back to the booth to hear about the fall books. I have to say there is alot of great YA books coming out this fall.

A pleasant surprise was seeing Helen Ellis the author of The Turning there. She is so friendly and sweet. Dying to read her book now.

In the booth listening was several bloggers: Kathy, Julie (here is a picture of Julie and I) Avis, Donna, Linda and Pam-Bookalicio.us.

(This is where I wish I had taken more pictures. Oh well there is always next year.)

After Sourcebooks I decided that I wanted to look around before doing any more author signings.

On my journey around the booths I remembered that Ethan Zohn (He was on Survivor Africa, the third season and was the winner.) was signing his book Soccer World Africa. I unfortunately missed out on the book as he had no copies left when I got there. I did get the chance to speak with him about me being a Survivor fan, etc and I graciously asked if I could get a picture with him and promised that I would return the next day to get his other book signed Soccer World Mexico. (Which I did do.)

Check back later on today when I do a OTDLW post about my night in NYC.