So…I’m back from BEA. Well, I’ve been back for a few days now, BUT I’m also in the middle of moving to a new house (we’ve moved back to the Los Angeles area!), so I haven’t had internet until…yesterday afternoon. Unpacking all of our stuff is devouring my soul (…seriously. How the hell did I acquire SO MUCH STUFF?!?!), AND I’m trying to recover from the awesomeness that is/was BEA.

I’ve been trying to think of how, exactly, I should sum up last week for you guys. Because it really was one of the best weeks of my life—and so many wonderful things happened that I don’t think I’ve processed it all (even a week later). So, warning: this post is SUPER LONG and mostly full of spazzing.

On Monday, I spent the day at the Bloomsbury office, and pretty much died from Awesome Overload. I filmed my Author Video, which I’m fairly certain is just a giant blooper reel of me a) giggling b) swearing c) making weird noises/faces or d) all of the above.

Everyone I met was so incredibly kind and welcoming, and it was just so, so wonderful to finally meet the people who made my dream of being a published author come true, and who have worked so hard on this book. And just in case you somehow don’t believe me about how truly amazing the Bloomsbury people are, look at what they ordered for the party they threw for me/THRONE OF GLASS:

Monday night, I went out to dinner with Courtney Allison Moulton (author of ANGELFIRE), Leah Clifford (author of A TOUCH MORTAL), Aimée Carter (author of THE GODDESS TEST), Scott Tracey (author of WITCH EYES), Sarah Reck, and Aimée’s lovely editor at Harlequin Teen. I’m pretty atrocious when it comes to remembering to take pictures, BUT Aimée managed to snag this photo of me and Courtney as proof that the amazing dinner actually happened (seriously, my stomach hurt from laughing so much):


Tuesday was the first day at BEA, and it was…overwhelming. In some ways, BEA was what I expected, but it was also WAY bigger than I realized it’d be. I spent the day wandering with author-friends (…waiting in a LOT of signing lines), and got to see Aimée be a total superstar at her signing:


That afternoon, I had the Apocalypsies Meet & Greet, which was awesome-awesome-awesome. I met so many lovely people (and bloggers! I love you guys so much.), including a long-time FictionPress fan who was just…the sweetest. I may or may not have teared up while thanking her for sticking with TOG for so many years (and hopefully she didn’t think I was a total psycho for it).

After the Meet & Greet, I was whisked away to the Bloomsbury bookseller dinner, where I met Shannon Hale. Yep. I MET SHANNON-FREAKING-HALE, author of so many incredible books that I can’t even begin to name them all.

My introduction to her went something like this (this all took place while we were standing in the Javits, about to leave for the dinner):

Awesome Bloomsbury Editorial Director: Oh! Sarah, have you met Shannon?

(seriously, she said this as if this wasn’t the BIGGEST EFFING DEAL EVER)

Me: (*slowly turning to look*) ….Not yet… (*sees Shannon*) …. (....*dies*)

After that, I went into Awesome Overload Mode and I don’t remember much of what came out of my mouth. But I think it was something like: “ILoveYourBooksYouAreAmazingOMGYou’reShannonHaleOMGWahhhhShannonHaleWahhhh.” AKA: Actual fangirl word-vomit. If I could have gotten away with it, I would have flailed through the entire Javits center.

Oh! And did I mention we were taken to our bookseller dinner in a LIMO? Yep. If I wasn’t already flipping out about meeting Shannon (who is one of the coolest, nicest, and most down-to-earth people I’ve ever met, as evidenced by the photo below), the limo just about did me in.


The bookseller dinner was fab-fab-fab—I feel like I must sound like a broken record, but I was just continually blown away by how kind, smart, and wonderful everyone is. (And the food!!! THE FOOOOOOD. Gahhh.)

Wednesday. Oh, Wednesday. How to describe the insanity and gloriousness of Wednesday? I was up at 4:45 AM that day, and got to the Javits bright and early to attend the BEA Author Breakfast (John Green was absolutely hilarious and Lois Lowry had the entire freaking room in tears). And immediately after the breakfast, I was herded to the green room in the autographing area to await my signing.

While in the green room, I started getting tweets that the line for my signing was crazy. So crazy, actually, that we wound up starting my signing early. And, of course, as if I’m not overwhelmed enough at that point, as I’m walking from the green room to the autographing area, WHO SHOULD WALK IN but JOHN GREEN.

Courtney was across the room and I actually did this crazy person flail to her while John’s back was turned.

And then…the signing.

How can I sum up the signing? It was one of the best experiences of my life. Whatever nerves I felt were replaced by pure adrenaline, and it was so, so, so fabulous to meet so many people…and to SIGN MY BOOKS for them. I honestly just had to maintain a go-go-go mentality while doing it, because if I had paused to take it all in, I would have broken down with utterly hysterical tears of joy.

After the signing, I had to run back to the Bloomsbury booth to film a video interview with two lovely ladies from Justine Magazine. Thanks to adrenaline and Awesome Overload, I remember very little of the filming, other than the fact that I had a great time, and the interviewers were so fashionable (seriously, they oozed cool).

And then…then I walked around with  Kat Zhang  (author of WHAT’S LEFT OF ME) and Meagan Spooner (author of SKYLARK), until both Kat and Meg had their BEA Buzz panel (they are both so well-spoken that I could gleefully kill them). And then I ran home and CRASHED for a few hours, until I met Kat for dinner (…at Chipotle. Which I totally eat once a week and was craving like crazy.), and then we went to the Rooftop YA Blogger party.

Holy crap, this party. First of all, it was on this rooftop terrace with 360 degree views of downtown NY. And then the PEOPLE at this party. Oh, I had such a good time, and got to talk to so many fun, brilliant, and welcoming bloggers. I never wanted the party to end!


And then…Thursday. Thursday was my day to be a total fangirl. Because it was the last day of BEA, it was a lot calmer at the Javits, and because I didn’t have any TOG-related events, I had the time to walk around the various publishers’ booths and snag galleys (and talk to their wonderful employees). I got a massive, massive haul on Thursday (all the books I’d missed during the week), AND I got to attend Alex’s signing for THE DARKEST MINDS (Kat and I showed up SUPER early so we could be the first in line!), and Meg’s signing for SKYLARK!



And then I had lunch with Kat and Alex, where I HAD to do this:


That night, I went out to dinner with some of my fellow Pub Crawl ladies (JJ, Kat, Julie, and Sammy), and I’m pretty sure I burned all of the calories from our delicious Thai dinner just by laughing the whole time.

There were dozens of other moments and awesome things that I can’t fit into this post (I could write a whole series of posts on all things BEA), but…in short, it was beyond fantastic.

And even though this post is already super-long, I just want to thank everyone at Bloomsbury for making this week so incredible that I kept wondering if I was dreaming. Thank you to everyone who came to my signing—I can’t even begin to describe how much it means to me that you waited in that long line. Thank you to all of the bloggers who made me feel so welcome (and special). I had such a blast meeting you all. And thank you to all of my readers from FictionPress--not an hour went by at BEA when I didn't remember that the sole reason I was even attending BEA was because of YOU and all that you have done for me and THRONE OF GLASS.

So, to reward you for reading this massive post, AND because a lot of you couldn’t make it to BEA (or if you were there, galleys of TOG went fairly quickly (side note #2: when I saw this article, I totally flipped) ), I figure I should do another giveaway of one of my THRONE OF GLASS galleys!!

Rafflecopter won’t work for LJ, so all you have to do to enter to win is leave a comment here (make sure to include your name!). Comment on anything you want: BEA, good books you’ve recently read, good movies, the weather, how hot Sam Worthington is, your favorite nail polish, etc.. ;)

The giveaway is open internationally and ends next Wednesday (June 20th)!

ALSO! I just found out (minutes ago) that French rights to THRONE OF GLASS just sold to Editions du Seuil! WOOOOOOT!!! (An even better reason to have an international giveaway, since TOG has now been sold in 8 languages!)