Yay! I have finally found the chance to sit down and write out this post. So Kristen and I had been anticipating this trip to Massachusetts for the longest time. It was our first time to the festival and we didn’t know what to expect. But we were both excited to take a road trip and have an overnight event. We were both up by 3:30am that Saturday morning. I know, are we insane? Yes, we are. But it was a good drive and Kristen was such a trooper (she hates driving). We bopped to top 40 songs and watched the sun rise in the distance just before getting breakfast.
When we got over to the Cambridge Public Library (which is a beautiful building), we made our way to the Rindge and Latin School that was in the back where other book lovers had made their way to wait. Around 9:30 or so, we were allowed in and they gave us these cute goodie bags that had bookish merch inside! And since I’d donated money to the BTAfest kickstarter campaign, I got to pick up my two prints that were designed by insanely talented @ash-poston for GEEKERELLA and SIX OF CROWS and I was so pleased that both were framed!
We were guided to the auditorium where the 30+ authors were chatting on stage and I was awestruck because there were so many. When I was looking at the lineup online, it didn’t feel like it was that many, but when they were all up on that stage together, it was a different story. The moderator had them all talk about their books and asked them hilarious questions - one of which was to describe what superlative they would be under. Let me say, it was probably one of the funniest Q&As and obviously the biggest. I was surprised that they really went through all of them, but I’m so glad I to hear about some of them. They had to describe their books in a single-sentence elevator pitch and I found some books that I was really interested in reading.
After, we were invited to sit in on some panels. There were five panels between the two morning sessions that would be repeated in the afternoon in case we wanted to see more panels.
Kristen and I decided to go to the Out of Character panel that featured @lbardugo (WONDER WOMAN: WARBRINGER), Jason Reynolds (MILES MORALES), @kerrimaniscalco (HUNTING PRINCE DRACULA), and @ash-poston (GEEKERELLA). The subject centered around taking these well-established characters and what they become when they’ve been inserted in these new stories. We were both excited for it and let me tell you guys that the rapport between these four authors was fantastic. There was so much ease and humor that passed between them, but real grit conversation, especially when they addressed the need to write about interesting women in literature. I think my favorite part of the discussion was the face-off between Bardugo and Reynolds when it came to talking about their characters in the DC/Marvel universes.
I think it was in this panel that I realized how much of a personable and charismatic person and author Jason Reynolds is. It’s not easy to be on a panel of awesome, intelligent ladies and keep up with them, but I think Reynolds did a fabulous job and he was responsible for so many laughs. It made me want to read his books!
After that, we stayed in the same room for the next panel, Lens Crafters, which featured Cinda Williams Chima (SHADOWCASTER), @vaveyard (KING’S CAGE), @lisa-maxwell (THE LAST MAGICIAN), and @tarasimauthor (TIMEKEEPER). They talked about writing books with multiple POVs and how their books have evolved from fleshing out the characters this way.
We decided to leave early because we were rather paranoid about getting lunch and having enough time to come back to the signings that afternoon. Plus, there was very limited parking. Being completely foreign to the area, we didn’t want to chance driving anywhere and losing our parking space. And there was a limit on parking at the library of 2 hours, so we had to keep coming back to pay for the space as well. We knew that there was free parking at the high school, but we couldn’t really tell what was what! So we decided to play it safe.
We went back to the car to fix up our books so we had an efficient way of getting our books signed and we were off to lunch. We walked over to the Harvard Science Center where I’d been wanting to try a food truck nearby, Roxy’s Grilled Cheese. And can I say, it was delicious? If I worked or lived nearby, I would go back and get more. if you are ever in that area, please look up their schedule!
Oh, I did forget to mention that the festival was also holding a raffle. Our little welcome backs had a raffle ticket inside and Kristen won herself an arc of ZENITH from Sasha Alsberg and Lindsay Cummings. And another arc from Scholastic! WOO!
We went inside the high school and saw that a line had already formed to get into the cafe where all the signings were. We bumped in a few of our blogger friends while in line and chatted until we were let in! And to be honest, it was one of the smoothest signings I’ve actually been to - especially at that capacity of authors. I think it’s no surprise that Victoria Aveyard and Leigh Bardugo had the largest lines, but Kristen and I knew that we would breeze through those, despite having 4+ books for each of them. We’ve been through enough signings to know how to get through the lines.
And can I say, these two ladies just light up a room with their loveliness!
I will say that the one negative is that it was starting to get a little....humid in there. It was a small space for the amount of people there were, but everyone who was there was so courteous and patient. We were all there for the same reasons and I could tell everyone was excited to be there and to bond with other people waiting in line. I’d made acquaintances with a girl in Ashley Poston’s line who was so understanding when I wanted to go join shorter lines to get my books signed before jumping back.
A bit of advice for people who want to go to this sort of event and are looking to get lots of books signed:
Always aim to get the most popular authors signed first. Sure, you spend most of your time in that line (I spent a half an hour in Leigh’s line and nearly the same in Victoria’s, but the signing was two hours!).
If you have a lot of books to get signed by one person, be considerate to the people behind you. Do you really need all of your books personalized? I mean, what if one day you decide to pass them onto someone else? Otherwise, you don’t REALLY need them signed (although the workers there made it clear about the limits on personalization).
If you’re in a slow moving line and you see an author of yours has a smaller line, ask one of the other liners to see if you can quickly go get something signed and come back - everyone’s pretty courteous about it.
You really need at least one other person with you to come up with a game plan. I know it’s such a joy to meet authors, especially the ones that have written your favorite books. But if you have met the author before or you only have one or two books to sign, then you can divide your books up between the two (or more) of you so that you can get it all done. I’m pretty sure that Kristen and I had 20+ books between the two of us to get signed, but by half hour of, we got ALL of them signed. Sure, was a little sweaty, but was it worth it? OH YAS.
Thank you so much to @btafest for such a great event. I hope to return in the next onth for the Boston Author Festival! And come back next year.
