Laurel Snyder

There is absolutely no way for me to tell you *all* about BEA. It was completely overwhelming and exciting and I got lost, and didn’t sleep a wink (okay, I left like, 17 winks). I know I will leave out a LOT of important stuff. But in brief…

I got to spend lots of time with my Tricycle crew. Laura and Nicole are the BEST. Ladies I’d want for my family, or my friends (and it kind of feels like they are now, both of those things).  Friday night they took me to this silent auction full of incredible artwork by many of my very favorite illustrators. And the shindig was all snack foods (never seen a mashed potato bar before?) and vino, and then  after the mashed potatos disappeared, we went into a ballroom, where they awarded the EB White awards, and Nikki Giovanni spoke and was inspiring, and (for those of you who care, though I found this part to be silly) they “unveleiled” the new Stephanie Meyer cover and a trailer for her movie, which looked uber-dumb. 

And then on Saturday they took me to the event I’d come to LA for– speed dating. And that was crazy. I was in the green room and just kept tripping over my tongue because I was surrounded by the likes of David Shannon and Jane Yolen and Polly Horvath and… and… and… then we went out and “dated” and it was not easy, but it was a kind of adrenalin rush, and I basically just showed each table of bookstore people my book, and told them about how I written it in Iowa, while working in a diner, and about how it isn’t really *that* sinister… and everyone was very nice, but it was kind of a blur and then the bell would ring and I’d hop up and move on to the next table of people… and finally it was over and I cuold breathe again.

And then they took me to eat very very spicy Mexican food. Yum!

Then, that night, the wonderful Tricycle people had a party at a FABULOUS place called Zucca, with a little tiny creek in a culvert (that I kept jumping over after I had a few of the fresh blueberry mojitos) and that was a ball.  The hilarious Dave, of Little Shop of Stories wonderfullness turned up, and my equally-funny sales rep (from here in Decatur) and he hatched a plan to do a launch for my book at Crescent Moon, a retro-diner here in Georiga. How cool is THAT!?

And after that, since I was around the corner, I joined the irrestiblie Richard Nash, who is one of my very favorite humans (and a new papa too) as well as being my publisher at Soft Skull. He was hanging out in a kind of walled garden in a courtyard behind the Hotel Figueroa, which may be one of the most beautiful hotels I’ve ever seen, all Moroccan tile and swimming pools. The bathrooms smelled like cloves.   

And I made new friends there, and so we all (strangers, all of us) hopped into the car of a particularly awesome new friend (Hi, Jim!) and sped off to the El Rey, for a PARTAY!  A partay the likes of which stay-at-home-mommies like me rarely see.  I will leave out the embarassing details of my flailing and screaming and fun….

But I will tell you that the evening ended at 2 am (which was 5 am to me) at an IHOP, with a pattie melt, and the illustrious Tom Bell and the delightful Jamie Allen and my partner-in-crime Marc Fitten, and some other people who were awesome but I was too far gone–more tired than drunk– to remember their names (forgive me?)

 And I met so many other great folks too. Vicki Arkoff and Heidi Estrin and Susan Weis and Donna Freitas and Elizabeth Devereaux especially.  And I got to see other friends.  Summer Laurie and Peter Manseau and Antoine Wilson and Karri Boyle and Jennifer Laughren and David Sarno, and my aunt Christine, and Daren Wang, however briefly. 

And I absolutely stuck my foot in my mouth a number of times.  Little stumbles, including the moment when I told David Shannon that my son loves his book “Angus” (when I meant “Fergus”) and also a particular stumble one might call a “cock block” (for which I alpologize to a friend and hope he will forgive, and that he was able to undo my wickedness) and also telling another friend I’d bought his book in hardback when it never actually came out in hardback (and for that I should explain that I *did* buy the book. I actually bought several, as gifts. But my ignorance shows I never read it, and for that I feel bad.  I just haven’t had time to read much this year. Sigh.)

The hardest part was NOT getting to do everything I think.  My cousin Ann was there, and we never managed to find each other.  That’s sad. And Slash (G&R Slash) was there and he didn’t even *call* me!  And Prince (or the artist formerly known as a symbol or whatev) hosted a party I didn’t get an invite to, if you can believe that. And  I wanted to pick up more books and I wanted to soend more time with so many people…

 But mostly, I felt like Cinderella at the ball.

And then I came back and was VERY happy to see my little cinders.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 2nd, 2008 at 9:21 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.