Let me tell you about Book Expo America…which is to say, let me tell you about one of the most exciting 4 days of my life! Getting this memoir published has been an exciting ride with ups, downs, curves, and wildly exciting spins (I think that’s keeping the metaphor…hmmm…. anyway….). But the 4 days in New York was four days of E ticket rides (is everybody old enough to remember when Disneyland had A through E tickets? No? Okay, well….E tickets were for the best rides and you only got a few of them in your book of tickets so you had to choose wisely).
On our first day in, we met my literary agent, Sarah Jane Freymann:
Sarah Jane Freymann, Literary agent and Teresa Rhyne--Author!!
Sarah Jane was the quintessential literary agent: sophisticated, smart, lovely and with great ambitions for books (including mine!). We had a lovely lunch at Colicchio & Sons (yep, Tom Colicchio) and chatted about my book. She’s going to look to sell film rights!! (Fingers crossed!) Then we shared a cab over to the Javits Center which is where BEA takes place. Chris and I needed to pick up our tickets for BEA and Sarah Jane had a meeting, so that worked out well (sharing a cab is soooo NYC don’t you think?:-) ).
My marketing manager, Valerie Pierce, met Chris and I in the lobby and took us up to the Sourcebooks booth, which is where we saw this:
Heather Moore, Marketing Director; Teresa Rhyne, author; Chris Baurle, Director of Sales & Marketing; and Valerie Pierce, Marketing Manager. Love my Team!!
Okay, I know I showed you that before, but come on….look at that thing!!! I can tell you seeing that was one exciting moment. and I almost missed it! Valerie pointed to it but since I was just looking for, you know, a book sized book, my eyes focused on the actual books on the shelf below. It wasn’t until Chris said “It’s huge!” and I looked over at him and realized he was looking up. So I looked up and….Holy Crap!!! I almost teared up. I’m pretty sure I gasped. Folks, that’s not just my book up there, that’s my cancer conquering beagle up there!! (And isn’t he just so cute???!!). Great, great moment.
Then Valerie handed me this:
The Dog Lived (and So Will I) 2 page spread in Fall Catalog
The Fall catalog where The Dog Lived (and So Will I) has a two page feature and ME! Quite a photo spread huh? And what you can’t read in that photo is the media plan. So, ahem, allow me to share parts of that… “National Media Launch…Pre-publication Book Club campaign…Major trade and consumer advertising campaign..” Squeeeeeeeeee!!! And are you seeing those blurbs from Larry Levin (author of Oogy) and Sy Montgomery (author of The Good Good Pig)?? Yeah, still thinking it’s a dream. But it continued….
We had dinner with my agent Shana Drehs and Director of Marketing Heather Moore. Apparently we were having so much fun I actually forgot to take a photo!
Next morning I was up at 5:30a.m (um, 2:30 a.m. to my west coast body clock), so that I could catch a 7:30 shuttle to the Javits center to attend the Author’s Breakfast with:
Stephen Colbert at BEA 2012 Author Breakfast
Junot Diaz, Barbara Kingsolver, and Jo Nesbro at BEA 2012
So, so funny. All of them!! Stephen Colbert you expect that from, right? But Junot Diaz? Barbara Kingsolver? Yep, hilarious. My favorite line was Barbara Kingsolver’s when she talked about all the celebrity books out now and concluded that the profession least likely to get a book deal these days is “writer.” Funny, sad and true.
Chris joined me and we roamed around the huge, vast, ridiculously laid out, overwhelming Javits Center. We picked up a few book galleys (they’re free!)! But it’s quite difficult to arrange things to be in the right place at the right time to grab some of the more popular books–still, we made quite a haul over the two days we were there:
BEA 2012 Book Swag
Then, nerves on fire, I had to catch a cab across town to Manhattan Espresso to meet with…an editor from More magazine!! I was a nervous wreck–not about the interview, but about getting across town and being on time. I’m terrible with directions and everyone had me freaked out that it’s impossible to get across Manhattan in an hour, so I left super early…and was 45 minutes early to my appointment. Manhattan Espresso is about 12 feet by 12 feet…and that’s with the kitchen. There were 4 chairs. 4. Luckily I was able to stack out a spot. The interview went great though (or, at least I think). The editor seemed to genuinely love the book and had definitely read the whole thing (odd to get used to strangers knowing so much about my life!). So, expect to see me and Seamus in the October edition of More magazine!! Woo hoo!! I’m a subscriber, so I’m particularly excited about this. I think it’s an audience that will appreciate the book.
And yet there was more! (pun intended!!). I went back to the hotel, met Chris, changed into cocktail party attire and we whisked off to Hudson Terrace for the Sourcebooks 25th anniversary party! Look how much fun we had:
Me withe Dominique Raccah, Sourcebooks Publisher
Sarah Jane Freymann, Literary Agent; Shana Drehs, Editor; and Teresa Rhyne, author
rChis Kern, Teresa Rhyne and Kristi Yamaguchi at Sourcebooks 25th Anniversary party
And I met with an O magazine editor, a Barnes & Noble buyer, several other authors, sale people, wonderful Sourcebooks professionals and …well, so many people. It was a blast. (We stopped taking pictures when the crowd got there…we were busy!!)
We had a nice relaxing dinner at a vegan Korean restaurant (my new version of comfort food)
Tasty Vegan Dinner at Hangwai
and then went home to crash. Not that I slept well…my book signing was the following morning. And I’ll tell you about that in my next post. So. Much. Fun.
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