BEA 2009 Report

Okay, I've been putting this off because it seems so daunting to sum up such a flurry of events as I experienced over the last several days. But I want to and have to, so here we go.

First off, let me just say this: everything was awesome. Incredibly awesome. And to avoid using the word awesome forty million times, please just assume that everything I tell you about was indeed awesome. Are we good on that? Good. Let's go back to where I last left you, after my incredible visit to the Random House offices and dinner last Tuesday.

Deep breath. And... go.

Wednesday:

Met my publicists Noreen and Emily at this cool dude named Mitchell's quaint house in the East Village to film video bits for online promotions with all the major retailers. Ya know, the whole mock interview thing. We also took a bunch of author photos. I'm almost certain I was an idiot and I can only hope Mitchell does some ingenious editing.

Emily then took me to brunch at this sweet place called Norma's. They had a menu item for $1,000 dollars that dared you to expense it. I thought that was quite hilarious. Had a great time getting to know Emily and asking her a gazillion questions. Good times and good food.

Spent the rest of the day relaxing, working, and gearing up for BEA.

In the evening, I met my friend Brandon Mull (FABLEHAVEN), his wife Mary, and Jennifer Schoebinger for dinner at a little jazz restaurant called The Garage. Good times and good food.

Thursday:

8:00 - BEA kicks off with the annual children's breakfast. Julie Andrews (yes, that Julie Andrews) hosted, Peter Yarrow (yes, that Peter from Peter Paul and Mary) sang a few songs, and a few authors spoke. Most memorable was Meg Cabot, who is freaking hilarious.

11:00 - My signing of THE MAZE RUNNER at the Random House booth, Noreen helping me. I have no idea how many books I signed, but we went steady and fast for the entire hour and had to do some on the side afterward.

Right after, I got to meet Libba Bray!!!!!

12:15 - Had lunch with my agent Michael, my editor Krista, and Lauren Abramo (foreign rights agent for Dystel & Goderich, my agency). Good times and crappy food (slim pickins at the Javits Center).

2:00 - BEA Young Adult Buzz Forum. Krista did an AMAZING job presenting her thoughts on MAZE to the audience. The room was large and packed, standing room only. Word on the street is that we had way more people show up than they did for the adult buzz forum. boo yah.

If you missed it in my last post, the best way to recap this event is for you to read the article in Publisher's Weekly: CLICK HERE.

3:30 - Meeting with RH folks and a representative from Levy's, the group that distributes books to places like grocery stores, Target, KMart, Walmart, etc. Her name was Laura, and she loves my book! What a great person to have on my side. She kept apologizing for gushing, and I kept asking her to please gush some more. Something was said about me signing 2,000 books for her company when I'm in Chicago this fall for the release tour. Yeah, that'd be pretty awesome.

5:00 - Noreen, Krista, Emily, and I head over to Brooklyn for the ABC (not quite a) Dinner and Silent Auction. That's not my description - that's what it was actually called. It consisted of a cocktail party, a program, then an auction of tons of original illustrations from children's books. Katherine Paterson (BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA) was one of the speakers.

My friend Shannon Hale hosted, and she was incredible. In fact, instead of rehashing everything, I'm going to link you over to her blog where she gave a great recap: CLICK HERE.

One really cool thing about this event: one of the three featured drinks at the bar was called "The Maze Runner." I really want to slap myself silly for not getting a picture of the sign for it!!! The other cool thing was that I totally got to hang with lots of RH people and other authors.

Afterward I went back to the hotel and went to bed, utterly drained and exhausted. And happy.

Lord have mercy this is a boring post. Too much info and too little time!

Saturday:

10:00 am - Signing of THE 13TH REALITY at the Shadow Mountain booth. We had 200 books, and signed all of them. Went really, really well.

11:30 - Lunch with Michael and my very good friend, Sara Zarr (SWEETHEARTS, STORY OF A GIRL, upcoming ONCE WAS LOST). Good times and not-so-crappy food.

2:00 - Author panel from the YA Buzz Forum. This is where the six authors from yesterday's forum got a chance to speak out. David hosted once again. It was short and sweet, with each of us reading the opening passage from the book then answering a few questions. Not sure where I rated on the idiot scale, but I think it went okay. I did try to make a couple of jokes, and I'm pretty sure no one laughed.

3:00 - Michael and I finally got to walk the showroom floor, visiting all the publisher booths. Way fun.

5:30 - The Simon & Schuster cocktail party for Simon Pulse and Aladdin authors. I was there for four hours and it was way awesome. (oopsie daisy, there I went and used that word again.) I had so much fun and felt so much love. Wonderful editors, marketers, publishers, and authors. Thanks for making me feel so welcome and part of the family! Good times and good food.

OK, this is where new people to The Dashner Dude might get confused. MAZE is being published by Random House under the Delacorte imprint. 13TH REALITY is published by Shadow Mountain in hardcover, S&S (Aladdin) in paperback (1st one coming this Christmas). So I'm currently working with three different publishers.

If I'm totally honest, this is proving to be hard for me. I have this neurotic worry that someone will think I'm cheating on them or don't love them as much as someone else. Or that someone will dump me because I won't commit my whole publishing life to them.

I've been assured by my agent and every other person involved that to worry about such a thing is complete nonsense. Do you think I'll stop? Of course not! Because I'm insane.

(I would be ungrateful, however, if I didn't pause here to say that at this point, Random House has made the largest financial and personnel and marketing and everything else commitment to me BY FAR, and for that I'm a very thankful and humbled dude. And I just think they deserve that little shout out. I hope no one else is offended.)

Whew. Luckily this post is like forty thousand words by now, so no one probably read this far anyway! See how smart and clever I am? Quite brilliant, really.

Okay, almost over. Didn't do much Sunday morning because my brain had imploded from glee. But the flight home was the fastest five hours of my life. Why? I sat between my very good friends Brandon Mull and Brandon Sanderson (after some very clever seat maneuvering), both of whom just signed seven figure deals, and we talked our biz the entire time. I loved every single minute of it.

WOW. BEA. What a thing it was.

But after all that, you know what I can honestly say was THE highlight? Getting to know Michael and Krista in person and hanging out with them. Seriously. To have such amazingly promising professional relationships, and yet feel like we've been friends for a thousand years?

THAT's what I call priceless.