NYC Book Crazy

Six or eight months ago, my friend Michele pinged me and said, “Hey, the rest of us are all going to the Backspace conference in New York, so you have to go too.”

And I said, “Well, if I have to, I have to,” and I began making plans to head out to New York. (It turned out that Michele had said the same things to the others, so we all made our plans under false pretenses. Ah well.) The first thing I had to do, of course, was figure out how Darin would take care of the kids while I was away. Muahahahaha. That part was fun.

I arrived in New York and settled in to the van of one of the craziest shuttle drivers I’ve had the, um, privilege of driving with. The woman next to me and I joked about our last days on Earth, and I managed to scrounge up a seat belt because, as I put it, “If he slams on the brakes, I’m straight through the front window.” I finally got to the hotel a good two and a half hours after landing, where I met up with Michele and we squee-ed like little girls. We had dinner, then went back to the room.

“We’re in New York. We should really go out somewhere.”

She said, “Yeah, we really should.”

So, off we went to the subway, down to Times Square —

(Holy Mother of Zeus, there’s a Toys R Us in Times Square now. Wow. So now where do I have to go for hookers? Brooklyn? Yonkers?)

— and thence to the Algonquin, where the get-together cocktail party for Backspace attendees was being held. The wonderful and warm Karen Dionne welcomed us, although we’d missed most of the party and neither of us was particularly interested in drinking at that moment. So after introductions and a little chat, Michele and I headed back uptown to our hotel, where we tried to crash.

The first day of the conference Tamar arrived, and since I haven’t seen her in two years we squee-ed like little girls. The conference sessions were for the most part good, although the Algonquin is not my idea of a good time — we were all under strict orders not to bring in any outside food, because if the Algonquin staff found one rogue Starbucks cup, BAM! The conference organizers were going to get hit with a massive fine. And hello: I was still on California time.

After the conference, Tamar, Michele, and I headed immediately back to the hotel, where Toni was waiting for us, having just flown in from Louisiana (and boy, were her arms tired). We picked up some food at Zabar’s and H&H Bagels, and then settled into the living room of the hotel suite to have a picnic and catch up. Tamar had to take off at about nine to head home. At which point Michele, Toni, and I said, “You know, we’re in New York. We should really go out.” So we headed out to Barnes & Noble, where I made Toni sign her books, and then it was off to Cafe Lalo, which is a great dessert cafe (whose claim to fame was that it was featured in You’ve Got Mail).

On Friday it was back to the conference (and the inhalation of a coffee and muffin before setting foot in the Algonquin). We cut out of the conference a little early, because we had important things on our agenda: 1) checking out the New York Apple Store (okay, this may have been primary on my agenda) and 2) getting a personal tour of the offices, stages, and studios of NBC News, the Olympics, and Saturday Night Live. from a friend of Michele’s. (Michele knows everyone. You know Michele. You do. Check your Rolodex.)

Saturday we headed off en masse to Book Expo America, the trade show for publishers, in which everyone gets together to advertise their wares and schmooze and do whatever the hell it is publishers and booksellers and distributors do when they get together.

You know the saying “Kid in a candy store”? Well, despite my love of sugar I’m not that fond of candy stores — my passions are ice cream and cake, in that order, and even I can only eat so much of either. I have no such limitations when it comes to books. “Kid in a book store” is much more my speed.

“Kid at BEA Convention” is the ultimate expression of this.

Two floors filled with publishers hawking their wares. Giant piles of ARCs for the taking! Flyers and posters and authors autographing!

I actually couldn’t figure out how I was going to get in. I was going to buy a badge, but being neither author nor publisher nor distributor nor bookseller nor dyed-in-the-wool schmoozer I wasn’t qualified to get in. However, over the past year or so Tamar has become friends with the beautiful and talented Alaya Dawn Johnson, who very kindly offered Tamar a pass to BEA and then came up with another one when Tamar said her friend Diane needed one too. (Michele had a friend who got her one, and Toni was a featured guest of St Martin’s Press, so they were taken care of.)

The biggest “Whoa!” moment for me was when we passed a gigantic line for one of the autograph tables, much, much longer than the given aisle for it. The line snaked down through an aisle filled with publishers, impeding the flow of traffic. I stopped one of the people in line and asked who she was waiting for.

“Patterson,” she said.

I blinked.

It took me a second to realize that she meant James Patterson. (Sadly, no relation. If he were a relation, I would be blogging this from my penthouse atop Notre Dame Cathedral, believe you me.) But I think I may have imprinted upon this experience. Talk about something to shoot for.

I shipped home 48 pounds of books, some probably good, some I already suspect are bad, the rest complete unknowns. The shippers knew they had a captive audience and raped and pillaged accordingly: $35 per box plus the cost of shipping. But I certainly wasn’t lugging home that many books, nor was I going to sort through them right then.

When Toni, Tamar, and I fell out of Javits Center, there was not a cab to be had for blocks. (No idea what happened to Michele, but I suspect she was meeting the last people in America she wasn’t friends with yet.) We kept walking and kept finding pockets of people desperately hailing cabs that were nowhere to be seen. We crawled back to the hotel room, sadly lacking in the fixings for margaritas but intensely pleased with how much fun this little vacation was.

If I can figure out some way for Darin to take care of the kids, I am so all over doing this again next year.