Heather Allen

This week was packed and I loved every minute of it!

On Memorial Day my friends and I took the train 45 minutes north to Sleepy Hollow, the setting of the infamous Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving. We are a bunch of book nerds, so it was worth the trip. When we got off the train we walked through Tarrytown Main St. and up to Patriot’s Park where we had a very nice picnic. Then we trekked 2 miles or so to The Old Dutch Church and Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where we visited Washington Irving’s grave. It was a beautiful day and taking a break in the cemetery was surprisingly not strange at all.

Hanging out in the Sleepy Hollow Cemetery #legendofsleepyhollow #hudsonriver

A photo posted by Heather Allen (@hahanella) on May 25, 2015 at 2:44pm PDT

The town has embraced the story and the author and there were plenty of homages to him and the legendary figure of the headless horseman. Since we were there during the summer there weren’t any events specifically for Sleepy Hollow so we’ll have to return in the fall for the Haunted Cemetery Tour and other spooky happenings around the town.

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I worked two days this week then took off Thursday and Friday to volunteer at Book Expo America (BEA). I was assigned to work in the Autographing Area, where we were charged with managing the lines for author signings. It was an interesting job. The first day was just trying to understand what was going on (got yelled at by an old grouchy man for not moving the queue of people properly–“I need to speak to your supervisor,” which he never did haha). Later in the day, Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor, the creators of the Podcast Welcome to Nightvale, were signing their book and I hopped into their line at the last minute to get a signed copy! It was great because the marketing person and the authors remembered me from the time I stopped them in the hall at work! The last hour of the show volunteers we were allowed to walk the show floor and grab some books, which I took full advantage of.

After BEA I went to the Young to Publishing event, BEA on a Boat at Frying Pan at Pier 66. It’s a wobbly dock-like restaurant/bar where we could mingle with other publishing people who were at BEA. I am not very good at networking so I met my friend, ended up talking to some nice people, but ultimately left early because I was exhausted from standing on my feet all day!

The next day, Friday, I was still in the Autographing Area, but this time the lines were much longer, but somehow it was much easier to manage them. I was able to talk with some of the people in line, spoke with R.L. Stein briefly (!), and got a Fall With Me signed by Jennifer Armentrout! Overall the day went by much faster and I had much more success than the previous day. My end of the day haul was much better than Thursday’s because I found out that we could raid the behind the curtain area where they kept the books that were supposed to be signed! I made out like a bandit with a bunch of YA and other books.

This experience was different than the past two years because I actually had responsibilities rather than the freedom to roam around and collect books. And because of that I picked books selectively and only enough that I could carry home. I’m glad I did because now I have a better chance of reading them! One thing that I was disappointed with was that the BEA pass couldn’t be used for BookCon, like they did last year. I always look forward to BEA and I hope that I can go next year when it’s in Chicago! If you are interested, over on 80 Books Blog, we also did a write up of BEA that you should definitely check out!