BEA '09 - blessings and disappointments

Let me start with two huge, personal disappointments connected to my BEA experience. I planned on going to BEA two days in a row, Friday and Saturday. As it turned out, I only managed to go on Friday. Here’s why: being a mom of a ten-year-old, I always have to plan things around her. All the moms reading it will understand the mundane reality. This was mine. I could not take her with me and I also could not very well leave her with just anybody. Due to the nature of my profession (I am a translator who works from home, on the computer most of the time) I have never had the need for a stable, full-time babysitter. Today, it has come to bite me in the bum-bum. On Friday it was a little easier since she was at school and my mom agreed to stay with her afterwards. Today (Saturday) was supposed to be my daughter’s weekend with her father. You know what’s coming next. We both got stood up. I admit that my naiveté got the better of me as I really should have known better counting on an extremely unreliable and thoughtless person. There was a reason for our divorce after all.

Because my plans for today are ruined, I am very sad and disappointed. The biggest disappointment is that I will not get to meet all the wonderful bloggers I was so looking forward to meet. The BEA is a huge and very overwhelming event, especially for people like me, who find crowded spaces overpowering and stress inducing. Therefore it took me some time to find myself there, then to go to significant places and meet interesting writers and publisher and by the time it was over, it was too late for me to go and proactively search for the bloggers even though I tried to be on the lookout throughout the whole day. I simply had in mind that the whole Saturday would be dedicated to meeting with the girls and spending some time with them. As it turned out, I am not there. C’est La Vie!

Now, enough with the ramblings of the unquiet mind. I am still very happy and feel blessed that I was able to make it to BEA at all. Thankfully, I live close enough to New York City to just jump on the train and be there within an hour. It wasn’t awfully expensive and time consuming. Otherwise, I wouldn’t even dream of coming. I also met and got a chance to chat with some fantastic writers and publishers whom I will be spotlighting individually in the near future. They were very nice and approachable people, and it was a great pleasure to meet them. I have met with three publishers (well, I visited more than that) which are not as yet very well known but it is my great hope that they will be soon as the products they offer seem wonderful and deserve more notice. Over the next few weeks I will be posting reviews of the books, hopefully interviews with the authors and introductions to the new magazine and book publishers.

That’s that for now. I am sure that by the time you read all the posts about BEA ’09 you’ll get slightly sick of it, therefore I don’t intend on boring you to death in this first post.