Last Thursday, my friend Sarah and I got up wayyyyy too early, and flew down to Houston for our first ever Book Lover’s Convention. We had no idea what to expect, and we were crazy excited.
We arrived at the Royal Sonesta at around 10 am, expecting to have them hold our bags until the afternoon, but were pleasantly surprised when they allowed us to check in immediately. The hotel was on point all weekend, I’m not gonna lie.
Thursday afternoon was all about Lottery events. You chose the events you hoped to get into, and they drew names to see who would get into which events. Sarah’s first event was at 11, so we had a quick breakfast in the hotel cafe, and hit up registration.
The bag was chock full of books and swag, and had us really excited for what was yet to come.
We also got our event booklets…. with the agenda, memory book, and our lanyards. The lanyards had our special event tickets in them, so they were super important. They checked for lanyards at every event.
We went up to drop our swag in the room so I snapped a quick pic of what was in the bag. It did NOT go back in the way it came out! I failed epically, but it all ended up in my suitcase together anyway, so it didn’t matter.
Sarah went off to play Lotteria, which was like BINGO, and I went to the BLC store, bought some swag and raffle tickets, and then chose which baskets to put my tickets into. It was nice to have some time to do that, which was nice. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it was about to get crazy!
Sarah took some pics of Lotteria as well. She got some swag but didn’t have any luck with her BINGO cards.
I bought an event tee and a mystery box. It was $35 and was chock full of swag.
This is the swag from the mystery box!
Sarah came down around noon and showed me her swag from the Lotteria event. We had some time to bring everything upstairs before we attended our next event, the only one we had together that afternoon.
Another look at my Mystery Box.
Our next event was called the Book Shower Party. It was hosted by author Valerie Clarizio and we played typical shower games, like BINGO, guess the quotes, pin the heart on Jamie Fraser, and more! Sarah and I both won prizes!
So much fun!! The next event was mine, Romancing the Chocolate, with author Roz Lee. We took a field trip to a chocolate shop near the hotel, tasted the insanely yummy chocolate, and then Roz let us each pick a gourmet bar to bring home…
We also got some swag….
So delicious!
Along with our special event tickets, we also got two VIP tickets. My first one was for the Denim and Diamonds Welcome event. We got cowboy hats, a BLC pin, sunglasses, and some other swag. The event had a band, and a Mac n Cheese Bar, which I couldn’t eat since I’m lactose intolerant. After we met some of the authors who sponsored the event, we left to have some dinner at Velvet Taco, which was close by the hotel.
The pics are out of order, but this is my chicken and waffle and cheeseburger taco.
Meeting Sylvia Day and Karin Tabke.
Swag from the evening.
Lora autographed a free book for everyone, I let her choose for me:
Those are tater tots under there. Insanely good. I shared with the table. As Sarah and I were leaving the event, two of the ladies we met, as well as two of the authors, decided to join us. There were 6 of us altogether…
Whoa. That was a lot! Stay tuned for our Friday activities! Thursday and Saturday were the craziest days, but all of them were pretty packed!
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