It's the final 2025 ApollyCon recap post! Right on time for 2026 tickets to go one sale next week. Woo! Actually, not woo. Trying to buy tickets to ApollyCon is always stressful. I've gotten lucky every year except one so far, so we'll see how everything goes this time. I swear this event likes to give readers ulcers. Why does it have to be so insane?
So Saturday, the fourth day of the convention, is all about signings. It starts super early, like 8 a.m., so lining up is even earlier. After the previous day, we were too tired to get up super early. We got up just early enough and managed to hop in line at a decent time/place to get fairly okay tickets for ticketed authors. First up on our stop once we got in was Amanda Bouchet. We see her every time we go, with the exception of the year we volunteered. She's always super nice.
Next up was an author I hadn't read before, but I kept hearing about the book Servant of the Earth. So, I bought the UK cover, since it has a dustjacket, and had her sign it. She was also very nice. Her line was pretty quick too, which is always a bonus when the feet start hurting from too much standing/walking.
After that, we went to Clare Sager's line. Clare is actually British, I think, which I wasn't expecting. Her accent is amazing! I brought a copy of A Touch of Poison for her to sign, since I technically had the first book in her series signed by her last year. I just didn't get to meet her because my friend picked it up for me when I was volunteering.
We stopped at JLA's table to take pics with her decor, since we didn't get a pic of it with her at her table from the previous day. The room she signed in after hours was just a bland hotel conference room. Her actual table area had the dragon (draken) from the Coronation event along with some nice backdrops.
Emma Hamm was next. She had a wonderful standee of her new troll male main character. It was pretty great getting pics in front of it. Emma seemed to recognize us a bit from the previous time we'd met her in 2023's signing, so that was cool. I had her sign the second book in her dragon series. I still need to read her books, though. She's awesome, so I need to get on it.
We went to Juliette Cross's table after that. We'd preordered a special copy of her The Wraith King book. It has a gorgeous cover. I haven't read this book or Firebird yet, but I've heard Firebird is very controversial, for reasons I completely understand. I need to read it, though, as I'd like to know if I even want to keep my copies. I have the FairyLoot and the regular hardcover.
Next, we went to Abigail Owens, and she signed our copies of The Games Gods Play. I started reading this one, but put it down for one reason or another. I need to get back into it soon before I forget everything Luckily, I think I'm only about 30 pages in if I do choose to restart it.
Here we have Stacia Stark. We picked up our preorders of the entire Kingdom of Lies four-book set. This was a special event exclusive set, and it's very pretty. I hope Stacia does a matching set for the spinoff book(s). Stacia also has a cool accent. She's from New Zealand. Oh, and like with Callie Hart, Stacia's table was another one that I decided to leave behind my yearbook at. Again, I didn't get very far before someone reminded me, but it just kept happening. Ha ha.
We got to take pictures with Rhage from the Black Dagger Brotherhood series! It was so cool! Look at the set up Art by Stefani had! It's so cute! The stars for each brother! The red carpet. Gah! I love it. I'm glad I got to have a miniature Rhage sticker to take home with me. I need to get this and the JR Ward pics framed so I can have them all together. That'd be cute.
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And then, we went to Zoey Draven's table. We'd received a copy of her book, Desire in His Blood, in a previous ApollyCon bag, and we were finally able to meet her and get it signed this year. Huzzah! She was very nice. I was super glad her line had died down, because it was pretty full when we went to check a few times.
Up next, we have the actor who plays Zsadist on the Passionflix show, Andrew Biernat. He was nice. He talked a lot about his process for getting into Zsadist's character. He was also tall, as you can see here. Totally not used to taking pics with guys attending ApollyCon, as normally the authors are around my height or shorter. I think Amber V. Nicole is the only one who's really wowed me with her height.
We were able to stop by Olivia Rose Darling's table to get our books signed by her. Once again, I haven't read her book. My friend did, though, and she really wanted to get Olivia's signature, even though we were running short on time. Actually, this may have been the point when we came back from lunch for the next signing, as the floor is different here, meaning we were in the other signing room. Well, lunch shenanigans consisted of packing boxes to ship them via UPS and dropping the boxes all along the way, and then blocking traffic briefly when they toppled. I also bruised myself pretty well on that trip. It was a great time.
At some point, I picked up my L.J. Andrews preorder of Curse of Shadows and Thorns. I wasn't able to meet her because her line was too long, but she'd presigned the books, so that was convenient. I think she's coming back in 2026, so hopefully I can see her then, if I get tickets.
K.A. Knight was the last author we saw during the signing hours. We were totally dead by this point, even though we'd taken more breaks and only stayed like an hour or two for each signing session. It had all just been a lot. But, we got her signatures. Then, it was off to get some food. We ate at a barbecue place nearby, it wasn't great. Last time we'd gone there, we just got appetizers, so I think that's the plan if we ever have to eat there again.
Oh, and I wanted to mention some of the authors that we saw that I didn't take pics with. Max Walker was one. Jennifer Estep, Elise Kova, and Mai Corland were the others. Two of those authors I'd seen before, so I was fine not taking photos. The other two, I just hadn't read their books yet and I was too tired to get a pic. Once the signing was over and food had been eaten, we went back to our rooms to pack our bags, as we had to be at the airport very early and we still had one event left.
The last event of ApollyCon is always the After Party. This year, it was sponsored by 1,001 Dark Nights/Blue Box Press, and they had the Coronation event decorations all throughout the room. The theme was masquerade, hence the masks in the pic, and most people dressed in gowns. We were too tired to put our dresses on, so we just went in t-shirts and comfy pants. We couldn't stay the whole time anyway, so it was fine. When we got in the event after watching the young cheerleaders who were also at the convention center leave and tumble their way down the hall we were lined up in, there were free books on tables inside. Some jerks were taking stacks of books, but I just took two Kresley Cole ones. Because I love Kresley Cole. There were also books in the goodie bags we received on entry. I didn't keep them, though. I let someone else take mine. So, after that, we basically just sat and swayed to the music. Eventually, we decided to get up and take pics at the photo booth. We were going to take pics with the cardboard cutouts, but the staff started taking them down because people kept touching them. I don't see why the staff didn't just have the DJ announce not to touch the cutouts. Instead, they just took them down. It was weird and disappointing. We stayed a bit after that to see if JLA would come by to give her usual end-of-event speech, but I guess she never did. We had to leave for our flight in the morning, though, so we gave up waiting about an hour before the event ended anyway.
Well, that was all for the fourth day. It was chaos and pain, but after it was over, we slept for a few hours before we had to head to the airport very, very early to go home. We got conned by the hotel into paying for an expensive cab ride instead of using a Lyft or Uber, but at least our suitcases fit. That's all that mattered. We can cry about the extra price later while I cry about how much I spent too. Ha ha. Overall, 2025 ApollyCon may not have been my favorite of the past years' events, but there were some nice moments. I hope 2026 is better, though. Fingers crossed I get tickets. You can see all the books I added to my shelves up above, along with all the swag I got. The crazy thing is, I didn't even keep it all. I got rid of some of it. And this is definitely less than what we got last year, thankfully. There were way too many pens in last year's bags.
