ApollyCon 2025 Recap: Day Three

I know, I know. I am still working on my ApollyCon recap posts almost two months post-event. I'm ridiculous. But, I always like to have these posts to go back and look on when the next event comes around. It helps me keep organized and remember what went right and wrong each year. The good news is, there's only one more day to recap after this one. Thank goodness!

 

Typically, Friday mornings at ApollyCon are for author panels. We were just too exhausted from the night before to even contemplate going to the panels. We're getting too old to keep going to these events. Ha ha. We ended up just getting breakfast downstairs, prepping for the Primal ticket-level signing, and relaxing before we had to head down to get in line around noon. You can see our packed carts in the first pic, along with me hanging out in line, and a 3D printed dragon I got. Someone was giving them away in line, so of course I had to nab one. Mine's the silver one. Isn't he cute? My friend grabbed a pink one. 

 

The first author we went to was Callie Hart. We actually just grabbed a ticket for her, and then headed to Jemlin's booth, but we didn't stay at Jemlin's booth long because her line was so long. I got a ticket for Jemlin and then we went to a few other areas and came back to Callie's table. She was nice. I accidentally left my yearbook behind at her table, so I had to go back and get it. I'd only barely walked away when Callie and her assistants reminded me, but that happened a couple of times throughout the signing. It was a reoccurring theme of forgetting that darn yearbook.

 

Now, I'm not exactly sure if everything is in order from here on out, but I think next up was Lisette Marshall. We ordered her Fae Isles special edition set. They're beautiful books, but we knew they'd be super heavy, so we decided to get those on Friday so we could ship them back in the boxes we'd packed to free up our suitcase space on the way home.

 

Next up was Nicole Platania. Now, I haven't read her book, but my friend did, and she really liked it. So, I went ahead and ordered The Curse of Ophelia. It looks like a fun book, so I hope I can get to it fairly soon, especially if she comes back for next year and I get tickets. It'd be great to get the sequel signed. 

 

I don't know exactly when, but I did visit Claire Legrand early on in the signing time too. She signed my copy of Furyborn. I forgot to take a pic with her, and I originally forgot to have her sign my yearbook. I ended up going back either later on this day or on day four to get her to sign the yearbook. She gave me a fancy bookmark too. I think that'll be in my next post, as I took a pic of a bunch of swag all together.

 

 

I think around this time, I decided to go back to Jemlin's table. I officially met Autumn from @/theautumnbookreads on Instagram. She does all the book box guesses each month, so I can decide if I want to save money. Lol. I had her sign the back of my yearbook. I also got Jemlin and Alicia to sign my yearbook. But, most importantly, I picked up my Prettygal Pins preorders, bought some other cards, and got some freebie cards. I took pics with the Violet Sorengail cardboard cutout too. Xaden was a bit too out of the way, but I took some pics of him all by his lonesome.

 

We went to see J.R. Ward at some point in this craziness. It was amazing to see her. She's so funny and so nice. She acted like seeing each person was just the greatest thing ever. She was even skipping and having a blast when she went to take a restroom break. She even did that later that night when she had to sign overtime with JLA. Thankfully, I was able to get her signing done during the regular hours though. We talked about how I hoped she'd be back the next year, and she said she would. She already had plans to host the same type of panel she hosted the previous day. I'll have to decide what books to get signed by her next time. I got Dark Lover, Lover Eternal, and Lover At Last signed and personalized this time. Oh, and she was giving out these awesome Rhage stickers based on the cardboard cutout you'll see in the next recap.

 

I believe after this, we went to Carissa Broadbent's table. Again, I could be totally wrong. I feel like I'm missing a few authors, but I'll do a list of anyone I missed in the next post. It's likely, if I forgot to include them, I only got my yearbook signed and didn't get a picture with them. For Carissa, I didn't bring any books. I had something signed by her last year, and I didn't want to take up more suitcase space, so I just did the dustjacket preorder she had. I still haven't put these on a book set yet. I need to figure out what I want to do about them. I'm thinking of putting them on the Owlcrate editions, since those are the same size as the traditionally published versions.

 

 

 

Now, I think some of these are definitely out of order because I have Jamie Applegate-Hunter next in my photo bank, but I feel like we saw her on our way out of this room. But, at some point, she did sign my preorder of The Umbra King, and gave us some swag. I also really liked her yellow dress. It was so cute. 

 

 

 

And then, I have Nalini Singh. I've been reading Nalini's Singh's books since high school, much like J.R. Ward's, so it was really cool to meet her. I had her sign two of my Guild Hunter books. I've only read the first book in this series, as her Psy-Changeling one was what I started with, but I don't own those in physical form. Nalini was very sweet, and I loved her character art. I hope it's still available when I've read the series, so I can maybe buy it one day. (Honestly, now that I'm thinking about it, we might have gone upstairs then come back downstairs to get Nalini's books signed. I think that's what we did when we needed to kill time waiting for JLA's line to open up.)

Up next, possibly, was Melissa Roehrich. We picked up our preorders of Lady of Darkness and Rain of Shadows and Endings, which were pre-signed. That meant we just got Melissa to sign out yearbooks and take pics once we met her. We did have to go back and return our Rain copies though, as they gave us the special edition, and we didn't want that edition. People claimed we were so nice for doing the right thing and returning our special copies, but, honestly, I liked the regular cover more.

 

Okay, so I think we're getting to the end now. Not the end of this recap post, but the end of me and my friend spending time in this room. The last thing we did, I think, was see Kalista Neith where I bought a $75 special edition. Icky. In my defense, the author did not tell us it was $75. I probably wouldn't have bought it if I'd known. It is super pretty, though. It's Invoking the Blood. Unfortunately, the narrator also signed the copy, which I didn't like. But he was standing there and the author asked if he could sign it.What was I supposed to say? On the way out of this room, I had the Arcane Society/Mystic Box owner sign my yearbook. We had purchased the first and third books in the Wicked trilogy at their table earlier too. I don't have a pick of them by themselves, but you'll see them in the next recap. After that, we headed upstairs to dump our stuff and head to the next signing room.

 

So, as you can tell by the carpet on the floor, we're in the new signing room. I have no idea what order these are in, but we did meet Rebecca F. Kenney at some point during the five-hour signing time. She actually didn't know I'd snuck up behind her to join the photo. Ha ha. Sorry, Rebecca.

 

 

We also saw Miranda Lyn and picked up our preorders. I got the paperback edition of Till Death. It's another book my friend read and recommended, so I decided to just preorder it. I'll get around to it eventually, right?

 

At some point during this, we also picked up our Books for Days Crate preorders. We each ordered a copy of their A Shadow in the Ember edition as well as their Kingdom of Crowns and Daggers edition by K.A. Knight and Erin O'Kane. I also bought their Sera and Ash standee and their Flesh & Fire character cards. The editions each came with overlays as well. We had to pick them up before going to JLA's signing line. JLA's line was very behind, so we ended up having to wait until around 8-9 p.m. to get her signature, which really sucked.

The signing ended at around 5 p.m., so if you were unable to get JLA's signature during the Primal signing time, you had to slog to another room to wait in another line to get her signature. They also announced that she wasn't personalizing anything anymore, so that kind of sucked. We ended up having to wait almost three hours to get our books signed. I was kind of over it by that point. They seriously need to figure out a way to do the signing that doesn't require people to not be able to schedule their time appropriately. But anyway, I got my ApollyCon edition of Born of Blood and Ash signed as well as the Arcane Torn edition, the Books for Days Crate ASITE, and the Coronation event ASITE. I think that was all I got signed, just because I was so exhausted. We could only get three items signed with the exception of things we'd ordered from the JLA Shop and what came in our Primal bag. So I got my yearbook signed too. There were a few other things I could've gotten signed, but I was just done. When I finally got to JLA she was kind of more interested in talking to her staff/volunteers than readers, which was kind of a bummer. They were doing that kind of slap-happy exhausted-type of conversation you have with people you know. At least I'd met her before, so I didn't feel ignored during the only time I'd seen her. That would have been awful. After all of that, though, we trekked up to our hotel room to prep for the next night and to majorly crash. The next morning would be an early one, unfortunately again.

Well, that was all for the third day. It was another long, crazy one. Thankfully, day four is a little bit less so. It did have its chaotic moments, though. Stay tuned for the next recap post. It'll be up whenever I can get around to it!