ApollyCon 2024 Recap: Part Two

Okay, I'm back with my ApollyCon recap. I think I can get this all done in one post, as I don't have a lot to say about the events I was at, since I was working most of them. I volunteered Friday and Saturday, but I was able to still attend the event on Sunday, which was the same day we left D.C. Overall, it was a pretty chaotic time.

 

Thursday morning was panel time. For the panels, I just basically sat in the room and monitored to make sure everything went smoothly, and thank god it did. The three panels I had were 1) Genre Jumping with Erin Mallon, Jennifer Fyfe, Marshall J. Moore, Nia Davenport, Nicole Northwood, and Season Vining; 2) The More the Merrier with C.R. Jane, Eva Chase, K.G. Reuss, Lana Pecherczyk, Lexi C. Foss, and Lola Rock; and 3) The Write Stuff: How to Kill Your Darlings with Denny S. Bryce, Eden Appiah-Kubi, Kate Dramis, K.J. Sutton, Mazey Eddings, and Priscilla Oliveras.

 

And then the afternoon was the Titan signing. I was assigned to Sarah A. Parker's line. She's SUPER nice and awesome, but her line was so busy. I was a line monitor, so I didn't have a lot of time to break off and explore the exhibit halls. I actually didn't even take a photo with Sarah, which I'm kind of bummed about. It was all so hectic and she was signing so late on Saturday that it didn't cross my mind. I did manage to take a crazy-eyed selfie of some of the chaos, though, simply because my dad called during this time wanting to chat and I was way too busy for that and I wanted him to see the chaos. Sarah did end up gifting the volunteers who worked her line some signed books, which was soooo nice of her.

I think, because I was so busy, I ended up only seeing two authors during my short break times. The first was Jess Wisecup. I picked up a preorder from her table, which took me forever to find. I also bought a copy of The Prince's Poisoned Vow at Hailey Turner's table. I didn't get any photos with these authors, simply because there wasn't a lot of time.

 

My friend, Sara, ended up picking up a majority of my preorders throughtout the weekend, since my table was so busy and hers wasn't as much. I can't fully remember which day she picked up what, so I'm just lumping it all together here. She picked up a copy of What Hunts Inside the Shadows by Harper L. Woods and my preorders for Clare Sager's A Kiss of Iron and Slaying the Shifter Prince and J. Bree's tour editions of The Crown of Oaths and Curses and Broken Bonds. She also managed to get my copy of The Serpent and the Wings of Night by Carissa Broadbent signed. Of course, she got all of her stuff signed/picked up too. I'm super glad she had the time to do all this, because I definitely didn't while I was trying to get things under control. Saturday, though, I made some more time for breaks and exploring.

  Later that night, I had more volunteering to do. This time, it was the Raven Kennedy Plated Prisoner event, and boy, oh boy, were my feet killing me by this point. Again, I was mostly doing line control. I did end up getting a goodie bag at the end of the night, along with a chocolate-covered pretzel that ended up being breakfast the next morning.

Saturday was more signings, which meant more standing and line control. Thankfully, like I mentioned, I was able to break off a little more and meet some authors and get a few things signed. I also managed to sneak in before things started in the morning and before lunch to get some stuff signed. I even bought a Bookish Box ApollyCon shirt. I was able to pick up my preorder from Vela Roth, purchase a copy of Rabid from Ivy Asher, and get my K.J. Sutton Fortuna Sworn and my S.M. Gaither The Song of the Marked signed all in the span of about eight hours.

 

During the lunch break, I was able to walk around with Sara and we took pics with the cardboard standees of Dean and Sam Winchester. And while I was on a different break, I ran upstairs to the other exhibit hall and ended up taking a picture of Jemlin's Bat Boys standees, because why not? And the bottom pic is just some swag that came from various tables.

 

Oh, and during this time, I also had to take a break to pick up my ApollyCrew bag, which had my JLA special editions of A Fire in the Flesh and Half-Blood in them, along with some swag, like water bottles, highlighters, and two extra smaller books. Those were an ARC of House of Ash and Shadow by Leia Stone and Songbird by Victoria Woods.

 

Later that night, I had After Party door duty, which was cool, as I ended up getting a free J. Bree bag, as she sponsored the event. That means I got my hands on the special event edition of The Crown of Oaths and Curses! I also got Breakaway by Grace Reilly and A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross. I also got a Primal bag for working the late shift. Thank you, ApollyCon crew! It had a very large number of books in it, including Do Your Worst (a signed Afterlight edition), Desires of the Blood, After, Saved by Wolves, The Origin, Ocean's Echo (technically, I traded Sara for this one. I originally had Calamity, which I'd already read.), Revolt, and Terror. And obviously, there was a ton of swag too. There. Were. So. Many. Pens. And the final event of Saturday night was trying to shove all of the books and junk into our suitcases and dufflebags. We ended up using the hotel FedEx scale the next morning to weigh our bags to make sure they weren't over the plane's 50-pound weight limit.

 

The last event was Sunday morning, which was the Q&A with the 1,001 Dark Nights publishers and authors, including JLA, Xio Axelrod, Audrey Carlan, Helena Hunting, Laurelin Paige, Lexi Blake, and Ravyn Salvador. It was an outdoor/indoor seating area, so there ended up being birds flying around the ceiling and there was an Indian wedding taking place next door, so a lot of music and people dressed in lovely outfits. JLA did end up heading out a bit early though. She wasn't feeling well. After this, we went straight to the airport where I had to kill a few hours, so I got Smashburger. Very yummy.

Well, I think that's all. It was definitely a different experience this year when compared to the past two years. Volunteering is a lot of work, especially on the feet, but it still has its fun moments. Am I going to volunteer next year? Maybe. I'm going to see if I can get tickets first though. It's pretty expensive to stay at the new hotel location, so I have to see if I can justify the costs. Oh, and in the photos above, you can see the books I bought at the event versus the ones I preordered. The ones I got for free were all up above as well. You can even see the After Party vase my friend took from the event during clean up, as it was just going to be thrown away. I'm honestly surprised it made it back home in one piece.

ApollyCon 2024 Recap: Part One

It's that time of year again. The time I try to get my ApollyCon recap up before I forget everything. Fortunately, this year is a lot easier to recap, simply because I didn't just attend, I had to volunteer during the major signing days, so no author pics during those days. I did get stuff signed though, despite being uber busy.

 

First, I'm gonna share the 10 books I brought with me to get signed. They included five JLA books, two Rebecca Yarros ones, and a book each for K.J. Sutton, S.M. Gaither, and Carissa Broadbent. I didn't think I'd be able to get more than that signed, so I didn't feel like lugging around the others if I wasn't sure I'd get signatures. I kind of wish I'd brought a Wendy Higgins book, though. She was pretty close to me,and I feel like I would've had some time. I did bring a Stacia Stark book that I didn't get signed, but she seems to attend every year, so I'll try again in 2025.

I'm going to start off the recap with what I did on Wednesday. I had to get up at 4 a.m. to get to the airport on time. Thankfully, my dad offered to drive me there for my 8:40 a.m. flight. Once I arrived in D.C., my friend, Sara, and I settled into our hotel, did some sightseeing, and ate at Nando's. You can see the Gaylord Convention Center, the ApollyCon location, in the bottom pic (above). It's a neat area. We wanted to go on the Ferris wheel, but we wanted to wait until dark, and unfortunately, by the time dark rolled around, we were too exhausted to go back. We ended up helping with moving bags and boxes of books for registration. They were very heavy. Our arms were dead afterwards. We crashed, ate some BBQ nachos and bread pudding, and slept after all that.

 

The next day was all about JLA. First up, was the volunteer signing with Jen and Rebecca Yarros. Both authors were extremely nice to offer volunteer-specific signing times. I wish more popular authors had done that, it made life so much easier. I'll cross my fingers it happens for next year too. But this pic is just me waiting in line to get my stuff signed and meet the authors.

Rebecca was the first line we went to, so I got Fourth Wing and Iron Flame signed by her. She was nice. I didn't have much to talk about with her, as everything about book one pretty much flew out of my head at that point and I hadn't read book two yet. I know I thanked her for doing a separate signing time for volunteers. But that's all I got.

  JLA was next up. I got Cursed and four Lux books signed by her. She actually remembered Sara and I from previous years, so that was cool. She talked to me about Kansas City east vs. west, which I know very little about. I live like four hours away from KC. My friend does live near it though, and I think JLA was continuing the conversation she had with her, thinking I also lived in that area. Haha.

The next couple of hours just consisted of us being dorks and taking photos in front of the various signage around the convention center. They even had pawprints along the carpet to represent wolven for the FBAA event later that night, called the Nite of the Rite (NotR).

Before that though, we got to see the Blood Forest set up again! That was cool! It was just in the waiting area for the NotR event. I, of course, had to take pics with all of the cardboard standees again. How could I resist? Unfortunately, the Kieran they had from the Blood Forest event was inside, so I didn't get to take pics with him until later, but I still love Poppy and Cas too. And Delano, of course.

The NotR and every JLA event are the entire reason I go to ApollyCon. I don't think I'd go if she didn't have something like it every year. With last year's being the Blood Forest and this year's being the NotR, I'm thinking 2025 will be Sera and Nyktos themed. They don't have standees yet. But anyway, there were a ton of new standees this year, and of course, I had to take pics with all of them. They had a new Poppy and a new Cas, Kieran as a wolven, the main trio together, a spot for taking pics at the Willow, a very cool background that looked like the inside of the castle party, a new Kieran, a Tawny, a new Cas, Viktor, and a Cas and Poppy in their Rite attire. Aren't they all amazing?!

I also bought myself some prints and a keychain where they had merch stations. I missed out on the free Jemlin bookmarks and other goodies. I was so disappointed about that. But thankfully, they seemed to be the same artwork as what's on the Prettygal cards I already own. Now, technically, I didn't receive all of the items that are pictured here during the NotR, but they either revolve around the NotR or FBAA. Of course, I had to buy the shelfie versions of the standees they had for sale. Though, my friend wasn't able to buy them for us until Friday. I also got more of the preorder incentive bookmarks and temporary tattoos from 1,001 Dark Nights. I think this is my third or fourth set of all the bookmarks. I don't know what I'm going to do with all of them. I also nabbed a NotR Daneer bookmark off an empty chair when the attendees left the event. If no one else wanted it, I figured why not? Ha ha. 

 

JLA also had a discussion and a Q&A panel with her publishers. She talked about the TV show process, Kieran and Cas's penetration abilities (lol), and just the same basic info she normally discusses at these events. I did miss some of it, as volunteers had to stand at the back of the room, and my legs were too tired to just stand, so Sara and I went back to the standee area to continue taking pics and buy some merch. But, that was all we did on Thursday. I'll share Friday and Saturday exploits with you at some point. I figured this post was getting too long to include all of the days, though.

Stacking the Shelves: The Salty Surprise Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Another week of 2024 has come to an end. And thankfully, I'm not ill anymore, so I've been able to get back into my workout routine. I also plan to catch up on all the cleaning I've been putting off. Yuck. But other than that, I'm not doing much. I have been reading, though, which has made me very happy. It's good to be back.

As for books, I have some goodies from Sierra Simone. I wasn't able to get my ApollyCon preorder of Salt Kiss from Sierra, as my order was lost somehow by the crew. But Sierra was extremely nice and she sent me a replacement along with some swag and a copy of the novella Salt in the Wound. I'm super grateful Sierra was willing to send this package.

Up next, I have a stack of books I preordered from Barnes & Noble. One of these, Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu, actually arrived last week, and I just forgot to include it in last week's haul. Oops. But the rest all arrived within this week. They include We Could Be So Lucky by Cat Sebastian, the new Bloom Books edition of Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout, Burning Crowns by Catherine Doyle and Katherine Webber, The Queen's Starfire Throne by Hailey Turner, and Five Broken Blades by Mai Corland.

And lastly, I have the April FairyLoot Adult book, Evocation by S.T. Gibson. I'm excited for this one. I skipped May's Adult FairyLoot book though, so don't expect FairyLoot copies this month. I think I even skipped the FairyLoot Romantasy box for May as well. The choices just weren't something I'd be interested in. But this is one I've been excited for since the sneak peek. While I wasn't a huge fan of Gibson's Dowry of Blood—I thought it was fine—I think I'll like this one more.

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The Rare Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Surprisingly, I only have one book to share today. That is a very rare phenomenon indeed. Okay, so technically, I had a couple of things show up to my parents' house that I plan to pick up this weekend, but since those books aren't in my hands right now, they don't count towards this StS post. Ha! As for the week as a whole, I've been getting over my post-con illness. Therefore, it's been survival mode. Now that the sickness is finally on the outs, I'm excited to be a person again.

Here is the one book that I got this week. And it may not look like much, but this was a rare find indeed. I've had a notification for Dark Flame by Kat Silver set on all the secondhand reseller sites for a couple of months now. I learned about this book through an author's Facebook group when I asked for similar recommendations, and, unfortunately, this one was completely wiped off the face of the planet. No ebook version available, no print versions in stores. Not even secondhand sellers on Amazon. I guess the author took it off every site she could. And there was one person selling a copy on eBay for like $1,000. Umm... no thank you. But last week, I got a notification from PangoBooks that someone was selling this one for like $10, and I jumped on it. I can't wait to read it, though I'm tempted to wait until I can locate book two as well. I know the trilogy isn't finished and likely never will be, but I still think I'd like to read it for the vibes. And knowing it will likely remain unfinished when I go into it will help lessen any expectations. But I can still hold off until I acquire book two. Maybe...

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

April Wrap-Up & May TBR

Well, I'm in my post-ApollyCon what-is-the-meaning-of-life phase. Why can't we just be surrounded by books, authors, and fun all the time? Why does real life have to ruin everything? Ugh. I don't have a lot to talk about in terms of April's shenanigans. The entire month was primarily about prepping for and volunteering at ApollyCon. I did end up getting sick from it, though, so that's been a great start to my May. Yuck.

In this wrap-up, I’ll list the books I read, the books I reviewed, the books I bought/received, and my TBR for next month. Now, let’s get this bookish party started!

Books Read in April

10 Things That Never Happened: 4 stars

The Last Sun: 4 stars

I only read two books in April, which is sad because I wanted to read a lot more. I was finally getting out of my reading slump after finishing The Last Sun, and I desperately wanted to read the sequels right after, but ApollyCon came up and distracted me from everything. Hopefully once I feel better, I can get back into reading quickly. Right now, it's taking too much effort just to hold a book up. But anyway, the good thing about the two books that I read is that they were both on my physical TBR list and my owned-prior-to-2024 list. So I've made some progress there. Huzzah!

Books Bought/Received in April

Obviously, this month's haul is going to be huge because of ApollyCon, but I also had a lot of preorders arrive as well. And I, frankly, have no self-control and I bought way too many things in April, even though I knew ApollyCon was coming up. Altogether, I bought 18 books in the month of April, three of which were purchased at ApollyCon, and I received 36 books, 17 of which were given to me for free at ApollyCon. That's a total of 51 books I actually physically received in the month altogether.

I'm gonna start with the 13 non-ApollyCon books I received in April, which means I didn't buy them in the month of April. They include the Arcane editions of Flames of Chaos and Ashes of Chaos, Illumicrate editions of Silver Under Nightfall and Court of Wanderers, the JLA Shop Wicked trilogy editions, The Tales of the Celestial Kingdom FairyLoot edition, A Feather So Black from the March FairyLoot box, Zodiac Academy 3 from Mercari (ordered in March, arrived in April), and three books ordered from Barnes & Noble in March that arrived in April, Sire, Broken, and Fortuna Sworn. 

 As for the 15 books I actually bought in April, there are too many. The 10 non-ApollyCon bought physical copies include the April FairyLoot Romantasy book, Lore of the Wilds, a PangoBooks order for Wolfsbane, a Hello Lovely purchase for their Wicked trilogy, and B&N orders for Dragon Rider and Zodiac Academy 9. I also purchased two ebooks, Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat and Of Sands and Silk by Claire Butler. There are three books that I preordered that haven't arrived yet, as well. Those include The Crown of Gilded Bones and A Fire in the Flesh ApollyCon editions via the JLA Shop and the April Adult FairyLoot book. (Also, ignore the K.D. Edwards books. I technically got them on May 1, so they shouldn't be in the photo.)

I got a lot of books at ApollyCon; 26 to be exact. Most of them were freebies, and I don't know if I'll keep all of them, but for now, they're living on my shelves until I do an unhaul. The 17 freebies include A Fire in the Flesh and Half-Blood by JLA, The Crown of Oaths and Curses ApollyCon edition, A River Enchanted, Songbird, The Origin, Desire of the Blood, House of Ash and Shadow ARC, Ocean's Echo, Revolt, To Snap a Silver Stem, To Flame a Wildflower, Breakaway, Saved by Wolves, Terror, Do Your Worst Afterlight edition, and After. Then, I picked up six books I'd preordered earlier in the year: Broken Bonds and The Crown of Oaths and Curses tour editions, A Kiss of Iron, Slaying the Shifter Prince, Blood Mercy special edition, and Between Wrath and Mercy special edition. And thankfully, I only purchased three books at ApollyCon: Rabid special edition, What Hunts Inside the Shadows special paperback edition, and The Prince's Poisoned Vow.

Currently Obsessed With

April may have been a crazy month, but I did manage to start a new show.

I started Anne with an E on Netflix. Anne is very dramatic and sometimes annoying, but it's still a cute show. It also only has three seasons, which I feel like is a good thing since I can't commit to shows right now. I just needed something to binge to get my mind off of everything else. Right now, I'm on season two, so I should have the show finished by the end of May. I'm also still watching Everybody Hates Chris, so I'll pick that back up once I finish Anne.

May TBR

No surprise that there are repeats from last month in my May TBR, especially considering I only read two books in April. The repeats include Charm by Tracy Wolff, Visions of Flesh and Blood, and Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu. The newbies include Zodiac Academy 9 and the sequels to K.D. Edwards's The Last Sun.

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Okay, well, that's the month of April, plus some May sneak peeks, all wrapped up into one post. Do you have a wrap-up post for last month? If so, share in the comments!

Stacking the Shelves: The ApollyCon 2024 Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Oh my goodness has this been a crazy couple of weeks. I got back from ApollyCon this past Sunday night, super late. And now, I'm ill. Ugh. Stupid, con crud. At least it's not COVID, though. My plan is to have my ApollyCon recap and April wrap up posts up sometime next week, but with how icky I feel right now, I'm not sure that'll happen. It may be an extra week or so before you see them. Blugh.

As for books, I had some orders come in from Barnes & Noble. Those include Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu, Zodiac Academy 9 by Caroline Peckham & Susanne Valenti, and The Hanged Man and The Hourglass Throne by K.D. Edwards. I'm hoping to read all four of these this month.

The next set of books all came from FairyLoot, which means my parents had to drop them off. I think A Feather So Black is the March Adult book, Lore of the Wilds is the April Romantasy book, and Tales of the Celestial Kingdom is a separate preorder. I don't think I'll be reading any of these soon. Not because I think they'll be bad, just simply because I have so much I want to read right away and these aren't those. Ha ha.

And next, I have the replacement dustjacket for the FairyLoot edition of Fourth Wing. I completely forgot this was coming because I'm probably going to sell my edition at some point. Now I have to decide how I'll do that with the option of the new dustjacket. Ugh. It's too complicated for my ill brain right now.

 

Moving on to the ApollyCon books. I'm not going to list every single one, as I'll get to that in my ApollyCon recap, but I will highlight some of the major books. Those include the special editions of A Fire in the Flesh and Half-Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout; the After Party and tour editions of The Crown of Oaths and Curses and the tour edition of Broken Bonds by J. Bree; and the special edition of Between Wrath and Mercy by Jessica Wisecup.

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Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?