BEA Report #2

I was too tired out last night to blog about BEA! Tonight I’m a little bit more awake at least for a little while.
Tonight was the Alyson Books party, at a very beautiful venue called The Gates. Managed to catch up briefly with two of my favorite native New Yorkers and writers, Samuel R. Delany, and Felice Picano. Alyson is one of the oldest gay book publishers in the country, if not the oldest, and was founded by Sasha Alyson in Boston. The company has been bought and sold a few times since then, and now is based in New York City, and Don Weise, who was my editor a few years ago at Carroll & Graf is now the head honcho at Alyson.
At the party I met up with my dinner companions, who included D. L King of Erotica Revealed, Lori Perkins and Holly Schmidt of Ravenous Romance, and some of my fellow Ravenous Romance authors like Debra Hyde, and from there to Congee Village, one of our favorite Chinese restaurants.
We had originally discovered Congee Village one night when we were in the neighborhood for the In The Flesh reading series, hosted monthly at the Happy Endings Lounge by Rachel Kramer Bussell. The restaurant is on Allen Street maybe 2 blocks east, and it is some of the best Chinese food ever. They have all the exotic festival foods like bird’s nest soup and duck tongues.
But back to BEA and book biz talk. One of the consistent complaints I heard from exhibitors today is that there’s been so much theft! Lots of people had books missing from their booths during the night, and much more than usual. Tough economic times? It isn’t like there aren’t tons of free books being given away (although some people are saying there is less than usual… my bag is pretty damn heavy so I haven’t noticed that…)
Among the booths I visited today, I had a great chat with a Laura Baumbach (and her lovely cohort Deana) at the ManLoveRomance booth. They had quite a nice smorgasbord of hot-looking books! And I also stumbled upon Torquere Press! Somehow I hadn’t realized they’d be there. They have not only a nice line of male/male erotic romance, but have a young adult line, too, Prizm. They said they were getting a lot of interest from libraries, which was also something I heard from NBM Publishing, the great independent publisher of graphic novels, both erotica/adult, and also a young adult/kids line called Papercutz.
I visited many more… and also attending the Baen Books party for a little while… but my brain is too fried to write any more right now. I better say goodnight and try to write a more coherent post tomorrow when I am on my way home on the Megabus! Half a day on the show floor and then I head home.