About Amy Hello, I'm Amy, an aspiring motorsports writer and former blogger. If you dig deeper enough, you find some very old blog posts, as this started as a book blog, but that's really where I got my start in writing: book reviews, hot book topics and as well as the odd personal essay. After leaving university, I left the book blog behind, but continued writing and going in the world of social media, writing film reviews and promoting queer cinema, but after a tragic event in my personal life, I quickly discovered Motorsports. What started as a love for Formula 1, while finally watching the Formula 1 film, Rush, and discovering Formula 1 TikTok, this love soon expanded to everything Formula E, IndyCar, Formula 2, Formula 3, as well as F1 Academy. I soon found the itch to write come back, with the fast-moving news of motorsport, to the drama, the competition, and the journey of drivers trying to find a race seat. I found that it was the people and storie...
So this year, 2017 marks the fourth year that I have been to YALC and as always I had a great time. This, of course, means buying and gaining too many books, I got like 20 and of course compacting everything bookish as possible into the three days that I was there, which I did. Instead of doing a blog post mentioning all the things I did at the event, I am going to do a bullet pointed lists of things that I did. I would like to first say that I spent most of the weekend by myself which I was fine with considering that I have social anxiety and could not speak to many people even if I knew them from twitter and this was OK for me. So let's get started...
What did do there?
What did do there?
- All the panels- literally all of the panels
- Two signings
- A panel of careers in publishing
- A street team stunt
- Brought and gained all the books
- Gained an alpaca
Friday:
- Woke up stupidly early to get to Olympia
- Got the bus with a Deadpool who then let me off the bus
- Got all the proof copies- not all of them but a lot- Also tip many publishers just had them out of Friday for the taking rather than taking part in challenges
- Got complimented on my Miss Peregrine bag and got a tote and badge
- Went to the Collaboration panel, it was very funny and I worried that Katharine and Elizabeth Corr were going to have an argument on stage, it was fine they didn't
- Also went to the Heroines panel and there was a great discussion over what a heroine was and it was very interesting.
- Met Hannah Witton who is one of my favourite YouTubers
- Visited the LFCC floor. Contemplated buying things but went against it instead
- Went to the SFF now panel. There was lots of discussion over the differences of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. Are there any differences?
- Also went to the Writing What You Know panel.
- Walked around for a while.
- Listened to the end of the Thrillers panel.
- Went to the We Love Buffy panel even though I have never watched Buffy but it made me want to.
- End of Day 1 which ended with me sleeping way too early.
- Went to the Olympia early and went to the first panel of the day which was New Voices 1. It was really interesting to hear all the different authors road to publication and to hear about a variety of books.
- Stayed for the Who Runs the World? panel which was really interesting especially about getting boys to read YA. It made me more intrigued to read Tayna Byre and Virgina Bergin's books.
- Got ready for the E. Lockhart street team which involved me wearing a wig and handing out samplers to people at YALC.
- Listened to the Genre-bending panel with V.E. Schwab and it was interesting to hear them talk about this topic and the way that their books linked to this.
- Went to the Unconventional Romance panel and was listening to the authors talk about the different romances in their book and how they were all different.
- Stayed for the E. Lockhart panel and this made me really excited for Genuine Fraud.
- Went E. Lockhart signing and got my book signed.
- Went to the Laini Taylor panel and I love hearing her speak about her writing process and Strange the Dreamer.
- Went to the final panel of the day which was Books That Made Me which was so lovely especially Johanne Harris's story about the Norse book and V.E. Schwab talk about Neil Gaiman.
- The last thing of the day was Non Pratt shaving her head which was interrupted by a wild Benedict Cumberbatch which had me dying of laughter. The community spirit in that room was just great.
- Again a very tired Amy went home.
Sunday
- The final day where I discovered that my phone had not charged overnight the joy.
- Went to the New Voices 2 panel, again it was interesting to see the different writing journeys of the authors.
- Went to the Fandom panel which was wonderful especially learning about the Being Human fandom and the interesting fan fiction stories.
- Left the Fandom panel to get Invictus.
- Went to the Publishing 102 speech and this gave me much more insight into the publishing process.
- Went to the Sarah Crossan and Brain Cohoghan panel and it was really interesting to learn how they wrote We Come Apart. Whilst waiting for this panel, I made eye contact with Benedict Cumberbatch and everyone was silent as he went past.
- Stayed to watch the Life advice panel and hear about the Wormtail test as well as seeing everyone's reaction when Benedict Cumberbatch interrupted the panel.
- Stayed for the Sticky second book panel where Benedict Cumberbatch interrupted the panel again. Like seriously what was he doing.
- Finished the day with the Patrick Ness and Juno Dawson chat who are as wonderful as always. Again Patrick Ness is just really interesting to listen to and I love hearing him speak.
- I then took advantage of the deals picking up The Lover's Dictionary for £1 and got an alpaca from LFCC.
- Then it was the end of YALC.
Until next year!
Did you go to YALC? What did you do there?
See you soon,
Amy
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