Nashville Author Event Review!

Hello and happy Sunday readers! Hope your weekend is going great! As many of my fans and readers will have already hear, yesterday I had the great privilege to attend the Nashville Author Event hosted by Lalone Marketing. The event was held June 7, 2014 at the Musicians Hall of Fame and Museum located in the heart of downtown “Music City USA”, Nashville, Tennessee (the happiest place on Earth in my opinion). I did a quick pre-post about the Nashville event. That post can be found by clicking here. 

The event was the best author event I have been to to-date and I am excited to share my experience with all of you guys! As you guys know, reviewing my events is something of a tradition here at OneGuysGuideToGoodReads and they are always my favorite posts to write because they include lots of pictures of me freaking out over meeting some amazing authors, bloggers, and fellow Street Team members! Hope you guys are ready, because this post has all kinds of fun in store!

 

Yesterday morning, two of my best friends (Hannah and Tommy) and I set off on a 3 hour drive headed to Nashville. Though a little tired, I was more than excited about what the day had in store for us. I knew that 2 of my fellow street team members, some blog "sisters", author friends, a a whole slew of fellow readers awaited me at the event. This was also the weekend of CMAFest which, if you guys don't know anything about it, seriously get out from underneath your rocks. CMAFest is a HUGE deal. It's pretty much Woodstock for country music and the ENTIRE city of Nashville celebrates! I figured rough traffic, no parking, long lines, and plenty of frustration would meet us upon our arrival in Nashville. I couldn't have been more wrong. Little to no traffic, easy parking (very close to the venue), and no frustration whatsoever. The weather started out beautiful so no complaints there. My only complaint was that my partner in crime, the amazing Megan who has accompanied me to every event thus far was unable to come due to a prior commitment. Before I get into the review of the event, here are some pictures of the venue and Nashville! 

Hannah and I in front of the Musicians Hall of Fame and museum before the event!

Marquee bearing the event and the Griffin Peterson performance announcement! Such a neat venue!

The beautiful Nashville skyline from the observation deck of our parking garage!

Once we got inside the event we were greeted by a line of amazing fans and then several "hey Ethans!" which made my day! If you guys have never been to a book event, let me tell you: go. The people are so nice and they really do remember you. I had been introduced/reintroduced to at least 10 people before I ever even took my place in line. It was such an amazing feeling! 

Line waiting to meet the amazing authors!

Rather than go through and discuss my experiences meeting each author, I am just going to post a whole stream of pictures and give you guys a visual journey through the event. Sorry, but I'm in all the pictures! :D Here we go!

First up was my amazing friend and author Miss Cora Carmack. I have met Cora before, but I still LOVED seeing her again. As a member of Cora's Street Team I have worked closely with her for the past few months promoting her newest novel All Lined Up! Cora is so freaking awesome. Pictured with us is my blog mentor and "sister", Amber from GrownupFangirl. More info on Amber and her gang later on!

My next stop was probably the one I was anticipating the most. Jay Crownover! What up Jay!! Jay is the author of the Marked Men series, and while I haven't read them, Jay is one of my favorite people ever. She and I have connected several times since our paths ALMOST crossed in Des Moines back in April. It was so awesome to FINALLY get to meet her. She is such a fun person who really loved her fans. I may be joining the Crownover Crowd after meeting her and Melissa! Megan is VERY jealous!

Third on the list was Rebecca Donovan! Rebecca is the bestselling author of the Breathing series and loaded me up with some amazing swag. Another fun lady, I can't wait to meet her again!

Fourth was the ABSOLUTELY AMAZING, INCREDIBLE, FANTASTIC Colleen Hoover! As you guys will remember, I featured a series review last month of Colleen's Slammed series. Colleen is an amazing author and hilarious woman. She was also extremely generous and actually gave me some surprises to give away to my amazing readers (be on the look out for that). I'm a huge Colleen fan so meeting her in person was such a great experience! (BTW that's Tommy in the background, hey Tommy!)

Fifth was bestselling author Heidi McLaughlin! Heidi is the author of the extremely popular Beaumont Series! Heidi was so awesome to meet. She loaded me up with giveaway swag and even told me to contact her if I ever want to collaborate so you guys may be meeting more Heidi later. Also with Heidi was one of her cover models which was pretty cool (for obvious reasons I did not request a picture with him, sorry guys [I'm looking at you Carmcats....])!

Sixth up was probably the coolest person I met in Nashville, Mrs. Tina Reber. I have only heard of Tina so I did not know what to expect. Nobody mentioned that she was the most awesome person ever! She and I talked for quite awhile about me being a guy in this female dominated book world and she had lots to suggest in the line of future events. Tina is awesome, she was later found dancing in her seat at the concert later that afternoon! She was so cool to meet. I'd love to see her again after reading some of her works! Her book covers are AMAZING!

Oh boy. I can't describe my experiences with this author in a short few sentences. This is me with Jenn (J) Sterling. Don't know who Jenn is? You should be ashamed. Jenn brought the party with her to Nashville and definitely made my few minutes meeting her a very memorable experience. I will never, ever forget meeting Jenn. Haha! Jenn is the bestselling author of The Perfect Game series. I haven't read any of Jenn's works, but after meeting her, I definitely will be in the very near future. I WILL be making it a point to meet Jenn again. Haha!  

Last on the event line was the author I was the most excited to meet, Mrs. KA Tucker. KA is the bestselling author of one of my favorite series, the Causal Enchantment series. I will be doing a series review of it later this week (with giveaway). KA is also the author of the Ten Tiny Breaths series which is huge right now! KA was amazing and so nice to talk to. Coming all the way to Nashville from Canada to be with her fans. We were so fortunate to meet her. 





Check out each author's Goodreads page by clicking on the authors name below!

Cora Carmack          Jay Crownover          Rebecca Donovan          Colleen Hoover  

Heidi McLaughlin          Tina Reber          Jenn Sterling                  KA Tucker

As you can see, the team behind this amazing event did not skimp on the author list! 8 of the biggest names in the business! Seriously, you couldn't throw a stone without hitting 2-3 bestselling, award winning authors. That is seriously impressive. HUGE shout out to Emily and her team at Lalone Marketing for putting this event together.

That being said, the event would not have gone off without a hitch without all the amazing blog sponsors and volunteers who helped make it happen. They did such a great job. Even more exciting, 4 of those volunteers were friends and fellow ST members! The event was blog sponsored by none other than the amazing girls over at GrownupFangirl. You guys have heard all about these ladies before, but I'm going to talk about them again. Amber, Carmen, and Christina were on hand in Nashville and were so awesome to see (again). I had previously met Carmen and Christina when I traveled to Des Moines for AViD in April! These girls have been so awesome to me while starting this blog and Amber can be thanked endlessly for her support since the beginning. I seriously love you guys to death. Ya'll always know how to make this guy feel special!

And as if that wasn't reason enough to be excited, I also got to finally meet another Carmcat, Elizabeth, who volunteered with Rebecca Donovan at the event! Here I am with Beth!

Here are a few more pics of me with the girls!

Me with the amazing and hilarious Christina from GrownupFangirl, Christina is probably my current favorite person on the planet, seriously she's awesome!

Pictured with my "sis", friend, mentor, fellow Carmcat, fellow blogger, storm chasin', readin' fiend and favorite person from Mississippi, the AMAZING Amber from GrownupFangirl! She's such an awesome person!

Me with the beautiful and hilarious Carmen from GrownupFangirl!



Carmen and Christina came all the way from the Kansas City area to be there, nearly 9 hours! They're hardcore!

The Carmcats went out to dinner after the event yesterday evening to celebrate us being in the same town for the first time! Nashville wasn't exactly "close" for any of us, but we still made sure to get together before heading back to North Carolina, Alabama, and Missouri late last night and early this morning!






Be sure to check out the girls from GrownupFangirl by visiting their amazing blog at http://www.grownupfangirl.com/ they work 366 days a year to ensure they have the most awesome book blog out there! Give them some love!

Here's the last of the random pics I have from the day including a picture of the Griffin Peterson performance!

Cora cheesing it up before the Griff concert. We can't take her anywhere without her being CRAZY! Just kidding, you know I love ya Cora!

 

Griffin Peterson and band playing the soundtrack to Colleen Hoover's bestselling novel Maybe Someday!

Overall this was THE BEST author event I have been to to date. The authors were amazing, the fans were great, the convert was spectacular and oh by the way IT WAS IN NASHVILLE!!! Woohoo! Needless to say we were rather exhausted after the 3 hour drive back to Missouri afterwards, but it was well worth it. I know I will be forgetting someone, but huge shout outs to each author, the volunteers, Emily, and all the bloggers I had the great opportunity to meet yesterday! Special shout outs to my best friends Tommy and Hannah for coming with me to this event. Sorry you had to be a pack mule and camera man Tommy, you know I appreciate it bro! Lol. And Hannah, I am so glad you finally got to meet some of these amazing authors I've been telling you about! Much love to all you guys! 

That's all I have to say for now about the Nashville Author Event, but you can check twitter for the hashtag #NashvilleAuthorEvent for some fun posts and pics of the event or you can check out the event Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/events/591605820924239/ for more awesomeness! 

Coming up tomorrow here at OneGuysGuideToGoodReads I have a release day post for Kallie Ross' newest novel Descent! I am getting ready to start it tonight and am real excited about it. It come to me from the amazing KP and her team at InkSlinger so check back tomorrow around noon for that post! Also be on the look out for some giveaways soon because I have LOTS to give away after yesterday. Have a great week readers and as always, Happy Reading!

-Ethan