Yallfest 2016

This past weekend was Yallfest, and as usual I headed out there to check everything out. Yallfest is one of my favorite events of the year, and it being in my hometown makes the experience even better. If you haven't been to Yallfest let me tell you what it's all about. It's a two day book festival that holds panels, signings, giveaways, and more. It's on a Friday evening and then all day Saturday.

I usually don't do the Friday events, because it's a lot of pre day events, panels, and because I rather request Saturday off of work and get to experience everything.. My day to cram everything in is Saturday.... my only problem this year was there wasn't a lot I wanted to do. Most of the authors I wanted to see ended up dropping off a couple months back, and a lot of the others are authors I've seen dozens of times and no longer had anything left for them to sign. Even with the lack of signings I personally wanted to attend, I figured this downtime would give me a chance to expand.

This year instead of trying to make it to 20 different events/signings I thought I'd take a different approach and make my y'all experience on a smaller scale. I wanted to still do some signings but I also wanted to do more one on ones and so interviews as well. I got asked to do one and then requested to do a few others. 

I ended up doing signings for :

Leigh bardugo 

Ryan Graudin 

Alex London  

Jennifer Armentrout

And Jesse Andrews. 

I interviewed:

Alex London 

Jennifer Armentrout 

And Jesse Andrews. 

(I'll be posting my interviews soon so look out for those.)

Overall my day spent as yallfest was one of the most chilled and laid back I've had. Usually I try and take on so much (I know sometimes that's half the fun), but having time to actual walk around and then of course having set times with authors made my experience better. I had more fun sitting down talking for 20 minutes with an author than I ever did waiting in line for three hours for one (think this is a given).

The bookstore per usual was very well stocked and ran, the volunteers well informed and polite, and Yallfest went back to basics. Last year they had events SO far spaced out it was almost impossible to get to anything. This year they brought everything back to a central area. The only downsides were the arc drops  were super limited most only 30 per. The books in the store are priced a little too high, and there was some confusion as to where to get press passes, I ended up using a temporary one most the day.

I also heard a little rumor that they might start charging for the event since it keeps getting bigger and bigger every year. Not sure how they would go about doing that, but I guess we will see.  

I think 2016 was my favorite year so far of Yallfest. Can't wait to see who they bring next year, and hoping that the authors that ended up not being able to come will next time.

The next event I will be attending is Apollycon 2017 in Florida.