I had a great time at the Olde City, New Blood convention in St. Augustine, FL! Since my mom and my little brother came with me, we honestly didn’t spend a ton of time at the actual convention, but we did get all tourist-y and wandered around town. Make sure you stick around ’til the end of the post, because I’m doing a giveaway of some signed books I got from some great authors while I was there!

St. Augustine is beautiful and a great place to go on vacation. Instead of the hotel the con was being held in, I stayed at the St. George Inn, which I highly recommend if you don’t mind a room up a flight or two of stairs/no elevator. The rooms were spacious and comfortable, and right by the heart of the town (shopping district, ocean, old fort, Ripley’s Believe It Or Not, etc).

The shopping district was great, with tons of variety and fun things to see/decent restaurants. I recommend Mojo’s Bar & Grill in particular. Great barbeque! Their fried green tomatoes were excellent. I didn’t think to get pictures of the shopping district except for a store that sold some lovely hand-crafted glass items.

If you get a chance to visit St. Augustine, make sure you go on the Ghosts & Gravestones tour (see if you can get James D. as your guide on the riding tour, he’s hilarious and does a great job of hamming up the spooky stories). Can you spot the weird, ghostly stuff my mom and I picked up on camera?

As for the convention, I spoke on a panel about vampires and another panel about humor in urban fantasy.

Loved meeting the bloggers like Carol from Bitten by Books (who is also a great moderator), Laura from Little Read Riding Hood and Christen from Goldilox and the Three Weres (aside: I love that blog name, lol).

I was also thrilled to meet some great authors like James Tuck, Delilah Dawson, Alex Hughes, Lucienne Diver and Jennifer L. Armentrout (not to be confused with Jennifer Armintrout, who is also lovely and very funny). Plus it was great to see some friends again like Casey from Literary Escapism, Chelsea from Vampire Book Club, Laurie London, and Damon Suede. Damon is totally hilarious, by the way, so if you ever have the chance to go to one of his panels, don’t miss it!

Aside from being distracted by family, I was also getting over the flu and pretty derpy from jetlag. I didn’t get a chance to socialize very much or go to other authors’ panels, and I ended up having to skip out on the bad movie tweet-up, but I did have a great time on the panels I sat on and the group events like the meet-and-greet and the charity signing.

All in all, it was an excellent convention. Kudos to Jennifer (Books Make Me Happy Reviews) for putting together such a great event! I’m looking forward to doing it again next year.

Now, on to the giveaway! Laurie London and Erin Kellison were kind enough to give me signed copies of their books, so I’m going to run a giveaway for their books as well as one of mine. One winner will get all three, and I’m keeping this open to all (i.e., international, except where prohibited by law, blah blah, legal disclaimers and such here).

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck to all who enter!