A Great Time - Olde City, New Blood

I had the pleasure of attending Olde City, New Blood this past weekend, as a featured author.

OCNB was a weekend mini-con in St. Augustine, Florida, focused on urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Readers and authors rubbed elbows all weekend, and it was a great time. This was the first year of its existence, but from everyone I talked to, it was a resounding success, so I’m hopeful it will become an annual event. If it does, I can surely recommend it.

Aside from the fact I got to hang out with friends and meet some enthusiastic readers, I also got to meet and chat with authors I greatly admire like Amy Lane, Mary Calmes, Damon Suede, TC Blue, Poppy Dennison, Lori Toland and the always fabulous Kiernan Kelly. 

Before you start wondering if this was a m/m conference… Nope. We only made up a small portion of the authors there. A number of other UF/PNR authors were in attendance – too many to list here, but I had the pleasure of speaking on panels with Laura Kaye, Hildie McQueen, Elisabeth Naughton, Lexi George, Cynthia Eden and many more. In fact, that was one of the best things about this con.

The panels consisted of a range of authors: New York Times bestsellers, small published, e-published, m/m, YA – the whole gamut, and I felt the m/m contingent was incorporated seamlessly and equally. The panels I spoke on included: the growing popularity of m/m, world building, paranormal characters beyond vampires and werewolves, and sweet vs. spicy romance. It was exciting to be able to answer questions from a m/m romance perspective, and have those answers contrast or complement the answers from authors who are considered more main stream.

I can only hope I held my own, but I know Damon and Amy (who are both waaaay more eloquent than I am) did wonders to increase converts to m/m romance. One of the best panels included both Amy and Damon, and was essentially Fiction Improv. The panelists were given some very basic information about plot and genre randomly contributed by the audience, and they had to make up a story on the spot – a few sentences apiece from each author before the next author would pick up and add their own spin. It was clever and hilarious.  I just wish I could recall everyone who was on the panel, because they were incredible. Let me just say this… platypus-shifter infestation in space. That's a book waiting to happen!

For my own personal pimpage… I took my super purple abs everywhere! Partly because my Loose Id books are my paranormal ones, and partly because who wouldn’t want those lovely purple abs anywhere and everywhere?

All in all, it was a fun weekend, an excellent con, and hopefully a few more readers were made aware of the many different fiction options available to them.

KC Burn