TropiCon 2025 - St. Augustine, Florida

Over a week ago, I got to spend four days in St. Augustine, Florida, the oldest city in the US. I was attending the TropiCon Book Expo 2025, as an attending author.

Every day there was something different to attend. Rachel Van Dyken, a NY Times best-selling author and screenwriter spoke on Imposter syndrome, and strategizing one goal, among other topics. I enjoyed hearing her take on being an author, specifically an indie author.

We also got to hear from a literary agent, Carly Watters, with P.S. Literary. Her talk was very informative. She laid out the process of authors getting an agent and how to send the proper query letter.

Carly also outlined the whole process from the time you get an agent to all the way through the traditional publishing process. It amazes me the amount of people and departments it takes to publish a book, and those of us who have no agent or publisher, we do all the work ourselves. Kudos to us!

Authors and aspiring authors who were in attendance were given the opportunity to do a 7-minute pitch to Carly, the following day.

I honestly wasn't prepared to do such a thing, but I signed up anyway, even if it was just to get the experience. So, I pitched my Eva St. Claire mystery series to her. She gave me some great feedback and loved the premise of my stories, but since she personally doesn't work with series books, she gave me her colleagues name and email and wrote down everything I should send him, as he does work with authors who do series.

Fast forward a week later and I am in the process of writing my first ever query letter, to send him.

On that same day we heard from USA Today best-selling author, Jen Talty, and she spoke about things from writing trends to AI, and marketing trends, which ended up being helpful.

I myself have never done a newsletter, but apparently a lot of authors do, and she gave us tips on that as well.

AJ Layne was another presenter, and he talked about BookBub and how to get our books to stand out and get more clicks, but also the financial end of things when you're working with BookBub and how to make it work better for us.

Now, one of my favorite parts of this expo was the author panel which consisted of Sherrilyn Kenyon, Rachel Van Dyken, Barbara Nolan, Kiersten Modglin, Jen Talty, and Cynthia D'Aba. They all fall under NY Times, USA Today or Amazon best seller lists.

Readers and authors were allowed to ask questions. And to hear all of their different answers, because each one has had such different experiences in this field, was rather interesting to me.

There isn't a singular mold for being an author, we all make our own journey in different ways, and what may work for some, might not work for others. And that's what makes us all unique.

By the time Saturday rolled around, we were at the big day, the author signing. There were close to 70 of us, and we all had our tables set up, decorated and ready to meet and greet all of the amazing readers that keep us all in business and able to do what we love.

It was a lot of fun meeting all of the readers, signing books, taking pictures and just talking to everyone who stopped by.

I was grateful to be able to attend this Expo, and I had four amazing friends that traveled with me, that made the experience that much more fun. We explored St. Augustine together, after I was done with daily events, but they got see quite a bit more than I did during the day, and they had a great time. After seeing all of the pictures of us having fun, my husband designated us, "The Spunky Bunch." I think it fits perfectly.

The four of them were such a great help to me, setting up and tearing everything down at the end of the day, I don't know what I would've done without them. And they are my biggest cheerleaders.

This was definitely a girl's trip to remember, for years to come.

I look forward to being part of TropiCon 2025- Branson, coming up in May.

Lynessa Layne and her husband AJ are the coordinators for all of the TropiCon events. They do these events in multiple locations every year, and the two of them do a phenomenal job. They have Branson in May, Pensacola in June and Hot Springs in 2026, and that's just to name a few.

If you are lucky enough to attend one of their events, you won't regret it.

Check out some of my fun pictures from the event below.