I was on a worldbuilding panel at ConFusion that was labeled Worldbuilding 495, intended to be graduate level in contrast with another panel that was labeled 101. I’m not sure we got it that far, but we certainly took it beyond default questions. And then I went to another panel where an audience member’s commentary made me shoot steam out my ears ( Read more... )

I will be in attendance at ConFusion next week, my dears, and here is what I am doing, officially and on the program:

Saturday, 10:00 a.m., Charlevoix. What Should I Write Next? The first book or series is all wrapped up, maybe even under contract. What comes next? Maybe a palate-cleansing change of genre, or building on strength and staying close ( Read more... )

The panel schedule is up for Fourth Street Fantasy con, which starts in about a week. (That is: there’s a social event Thursday night. Programming starts Friday.) I’m on two panels, and here they are:

Truth, Lies, and Meta. Friday, 4:30 p.m. Marissa Lingen, Emma Bull, Casey Blair. Fiction, by its nature, isn’t real, which means that when narration ( Read more... )

Last night I didn’t read Anna Karenina. I didn’t watch Simon & Simon or consume walnuts or gluten or alcohol. I didn’t play Moonlight Sonata on the harmonium. I didn’t buy a hamster.

All the things you don’t do are pretty boring to write about.

For one of my friends, though, not consuming alcohol was a little more interesting, because she was ( Read more... )

Last week I had a post about panels at conventions, and I got interested in how to talk about doing panels better. I’d like to see more people talk about that-especially in the contexts of different kinds of panels. Getting slightly more specific seems like it might be a fertile source of good advice, because I think one of the places people ( Read more... )

One of the things Alec and I talk about a lot is how to make panels at conventions better. Because he did the programming for Fourth Street for four years, naturally some of that conversation has been from the programming side: how do you choose panelists, how do you choose a moderator, how do you write the panel description so that the panelists ( Read more... )

After the debacle that has been several years of World Fantasy Con, Mary Robinette Kowal has posted a convention accessibility pledge. It’s worth a look; it’s worth thinking and talking about. I specifically want to highlight something that I know Mary and the other people who have been talking about this pledge agree with: that the ADA (Americans ( Read more... )

One of the great joys of a good panel is that there’s always more to say about the topic than will fit in the panel slot. When I was moderating, I had probably twenty names on my “so-and-so has a comment, call on them next” list, and almost all of them were people I already knew, and all the people I already knew were people I knew to be smart and ( Read more... )

The schedule for 4th St. Fantasy is up, and it starts today! We’ll be heading up there to settle into the hotel and do evening events tonight. I’m leading the seminar starting at 9:00 tomorrow morning, but all the spots in that are full. You can still get a convention membership, though! And here are the panels you can hear me on if you do:

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I am terrible at the kind of con reports that are the next best thing to being there, but I did have lots of nice moments at Minicon. There were a couple of really quite good room parties (including one that actually was worth being squeezed in like sardines-first time in my con-going experience that that’s ever been worth it, and I’ve been to a ( Read more... )