My “home” convention is ICON, which is celebrating its 49th year. Interestingly, I was born the same year it started so it has been one of those things that has been lock-step in my life since I first went to it in 1995.

Panels

Last week, I posted my schedule but I ended up doing two more panels than I expected.

Where Do We Go From Here?

This panel focused on writing science fiction and being wrong. Things like John Carter's Mars series and how we do not have four-armed beings nor Flash Gordan or antigravity metal. For some, specially hard sci-fi writers, that can be stressful but for others, they embrace it.

We also touched on the new editions of Star Wars and Diane Duane's Millennium edition of So You Want to Be a Wizard. (Diane is one of those major influences to my own writing.)

We talked about retroactively changing the settings, or just embracing the wrong details, or slowly adapting. I noticed in my own writing, I adapt to technologies but try to keep the details.

One of the discussions was “sci-fi as window dressing” and “sci-fi as integral to the story”. I like character-driven stories and sometimes sci-fi is just a setting for me (you could probably change the setting to fantasy and get the same story) while others it is integral to the story (like my per-second charges of housing in Casting Call). Both have their place, but I definitely came more off as sci-fi is a setting while speaking.

It was also late on a Friday, so there weren't a lot of other people.

Speculative Fiction and the Stages of Life

I really liked this panel. We got to talk about middle and old characters, and readers. There are much different stories than the coming-of-age stories.

As I get older, I'm not fond of coming-of-age and power discovery stories. I want to know what competent people do against competition antagonist. I like the muddled good verses evil that age seems to bring.

It was a very spirited panel.

Author Meet and Greet

This wasn't on my schedule, but I'm glad I saw my name on it. This year, they tried something new. Previously they had authors stand at small tables and wait for someone to stroll up. This year, they had larger tables and invited others to chat. When that didn't work, Doug Brenner started playing match-maker and inviting others to have lunch and then finding an author to do a personal reading for them.

One table wanted to hear from Sand and Blood and they seemed to be really into it. Which is cool, mostly to hear laughter and smiles at certain points of the story.

That definitely made my day.

Fantastical Low Stakes

This is a panel I was asked to join in by Doug. I have written a lot of short stories as part of my 300 consecutive week challenge.

It was nice talking about stories where no one dies, the world doesn't end, and why we want stories were the only thing at the end is getting that ice cream. Someone called these “cozy fantasy” stories and I like.

Dungeon Masters Workshop

Not much else to say, it was fun talking about players, my kids, and how to handle things. Most of the focus was on railroad campaigns, sandbox, and “guided” (sort of sandbox but events will pop up no matter where the players go).

I'm pretty much a sandbox GM. I also focus a lot on documentation of my games (and fiction worlds) after the fact. In my games, I reward players who are willing to write down session logs, expand areas of the world, and generally get involved in the world-building side of creating a story.

Monster Lovers Society

This was a panel that Doug asked me to join since it was a topic I was comfortable with speaking about in public. I've done many erotic readings at ICON previously..

It was a blast. We got to talk about monsters, shifters, what is fun about them, why pictures have to cover men's nipples in Ohio, and basically got to cover a lot of the naughtier side of things.

This was also one of the few times I talked about my commissioned writings, which has a fair amount of monster loving, so that was nice to be able to talk about the writing I can't give details. Usually I gloss over them as my “monthly obligations”.

Benefactors Brunch

While I've been a benefactor of ICON for quite a few years, I don't usually make the brunch (the only benefit I actually use). This time, I got to talk to the artist guests of honor and had a great time.

The Formulas of Fantasy: A Study of Tropes

This was somewhat ad-hoc of a discussion but we talked about tropes in our writing and what we like writing. It was a fun, but I was definitely flagging at that point. Still, it had a lot of fun highlights.

Writing Fundamentals - How to Plan a Novel

Much like the GM panel, I talked about documenting, how to be a pantser, and why outlines are pointless beyond 2-3 chapters. I really should document my writing processes again, but I got to talk about the struggles of focusing on characters.

Dealer Hall

Even though I didn't have a table, I did my usual “author groupie” and bought at least one book from almost every author who showed up. This resulted in my first duplicate book in ten years, which I'm ashamed of not remembering that I had bought (but not read) from the previous year.

Don't regret doing it, I just try really hard to remember what books I already had because my mother used to constantly buy duplicates and my job as in my pre- and teen years was to go through her basket and remove them.

Interest

I didn't have a table this year but I got more interest in my writing than ever before. It was either not being in pain, being cheerful, or something else but I ran out of business cards with my site and people seemed genuinely interested in what I was saying. I even had people stop me in the halls and dealer room to talk about it.

Being asked to join some panels because they wanted someone else was also a nice egoboo.

That was nice.

Really nice.

I did give away a copy of Flight of the Scions to an author friend. No review required, just wanted to give some thanks and also have someone else read it after the sting from the last review.

Aftermath

Usually, when I come home from a convention, I feel guilty for not writing enough, not being smart enough, or opening my mouth too much. This time, I was excited about writing again. I haven't in a long time and it was… really nice to feel like I was capable.