This was my only panel at Readercon this year, and it was an interesting one–about how advanced degrees had impacted the writing careers of the panelists. More than one person noted the irony of having this panel right after the “Drop Out, Write On” session, with panelists who never graduated college, but the key point is that different paths work for different people. For me, academia was a valuable entry into the world of writing generally and speculative fiction more specifically, and the other panelists had (not surprisingly) similar takes. The panel had Brett Cox (who was the only other “Humanities” person), Lauren Burka, Anil Menon, Tom Easton and Joan Slonczewski. (I apologize for the audio–I had forgotten my digital recorder and thus recorded this with my netbook, an experiment I won’t repeat.)

This was my last panel appearance at Ad Astra 2010, and since it was about an important topic (getting the agent who can get your work sold), we had good turnout in a sizable room. Most interesting was that everyone on the panel (which included Megan Crewe, Adrienne Kress and Ian Keeling) had different paths to getting their agent, which is, I think, instructive…and I was told by a few of the attendees they were glad that we had a story or two of the “work at it and build up to an agent” variety, rather than everything being the “here’s what happened that time that lightning struck” kind. Watch out for the few audio spikes here!

My third panel at Ad Astra 2010, this one on keeping characters’ voices distinct. This was the largest panel I was on (always kind of a problem when you’ve only got a little under an hour to cover the topic)–I joined Hayden Trenholm, Grant Carrington, Karin Lowachee and Kate Story. Again, watch out for the couple of spikes in the audio volume.