One of two panels I had at Worldcon this year, this session looked at politics in speculative fiction in a number of interesting ways, though I’ll admit that I sometimes felt we were losing the “speculative fiction” part a bit. But overall this was an engaging and thoughtful panel to be a part of, with some good contributions from the audience and fellow panelists David Nickle, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, Lou Antonelli and Madeline Ashby. Not audible is my family, one member of which said she loved the chance to see me “in my element.” If a science fiction and fantasy convention is indeed my element, I think I’m probably doing something right!

I always have fun talking shop with other authors, especially when they’ve got such different experiences from my own (while sharing the same love for story and narrative that I do). So a panel like this one, the table for which I shared with Kerrie Hughes, Matt Forbeck and James Dashner, was particularly enjoyable. I’ll admit that a particular Tweet which came through during the panel made this even more fun–you’ll just have to take a listen for yourself to understand the context!

I’ve done panels like this before (most recently at last year’s Gen Con), but it was interesting to take another run at what fuels the author’s interest in language with Brad Beaulieu and James Sutter from Paizo, who brought both an editor’s and an author’s perspective to the mix. On the whole, an interesting and fun panel.

An interesting panel at Readercon on, essentially, the age-old (and probably overly simplistic) distinction between “plotters” and “pantsers,” those who plan everything ahead of time and those who just, well, write and find the work as they go. Dale Bailey, Peter Dube, Stacy Hill, Cecilia Tan and James Patrick Kelly (our talented moderator for this panel) had a fun discussion, with more metaphors crammed into an hour than is strictly socially appropriate. One big caveat–I almost didn’t post this because of how bad the audio is, a function of a big room and an echoey sound system, so be warned that this is often difficult to hear.