I think the panel title says it all, and it’s something which isn’t said enough. Matt Moore, Scott Edelman, Adrienne Kress, Mandy Slater, the inimitable Howard Tayler and I worked through various definitions and concepts of professionalism in the speculative fiction industry, trading war stories about those who exhibited (and didn’t) said quality. It was a fun panel, and we lived up to the title by not straying too far away from the topic at hand!

Okay, this might not sound like the most fascinating topic, but if you think about how much attention writers and readers pay to things like backstory, character description and worldbuilding, you’ll realize the relevance of what we talked about on this panel. Matthew Johnson, Claude Lalumiere, Marc Mackay, Sandra Kasturi and I wrestled for nearly an hour with what works (and doesn’t) in presenting exposition in written work, and I think the result was an interesting and sometimes amusing panel.

My first panel at the 2011 version of Ad Astra, and an interesting one about how travel informs writing, even if you’re traveling virtually rather than actually. I was joined by Tony Pi, Jana Paniccia, and (crashing the panel, according to him) Claude Lalumiere, all of whom seem to have traveled a lot more than me!

My only panel at WFC 2010, this was a really interesting panel on what is unsaid in the best speculative fiction. Lawrence Connolly, Madeleine Robins, Delia Sherman, Martha Wells and I held forth (so to speak) to a room with really great turnout…even for a Sunday morning!

This Symposium panel at Gen Con 2010 concerns deadlines, external pressures, and other things which bedevil authors just trying to get their next book finished. I joined Anton Strout, Don Bingle, and Tobias Buckell for this one, which had some good information mixed with some frightening revelations about Anton and Toby’s love for Excel spreadsheets. Be afraid…be very, very afraid.

A third Symposium panel at Gen Con 2010, this one on how to establish an effective and memorable setting, with Maurice Broaddus, Chris Pierson, Robert Farnsworth, and Paul Genesse. This was one of my favorite panels at Gen Con, mostly because of the various approaches the panelists took to the topic…even if we couldn’t agree on how to pronounce “gazetteer.”

Another of my Writers’ Symposium panels at Gen Con 2010, this one on (shockingly) how to create a well-rounded and non-cliched antagonist, with Richard Lee Byers, Marc Tassin and Brad Beaulieu. Again, some good insights here, though heaven only knows how Sex and the City ended up in the discussion… 🙂

My first of a number of panels at the 2010 edition of Gen Con, this one on how to create a well-rounded and interesting protagonist, with fellow Writers’ Symposium members Linda Baker, Richard Lee Byers, Dave Gross and Brad Beaulieu. Some interesting insights came out of this one, and I even managed to sneak in a Paradise Lost reference without being thrown out of the room for being too highbrow. 🙂

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.)