Going to this year's GenCon? Then swing by the GenCon Writer's Symposium, which is held right upstairs from the main exhibition hall. Your GenCon badge gets you in for free to the Symposium's more than 140 hours of programming by more than 50 authors, including myself.
My schedule of events includes:
Friday, Aug. 15 at 2 pm
Writer's Craft track: Writing Amazing Short Stories with John Helfers, Toni L. P. Kelner, Jim Lowder, and Catherine Shaffer.
Learn what makes a great short story great, what types of stories work in short form, and tips for crafting amazing short stories of your own
Friday, Aug. 15 at 5 pm
Business of Writing track: Selling Your Stories with Elizabeth Vaughan, Carrie Harris, Scott Westerfeld, and Maurice Broaddus.
Learn how to sell a finished story, get advice on choosing a market based on the length or genre of your story, and learn to improve the chance that the person you send your story to read it!
Saturday, Aug. 16 at 1 pm
Publishing track: Traditional Publishing with John Helfers, Erik Scott de Bie, Saladin Ahmed, and Jim Minz.
Find out what it takes to get published by the big publishing houses, learn the advantages of going this route, and discover the challenges
inherent in this path to publication
Saturday, Aug. 16 at 6 pm
Writer's Craft track: Short Fiction Plotting with Don Bingle, Catherine Shaffer, Dylan Birtolo, and Christopher Rowe.
Learn to shape a plot when you have less than 10,000 words to tell the entire tale! It takes a special set of skills to forge a plot that works in
short fiction, and we'll tell you how to do it
Sunday, Aug. 17 from 11 am to 1 pm
Read and critique session with Elizabeth Vaughan, David B. Coe, and Maxwell Alexander Drake.
This session gives attendees the opportunity to read something they've written and to hear instant feedback from published authors. If you stop by this session and share a little of your fiction I'll not only give feedback but also suggestions on where to submit the story.
If you see me at the Symposium, be sure to say hello. I love talking with people.