Arisia Sunday

Fun day today. I had my two panels, the first of which was with GoH Laura Gilman and others. We discussed character creation. Mostly the panel all agreed on the need to make the characters consistent, and true to them selves and avoid painting yourself into a corner. We covered Mary Sue's, cardboard characters, and research and the need to make the each character an individual distinct. This led into a few minutes on the need to make the characters distinct and not entirely nuts. That meaning that if you arrive at a place in your book and realize your main characters are House and Monk you've probably done something wrong.

The second panel was on the Appeal of Evil Barry Longyear and two others who's names elude the protoplasm and goo in which my hair is rooted managed to entertain and inform the crowd while i tossed out bad jokes. This was a fun panel with a bit more audience interaction than most, i think we started taking questions and comments after only about twenty minutes.

Then there was the all important lunch. The hotel had another one of its buffets. The selection was sorta subprime, but the quality was good. Mr Shirt and i discussed half a hundred thousand things over the course of an hour or two around three or so.

After one of my panels someone asked me about what they should do to write more. The short, short answer was use the A.I.C, method. The short answer was write more, and the long answer (for me) was; if you don't write it no one else will so sit down and write it.

For Laura:

Pats Win!! Pats Win!! Pats Win!! :-P