Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

Salt Lake Comic Con 2016 – Day 1

Posted by Rampant Coyote on September 2, 2016

JBPreppingSLCC2016_640I started the day at our booth. Come see us, if you are there! It’s #2226, near the celebrity signing area. I’m not a celebrity, but I’m happy to sign books! 😉

Went to hear Mark Hamill speak at the LARGEST NUMBER OF PEOPLE he’s ever spoken to. He was awesome.  Like, way awesome. You can hear/watch for yourself. No, he didn’t reveal anything about Star Wars Episode 8.

Sadly, our booth had to open, so I didn’t get to stick around to hear William Shatner at the same venue. While Hamill was a tough act to follow, I’m sure Shatner was up to it.

Afterwards, I was at the booth, and was a little surprised by the number of people coming through on a Thursday. It was BUSY, but awesome.

JediProtector640I didn’t get to go visit many places in the vendor area, but I dropped by the 501st legion and got a snapshot of my friend Edy VanOrden as she protected the queen.

Actually, I ran into a ton of friends on the vendors floor – just in passing. That’s probably why I didn’t get to see too much of the floor itself. 🙂  But I did end up going to the WordFire Press booth… aka that “Tower of Power” and talking to a few authors there that I know. In particular, Julie Frost is a pretty amazing lady and a prolific short-story author who has been very kind in offering useful advice for a struggling n00b like myself. Her excellent recent novel is called Pack Dynamics, and she is a winner of the 2016 Writers of the Future contest.

I got to meet Christie Golden, a very prolific author and one who has published many books in popular licenses, from D&D to Star Wars. We actually have a mutual friend from waaay back.

Brad R. Torgersen, author of The Chaplain’s War and tons of short stories, winner of scads of awards and nominations for his short story work, was finally back from deployment with the Army Reserves. It was great to see him again, and a panel he was on with the Utah Valley Astronomical Club about the conjectured 9th planet in the Solar system (yes, I was taught as a child that we had 9 Planets in the Solar System, but alas, Pluto was disqualified), and how planets in other star systems are discovered. It was fascinating stuff! We don’t know much about these worlds yet, but there’s another point where modern discoveries have rendered stuff I thought I knew (and scientists thought THEY knew) obsolete. It was once believed that the Solar system was fairly unusual in possessing planets. In just the last decade or two, we’ve been able to discover that not only were we wrong, but in just the last couple of years we’ve learned we were waaaaay wrong. In fact, it’s beginning to look now like most stars have planets orbiting them.

David Farland’s panel on creating a cast of characters for novels and screenplays was really information-dense. He broke down character roles that they serve in the story, talking of “character circuits” and their sources of tension and conflict even between allied, friendly characters.

I attended a panel on writing fantasy, moderated by Larry Correia, which included fantasy and SF legend L.E. Modesitt Jr., long-time urban fantasy author Laurell K. Hamilton, Matthew J. Kirby, Sarah Kuhn, Brian McClellan, and JP Roth. It was probably more inspirational than educational, but it included tons of advice and suggestions from successful writers on writing in general, and writing fantasy in particular.

FantasyPanel_640

I also attended a panel on world building and creating magic systems, which also included Larry Correia and L.E. Modesitt, and my friend and fellow Xchyler author Candace Thomas.

I can’t wait to resume my adventures tomorrow!

And as a reminder – our publisher Xchyler is running a major sale this weekend!

 

 


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  • MalcolmM said,

    I guess Modesitt is a legend. I use to enjoy reading his books and I was amazed at how quickly he turned them out.

    He writes quite well but his books all follow a formula. I started to feel like I was rereading the same novel again and again. Even books in different series were very much alike. So I gave up on him at least for a while.

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