So tired, but happy. I had a wonderful time at Radcon (a convention celebrating speculative fiction held in Pasco, WA every year.) Lots of thanks to the organizers, volunteers, attendees, staff at both the hotel where I stayed and the convention hotel, and anyone else I might have missed. Oh yeah, the fantastic bartender at Sterling Restaurant. The folks making mad amounts of coffee at the Black Rock coffee stand near the Red Lion Hotel. You're all amazing.

Sometimes I do an overview of the panels I was on, but I was on fourteen this time. Plus, on Sunday, I sat in for my husband, who was double booked. So actually, that makes it fifteen. My husband had twenty three scheduled. Going over all of that would take a book rather than a blog post. So, instead, I'll just highlight a few things. Because the next time I'm writing on a book, it's going to be to make progress on my sword and sorcery series: coming within my lifetime, ideally, and hopefully pretty soon.

If that just made no sense, it's because I'm really, really tired. I think I mentioned that already.

Anyway, on the Where Do Writers Get Ideas panel, we talked more about how to figure out which ideas are worth pursuing and what to do when you get stuck than on how to get a story idea. Because really, there's only so many hours in the day, so it's best to write on a great story idea rather than merely a good one. Also, the time you might need an idea the most is not when you're trying to write a story from scratch, but when you're stuck in the middle and need some idea of how to proceed. We all agreed that walks and showers and/or hot baths work really well. And getting out of the house. And combining things that don't normally go together, like honey and stencils.

Things got lively in the dynamic side characters panel. Because characters aren't just characters when you're writing a story. They mean something. If you're writing about them, they must have a purpose to the story, and some sort of meaning beyond being a best friend's boyfriend or a barista. I particularly like the idea of characters that seem to be friends and helpers but are actually trying to keep the main character stuck in their rut, or even causing them to fail. Because they care? Maybe. Or maybe they're secretly evil.

On the how to write/film a fight scene panel, things were quite lively too. Not many people attended, which was too bad because the three of us panelists really worked well off of each other. There was a concept of dials, for example, where on a scale of violence intensity from silly early Batman tv is at one end, John Wick might be at the other, but it's all 'cartoon' violence with just a difference in gore and how gratuitous the violence is. You can have another dial where at one end there's 'clean' and 'bloodless' death where an invisible wound drops a character dead, and at the other end, death includes more suffering and potentially more realistic things like the fact that the body doesn't just go completely still right after someone dies (at least not every time.) Figuring out where to set the dials for your fight scenes involves knowing your audience, and also, honoring your story. 

So that's just three of my fourteen/fifteen panels. I made new friends, visited with old friends, had great conversations with people between panels, and saw lots of great costumes and art. I didn't have time to dance this year, sadly. Maybe next year! Thanks again Radcon, and you too Pasco. As tired as I am, I'm also inspired. If I work hard, and think hard, and plan well, hopefully I'll have at least one new book to show around next year.