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| Credit: Wizard World |
I apologise for
missing last week’s post. I was busy with a special writing project
that was due any day and so I didn’t have time to post anything
except to my Facebook page. You can visit my Facebook page for any
updates in between blog posts.
I promised you a
fuller report of Wizard World Comic Con Sacramento in my last post
and so that’s what I have here for you today. However,
I don’t have enough time
to go over all three days of the con in one post, so
I’m going to break up the
coverage into three parts.
The con offered a lot of great events such as cosplays and
panels on comic book creation, including art and writing. I’m not a
costumer but I just dug seeing the people who are and that go way,
way out with their apparel! And that’s a great thing. To see what I
mean, check out the photos in my last post if you haven’t done so
yet.
But my favourite
part about sci fi and fantasy conventions is talking to the other
artists and writers as well as attending their panels. Panels by
experienced writers and artists don’t only give you great tips for
your own work or insight about what goes into your favourite comic
book series or novel series, but they also give you motivation to
create and read more. And even though this convention emphasised
comic creators, many of the creativity panels--especially the ones on
writing--work for fiction in any medium whether it be comics, prose
books, TV, movies or even video games. So here’s the more detailed
highlights of Wizard World Comic Con Sacramento that was held at the
convention center in downtown Sacramento, June 17 through 19.
Day 1 of Wizard World
I don’t have a lot
to say about day one, since I was only at the convention for a couple
hours and only attended one panel and it wasn’t even the whole
thing. I went there that late, hot Friday afternoon mostly to pick up
my admission wrist band and check out the refreshing air conditioned
dealers room which was almost the size of the Golden 1 Center arena.
Dealer booths covered at least a good three quarters of it.
So after I looked
around at some art and talked to a couple comic book creator friends
at their booth, I sat down at the panel that was going at the
Creative Stage set up their in the dealers room. The panel was called
“From Beginning to End: The Art of Plot”. There were at least
three panelists there. The main one was comic book creator Victor
Dandridge and one of the others was novelist Todd Gallowglas. I did
not take notes on this panel, because I was only there for about ten
minutes, but I do remember Todd saying something like that one of the
things he does to motivate himself to write and finish his books is
that he puts his empty wallet in front of him at his work space and
that reminds him of the bills he has to pay. And another panelist
said that, for him, there’s no such thing as writer’s block and
that it’s only a fear of writing. If I remember correctly, he said
that the easiest way to handle it is to write anything no matter how
much of crap it is. Whatever, I believe this approach to writer’s
block and have heard of it from other pro writers. Just write the
rough draft and complete it; there will be plenty of time for
revision and even re-creation later.
Day 2
As far as Saturday’s
writing panels I attended go, the first one was called “Modern
Mythology, Classic Horror and the Devil Incarnate”. The main
panelist was Richard Kadrey, writer of the comic book series Lucifer,
which was no wonder they named the panel the way they did. But much
of this talk discussed
the dark genres such as horror and dark fantasy although Kadrey said
he does not like the word “dark” because it’s a relative term
and that he doesn’t like being labeled as a dark genre author. This
is a problem that many writers have when their books have been
published and marketed, especially famous authors because they tend
to be looked at only for the genres they mostly write in. I don’t
plan to limit myself to writing dark fiction or science fiction for
the rest of my life, even though they’re my favourite genres and
I’ll regularly write in them. But because I like literature that is
dark, especially
supernatural fiction, the word “dark
genre” doesn’t
bother me in the least.
The problem one of
the other panelists, author Genese Davis, had with the genre label of
“dark” was that it scares people away from buying, reading or
watching things in that category. But my belief is that if it scares
those people away, then that’s not our
target audience and that’s probably a category of fiction not for
them. That is why we classify fiction into genres. Personally, I want
to know what I’m purchasing or checking out before I spend my money
or time reading the book. I do read outside the speculative genre,
but when I want to read in it I want to know where to find it in a
book store or library.
Kadrey went on to
give a really great writing tip. That tip was to that when we write
to go into the project with as much ignorance as possible for better
creativity. I believe what he meant by this was that if you write
with as little conceived notion as possible about how you want your
story to turn out, it will more likely come out as a unique piece. It
goes along with my personal philosophy about writing, especially
fiction writing, which is that it is a journey. It’s a trip that
you take into a conceived time and space, into a setting of a sort,
where you don’t know what you will come across or how you will get
to the end. Approaching fiction writing in this way helps you to
develop your story in directions other writers haven’t taken before
and it makes it more enjoyable for you as the writer. I mean, who
wants to take a trip knowing ahead of time exactly every detail they
are going to see? That would be boring and unenriching.
The panel also
discussed mythology in today’s pop literature, TV and movies.
Richard talked about his approach to his Greek god characters in his
novel, Sandman Slim. He said that every Greek deity “is a
jerk” and that this makes their characters ambivalent and he wants
to keep the continuity in that trait between his stories. This is why
the Greek deities continue being popular in today’s story-telling
because, unlike many of the other deities of mythology, they are
flawed and very human-like. The difference between them and humans is
that the gods are immortal and they have powers that exceed the
strength of humans.
As far as the Satan
character goes, Kadrey mostly talked about how the devil is depicted
in his own work which is as a hero, particularly in Lucifer.
So the version of his Satan derives, as he explained, from Milton’s
in Paradise Lost. He discussed the Satan/Lucifer character
more in his other panel I attended that day, which I will talk about
in the next post.
“Circa Sixty Years Dead” Update
I just finished the
back cover summary for the print edition of “Circa”.
I’m going to add it to the back cover in the template and will
submit the book for publication during the week. Hopefully it will be
available for purchase by the next post.
Until then . . .
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