Come see me at FogCon this weekend!

This convention zoomed up on me before I knew it, but I'm super excited! I'll be appearing at FogCon this weekend, at the Walnut Creek Marriott. I hope to see you there.

Here's my schedule:

Friday, March 6,  3:00 pm Salon C

Tenses for Time Travelers and Other Abominations of Language

Travel to a strange place -- learn new words for animals, foods, and activities at your destination and along the way. Travel in a strange conveyance -- learn new words for fuels, travelers' pastimes, and social structures. How do invented words affect the reader's experience of an invented world? What strange manglings of language feel natural and atmospheric, and what just doesn't work?


Friday, March 6,  4:30 pm Salon C

When your Traveler is my Colonizer

Themes of travel, exploration, and colonization are intertwined with one another in genre fiction and are often glamorized as "classic adventure". But every colonist is also a colonizer. What happens if we remove or subvert the "colonial gaze" when we look at these stories? Which stories offer a post-colonial perspective or critique of the ideology of exploration and colonization? How does a modern fan best interact with the more old-fashioned and unreformed examples of this staple of genre fiction?


Friday, March 6,  8:00 pm Santa Rosa

READING

I haven't decided what I'm reading yet, but I suspect it will either be "Lady Sakura's Letters," or "The Valiant Heart." There are some other great writers in this group, so come and hear us! It should be a great time.


Saturday, March 7,  3:00 pm Salon A/B

Embracing "The Other"

Fantasy and Science Fiction have a long history of asking us to empathize with the Other -- the alien, the fae, the one who Isn't Like Us. Sometimes that "not like us"ness is done really well, and other times it's easy to see the human culture under the rubber "alien" suit. How can we present cultures we are not part of with depth and respect? How can we avoid writing yet another *Fill In The Blank Human Culture Not the Author's* With Purple Scales story?



#SFWApro