RavenCon 2024 Schedule

What are YOU doing on April 26 – 28? Me, I’ll be livin’ it up at RavenCon 2024, an awesome SF/Fantasy convention being held in the Richmond area. Come see me at the con!!! And you can come for the entire event, or just a day, if that’s all the time you have.

I’ll be on panels, I’ll be running a workshop on Sunday, and I’ll be signing books. See you there!

See my full schedule below…

Day	Time	Session
Fri	6:00 PM	Writing Readable and Believable Near Future SF We are looking at global warming, resource wars, mass migrations, a fragile world economic system, and global political systems that seem unable to deal seriously with real problems. How does a writer extrapolate from the present into the future while avoiding the pitfalls of infodumps and exhausted tropes?
Sat	11:00 AM	It Takes a Village: The Logistics of Human Colonies in Space How do you maintain a supply chain? Do you limit reproduction? Do you need to rotate people planetside? How do you integrate different cultures? Creating a human colony in space is going to be a logistical challenge. How will we handle it?
Sat	1:00 PM	Reading: From “Dustbowl Detective” In a splintered America, Ulysses Perez ekes out a living as a private investigator in the “scrublands,” the desert areas nobody cares about anymore. His next case: a futuristic train heist.
Sat	2:00 PM	AI: Separating Fact, Fiction and Good ‘ol Copyright Infringement AI might be a lot of things. It might enslave us all. It might usher in a new era of post-scarcity abundance. Or it might just be the next big tech innovation that is going to change everything but still get rolled over by big copyright. (Who remembers Napster, Bittorrent, or the Pirate Bay?)
Sat	4:00 PM	What Every Editor Wished Authors Knew At some point in your writing career chances are you are going to work with an editor, but many authors know next to nothing about the field of editing. Copyeditors, acquisition editors, managing editors, line editors, developmental editors… What do they all do? How do you know what kind of editor you need? How do you find a good editor? How do you work with an editor of a magazine, anthology, or publishing house? Everything you need to know but were afraid to ask.
Sun	11:00 AM	Strong Stories Need Strong Heroes (2-Hour Workshop) Compelling heroes are the centerpiece of successful stories. They’re not just carried along by the plot—they drive the plot. They demand the reader’s attention and drag them on a journey. If your heroes aren’t doing that, then this is the workshop for you. This group collaborative session will teach you a multi-layered approach to crafting a compelling, memorable hero. During the character-building exercises, you’ll also learn how to build a meaningful character arc for your hero that you can leverage for your story’s plot.