Balticon 2024 Schedule

Come join me for Balticon 2024 over Memorial Day Weekend, April 26 – 28! I’ll be in Baltimore’s Inner Harbor at the Renaissance Hotel for this awesome convention. 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	6:30 PM	Indie Guide to Editing (Virtual) [Moderator] Editing is a multi-stage process, from the first rewrites of your rough draft, to putting the final touches on your PDF upload file. Since you are an indie author, you have the honor of managing this process yourself. What types of editing are there? What do you need and how much will it cost? How do you find qualified editors, copyeditors, and more?
Fri	8:30 PM	Quality Control and the Indie Publisher (Virtual) Independent authors comprise a growing segment of the SFF field. But many people assume that their works are not as good as those that go through the major publishers. The truth is that self-published works run the gamut from amateur efforts to quality publications indistinguishable from traditional publishing. Panelists will discuss how to improve the quality of self-published works, as well as how to find good ones.
Sat	10:00 AM	Splitting Genres – And Your Audience Writing across genres is challenging. It can be difficult to satisfy the tropes of multiple genres. When you mix audiences it can be hard to meet their differing expectations. So why do it? Because if you’re lucky, you can achieve something different from other stories. Let’s talk about how and why to step off the beaten path.
Sat	11:30 AM	Economics of Adventuring, Or Who’s Bankrolling You Do creators take into considerations the economics of their adventures? What happens after the Heroes have killed the dragon? Who pays to rebuild the village? Who keeps funding those ill-advised expeditions into crypts? Are wills contested in event of resurrection or reincarnation? When the local economy receives a sudden influx of currency from looted dungeons, how do they handle it? Does anyone have insurance?! Our panelists will have a semi-serious conversation about these concerns.
Sat	5:30 PM	How Contemporary Fears Shape Apocalyptic Fiction [Moderator] From nuclear war to disease to computers run amok, apocalyptic fiction holds a mirror up to society’s fears and shows us just how badly things can go wrong… and what happens next. How have the terrors of different eras shaped stories of the end times, and why have some stories outlasted the fears that spawned them?
Sat	7:00 PM	Impact of AI on Creators If you are a writer, an artist, a narrator, a musician, AI is coming for you. What are the issues with AI for the creative and what can we do about it? Does it matter if you’re using generative AI or assistive AI? Panelists will help creators navigate this tricky area and stop panicking.
Sat	8:30 PM	Late Night Tales from the Slush Pile Our panel of editors won’t be cutting anything out when they bare it all with some of their more… memorable submissions.
Sun	10:00 AM	Creating a Setting for Your Series (2-Hour Workshop) Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve noticed that a lot of authors are making money with series. But crafting a series is hard, and it’s a subject that’s not covered in most writing manuals. Come learn a set of steps for creating a coherent, consistent and connected background to support multiple stories leveraging the same setting, primary characters and supporting characters. Give your series the foundation it needs to become what you want it to be.
Sun	2:30 PM	Finding the Right Writer’s Group – Online and in IRL One of the most important relationships a writer can have is with their writers’ group. Thanks to modern technology writers’ groups are available online and IRL in a wide range of genres and geographical areas. How does a writer find a group that’s right for them, and how do they get the most out of it?
Sun	4:00 PM	My Toughest Book (Virtual) [Moderator] What makes a book hard to write? How did you overcome your problems with the story, or did you? What did you learn from the experience and how did it make you a better writer? Listen to our panelists open their hearts to discuss the hard stuff.
Sun	7:00 PM	Tough Lessons for Indie Authors (Virtual) Indie authors deserve love, even tough love. From not listening to critique from a mentor, to over focusing on perfecting your prose, or even the fear of putting your work “out there”, there are many ways Indie authors can sabotage themselves. Our panelists will discuss some of the lessons they’ve learned as an Indie author.