Gen Con Family and Friends

Table of Contents: 

• Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
• Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Author Selfies & Dyscrasia Fiction Fans 
• Gen Con 2025 - Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes
• Gen Con 2025 - Family and Friends 
•  You are here

Gen Con 2025 Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes

 Table of Contents:

• Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
• Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Author Selfies & Dyscrasia Fiction Fans 
• Gen Con 2025 - Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes
•  You are here
• Gen Con 2025 Family and Friends 

Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Selfies

Table of Contents: 

• Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
• Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Author Selfies & Dyscrasia Fiction Fans 
•  You are here
• Gen Con 2025 - Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes
• Gen Con 2025 - Family and Friends 

Writer Symposium Author Selfies

John Scalzi – Guest of Honor Writer

Maurice Broaddus – Author and Chair of WS

Olivia Sailor – Lead Organizer Writers Symposium

Byron Leavitt – Diemension Games Writer

CSE Cooney - Author

Gilles Plantin - Monolith Creative Director & Jeszika Le Vye - Artist

Tim Waggoner – Horror & Conan Writer

Chris A Jackson - Author

Aaron Rosenberg - Author

Michael Stackpole – Sci Fi & Conan Writer

Jim Zub – Conan Comics Writer

Sean CW Korsgaard - Battleborn!

Dyscrasia Fiction Fans

Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review

Table of Contents:

• Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
•  You are here
• Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Author Selfies & Dyscrasia Fiction Fans 
• Gen Con 2025 - Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes
• Gen Con 2025 - Family and Friends 

Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panels Review

Remembering Howard Andrew Jones 

Thursday, 11:00 AM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4

Join us as we honor and celebrate the life, work, and memory of Howard Andrew Jones, one of our own.

Featuring: Bryan Young, C. S. E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Chris A. Jackson, Erik Scott de Bie, Erin M. Evans, Gregory A. Wilson, Katherine Monasterio, Matt Forbeck, Sean CW Korsgaard, Seth Lindberg

- We announced the Howard Andrew Jones Memorial Travel Grants (for enabling BIPOC and first-time panelists/authors to attend); thanks to the 2025 Writer's Symposium organizing committee

- Also, some homeage pictures of the Skull's Zigguratt (Goodman Game's Vendor booth) and of the piano outside the Writer's Symposium green room (this haunts me, but I love it. Miss you Howard)

See previous Memorial Obiturarys, Memorial Panels:

• Howard Andrew Jones Memorial Post -1  [piano]
• Howard Andrew Jones Memorial -2
• Two Howards Fathering Sword and Sorcery – Swords Together! [Obit]
• Windy City Pulp and Paper 2025 - Howard Andrew Jones panel and Connecting with the Community

From Battles to Fisticuffs

Saturday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 1

Bar fights, professional fights, ambushes, duels, full-scale battles - how do we do them justice? How do we craft a physical confrontation in our scenes?

Featuring: J.B. Garner, James A. Hunter, Richard Lee Byers, Seth Lindberg, Stephen Kozeniewski

Community Building

Thursday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Boston

Writers who have a community thrive better in their creative work. Come listen to our panelists talk about the communities they participate in, best practices, and how to get started. 

Featuring: DaVaun Sanders, Kelli Fitzpatrick, Rob Cameron, Seth Lindberg

Monster as Protagonist

Friday, 4:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 2

Sometimes, it's the monster's turn to be the star of the show. How do you write for when your protagonist is a bloodsucking fiend, an evil genius, or a shambling corpse?

Featuring: Daniel Kraus, Erin Roberts, Khaldoun Khelil, Seth Lindberg, Shveta Thakrar

Sword & Sorcery

Friday, 10:00 AM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4

From Robert E. Howard to Howard Andrew Jones, explore the highs, lows, and two-fisted pulpy action of this fantasy subgenre.

Featuring: Bryan Young, Michael A. Stackpole, Richard Lee Byers, Sean CW Korsgaard, Seth Lindberg

 

Magic Systems 101 

Friday, 5:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 2

Join us as we discuss how to develop a magic system for your game or story and how to ensure you don't break your own rules.

Featuring: Aaron Rosenberg, Daniel Myers, Danni Williams, James A. Hunter, Seth Lindberg

Nilah Magruder Spotlight 

Saturday, 1:00 PM EDT for 1 hr Marriott: Marriott Ballroom 4

Join our Writers Symposium featured guest in conversation for a special one-on-one Q&A session

Nilah Magruder and Seth Lindberg

Gen Con 2025 TOC

 

Table of Contents:   You are here

• Gen Con 2025 - SELindberg Writers Symposium Panel Review
• Gen Con 2025 - Writer Symposium Author Selfies & Dyscrasia Fiction Fans 
• Gen Con 2025 - Writers Symposium Behind the Scenes
• Gen Con 2025 - Family and Friends 

UK Roadtrip - Literary Inspirations from Tolkien, Shelley, to the Ancients

This Summer, Heidi and I took a Rick Steve's Tour (best 14 Days of England, highly recommended);  it started in Bath, and we arrived a day early since we had arranged for a separate private tour from Daniel to see Stonehenge (which was absent from the awesome Rick Steve's itinerary we had signed up for). Had an absolute blast. This captures highlights related to writing:

1) Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; The Modern Prometheus - 1818

A plaque in Bath commemorates Mary Shelley's writing of Frankenstein (she was 18 years old!). Later, when we went through Oxford and went through the amazing Treasures of the Bodleian Library, we saw several of the hand-written scripts of Frankenstein with her edits, and a portrait painted from he deathmask (painted by Reginald Easton, watercolor on ivory, circa 1857)

2) Other Treasures of the Bodleian: Robert Hooke's 1665 Micrographia & Jane Austin, and Lewis Carroll

The Bodleian Library holds a first edition of Robert Hooke's Micrographia. Hooke is a hero amongst mechanical engineers and rheologists (all hail the Spring constant) and microscopists. His drawings showed the world stuff they had never seen before, and the image data was digestible to all who could get their hands on the printed books.  This is the second time I saw a 1665 edition - the first being in 2012 when I gave a lecture at the McCrone Research Institute in Chicago.

Also, they had some awesome scripts from Jane Austin, who had roots in Bath.

3) To write, one needed pencils!  Derwent Pencil Museum in Keswick

The science and engineering behind pencil making is kind of fun. To note one story, Charles Fraser-Smith commissioned special pencils under the Official Secrets Acts of WWII. The RAF pilots got them, and they were fitted with maps and compasses to enable escape from behind enemy lines.

4) Church of England, King James Bible champion also wrote Daemonologie book

The trip fully illuminated the splintering of the Catholic Church (we visited many ransacked and ruined Abbeys and Minsters); soon after the formation of the Church of England, folks got their own readable Bibles (i.e., written in English, not Latin) from King James I (same as King James VI of Scotland).  Not only did he initiate/commission the project for the bible, he actually did write a book on Demonology (largely espousing the torture of witches).  A statue/relief in Oxford commorates his role in the making of 2 books.

5) Rosetta Stone - British Museum  [~200BC]

Excerpt from Wikipedia: "The Rosetta Stone is a stele of granodiorite inscribed with three versions of a decree issued in 196 BC during the Ptolemaic dynasty of Egypt, on behalf of King Ptolemy V Epiphanes. The top and middle texts are in Ancient Egyptian using hieroglyphic and Demotic scripts, respectively, while the bottom is in Ancient Greek. The decree has only minor differences across the three versions, making the Rosetta Stone key to deciphering the Egyptian scripts."

This stone enabled the decipherment and translation of hieroglyphs. It is so popular now, no contemporary human canreally see the actual stone up close via the mob of tourists.

6) Legion of the Shadows - York Minster Museum under the Church

Karl Edward Wagner used the legend of the Ninth Legion (Legio IX Hispana), the infamous legion that went abruptly missing in 108 AD. to write his Robert E Howard pastiche of Bran Mak Morn. The legion was last recorded in York, they had left their signature on bricks viewable in the Roman Fortress Museum under the York Minster Church.

7) The 'Tolkien Door' at Stow on the Wold Doors of Durin, also known as the West-gate of Moria

Cotswolds - Stow on Wold - Link - excerpt:

The north porch of St. Edward's Church in Stow on the Wold, Gloucestershire, is home to a wooden door which looks like something from a fairy story. Indeed, rumour has it that the door was the inspiration behind J.R.R. Tolkien's J. R. R. Tolkien's Doors of Durin, the west gate of Moria that appears in a scene in the The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

The door is made of dark wood with studded panels, and it has an old oil lamp hanging above it. The door is quite small, and it is said that only a hobbit could fit through it.

Tolkien was known to visit the area while he studied at, and later became a professor at, Oxford University (Merton College). Much as we'd love to believe that the door was instrumental in the creation of the Doors or Durin, the claims have never been authenticated.

The north porch of the church was built about 300 years ago and young yew saplings were planted to enhance its entrance. Today these trees are now part of the architraves for the door and make this one of the most photographed doors in the Cotswolds!

St Edward's Church is just a short walk from the Market Square and the magical yew tree door and stained glass windows are well worth visiting.

8) Harry Potter

My kids were into the novels more than me. Anyway, it was neat to learn how Oxford was designed (40+ independent universities forming a city, Lewis Carroll, C S Lewis, Tolkien, and more sprung from here).  The design of the houses in Harry Potter were inspired by this, and filming for the movies occurred in Oxford and York, amongst other places. Picture below captures Oxford, a train station in York, and the Shambles streets of York.

9) Stanway House

The Stanway House is rich with literary history. 

"Stanway House in the Cotswolds was a frequent summer retreat for J.M. Barrie, the author of Peter Pan. He was known to spend time there during the 1920s, and even up to 1932. While staying there, he wrote parts of Peter Pan and also formed a local cricket team called the Allahakbarries, which included other notable writers like Arthur Conan Doyle, H.G. Wells, A.A. Milne, and P.G. Wodehouse", according to Country Walkers [and our tour guide].

10) Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain - Welsh Mythology

Lloyd Alexander’s The Chronicles of Prydain was the first book series I read. The image of the Horned King on the cover of The Book of Three, plus the Cauldron Born deathless warriors, had a huge impact on my psyche.  Lloyd Alexander did not have a specific Welsh geography that inspired him, but drew heavily on the Mabinogion. As we toured Wales, we stayed/toured in Conwy and Caernarfon, I re-read the first two in the series. 

11) Pre-historic Stones: Stonehenge [300BC],  Avebury [2800BC], Castlerigg [3200BC]

At Stonehenge, thanks to the prodding of my buddy Dirk, I took a selfie video of me chanting the Charm of Making, Merlin's chants in the 1981 Excalibur movie. That video will not be shared here!  Anyway, touring the ancient stones is a wonderful experience. Stonehenge; being the most monumental in size and height; Avebury, being the largest diameter-enough so to encompass an entire town! and Castlerigg; being the most intimate (in that it is more remote, visitors can approach the stones).

Battleborn Magazine

 Simulcast on Black Gate today! Click here,

Add comments on Black Gate! 

Battleborn is an upcoming action-packed sword and sorcery magazine curated by Sean CW Korsgaard and published by IronAge Media. Read this to learn the scope of this supercharged magazine, the crowdfunding campaign needed to make it a reality (Indiegogo Aug 1st!), and learn Black Gate Exclusive scoops!

As an editor at Baen, Sean CW Korsgaard championed the Hanuvar series, and was mentored by the author, the late Howard Andrew Jones.  Sean CW Korsgaard states that Battleborn is emulating Howard's run on Tales from the Magician's Skull, both in style and in terms of authors and artists tapped. The magazine will feature a new Hanuvar tale from the late author, and from first issue to last issue, this will be on the masthead: "Howard Andrew Jones - Editor Emeritus."

Expect:

• Contemporary authors
• Classic reprints
• And, perhaps adding to a Heavy Metal flair, each issue will have a short comic crafted by Schyler Hernstrom.
• If all stretch goals are met, they will have room for 20k words more per issue... which WILL be open to submissions.

Immolating Ember Appears in Savage Realms Monthly - July 2025

"Immolating Ember" appears in the July 2025 issue of Savage Realms Monthly!

It includes an interview with me too!

Available now (click here!)

The snarky seductress, Ember, has lead roles in two recent anthologies:

• "Embracing Ember" (2022). A Book of Blades Vol I (Rogues in the House Podcast)  
• "One Hive. Two Queens" (2022). Terra Incognita (DMR Books, edited by Douglas Draa)

Ember also appears as a minor character in:

• "Breaching Earth's Womb" (2023). A Book of Blades Vol. 2!   (Rogues in the House Podcast)  
• "Raising Daughters" (2020). Whetstone Amateur Sword & Sorcery Magazine Issue #2

Sometime in 2026, the collection Gave's Daughter will feature her, and her sisters Leech and Melanie!

Cover art from Bastien Lecouffe Deharme. Ember is the one on the right!

 

What Rough Beast? - Interview with Byrn Hammond

What Rough Beast? - Interview with Byrn Hammond - Simulcast on Black Gate

Waste Flowers and What Rough Beast? Tale of Goatskin, written by Bryn Hammond, both with cover art from Goran Gligović[/caption]

Black Gate has been tracking the inception and growth of New Edge Sword & Sorcery Magazine, starting with Micheal Harrington’s 2022 interview with Oliver Brackenbury (champion and editor of NESS), through 2023 with NESS's first two magazine releases (also Mele’s review of #1), and then into 2024 with  NESS’s first book “Beating Heart and Battle Axes and its two-novella combo book Double-Edged Sword & Sorcery, and (deep breath)... most recently... NESS's publication of a NEW Jirel of Joiry! (2025).

NESS crowdfunds 4 New Novellas (link)!

Surprise, NESS continues to blaze flaming hot new trails! Starting this September 9th 4PM and running through September 30th, NESS pitches four novellas. The first advertised is What Rough Beast?, written by Bryn Hammond (with cover art by Goran Gligović, and interior illustrations by Linnea Sterte).  As shown in the cover images above, this first novella is another Tale of Goatskin and has the same cover artist as Waste Flowers, Goran Gligović, who was featured in a mini-interview on Black Gates' previously.

Waste Flowers

Goatskin the goat nomad and her bandit love Sister Chaos guide merchants from Samarkand across the Gobi desert to the Mongols. But their caravan veers from one weird assault to weirder and worse. Who is behind this grotesquerie? Will they lose their way, or even lose their minds?

What Rough Beast?

Among the yak nomads, rowdy, restless young have thrown themselves into a cult of were-beasts ridden by unknown spirits, and they stalk Goatskin. They feel evil: evil by the lights of the intruder Temple, or by the banned old beliefs? And the shaman Goatskin searches for – a sad old man who set off on a quest his people call insane – what beast does he impossibly grapple? In the starry high meadows, what inhabits the night? Whose evil?

The other three novellas in the campaign promise wondrous, contemporary adventure, as per NESS's mission.  But here we highlight Bryn Hammond's contribution. Learn her muses and motivations, why she splatters paint on canvases, and learn why you'll want to follow Goatskin into the haunted Gobi desert and beyond as she battles seriously weird, undead armies and dragons!

Read this, learn inside scoops, follow Goatskin!

Chain Story 2 Project - Sword & Sorcery

The post below on the Chain Story project will be simultaneously cast on Black Gate this month (aug 4th): Click the below link to comment and read there:

Chain Story 2 Project - Sword &  Sorcery

It has been 15 years since The Chain Story project hit the internet; in 2010, Michael Stackpole led a bunch of authors to write stand-alone adventures all shared via "The Wanderers' Club."  All the stories were "chained" together with a common element but enabled every contributor to showcase their own characters/worlds. As standalone tales, they could be read in any order.  And.... all stories were free to readers (at least for several months, many times indefinitely)!

Chain Story 2 has just commenced and will follow the same approach. This round, expect Sword & Sorcery with a common magical artifact represented in the logo. Learn about the project and the first three entries now on Black Gate. Shortcuts to the free stories are included below.  Stories will be released every few weeks, so check the Chain Story website continuously, and you will also be treated to cool interviews (i.e., with S&S Champion Matthew John, who just released his second entry in his Maxus Cycle,  Within the Weeping Eye).

We'll aim to review the Chain Story project as it develops again in a few months, but read this to get onboarded!

GRAVE'S BROOD - Chain Story 2 - Sword and Sorcery by SE Lindberg

 

Grave's Brood

Doktor Grave sends Brood to recover a crown from the Red Orchard, only for Brood to find it is the source of a bloody plague caused by Grave’s experiments. Facing vampiric plants and their loyal clan, Brood must confront his past and question whether he can trust Grave or escape the nightmare himself.

Download Now free (from now until at least Dec 2025):

• Grave's Brood - PDF  [download from Google Drive: LINK]
• Grave's Brood - eBook  [LINK]

Cover Art

        “Infernal Executioner” Licensed 2020 from Antonio Jose Manzanedo Luis

Chain Story 2 Project:

The Chain Story is a cooperative effort between authors to share new work with their audiences. Each author provides a story for free (for a limited time, we do have to eat eventually) which everyone else shares with their readers, sharing new and exciting work by authors they may have missed. Each story becomes part of the chain by using bits and pieces of a central plot, which will expand as the project continues. The more you read, the more you will come to understand what’s going on between the world. If you like this idea, please let the authors know and support them in their work. The easiest way to do that, aside from buying stories, is to share news about The Chain Story on social media.

To learn more, click here: The Chain Story Project [link]. / https://www.chainstorycore.com/

https://www.chainstorycore.com/blog/free-fiction-round-four 

Also, check out the primer posted on this blog and Blackgate.com.

Dyscrasia Fiction Fans

Tackling Ravenloft is tough without the proper gear.

Thankfully, this Dungeons & Dragons crew has Dyscrasia Fiction merchandise!

Appreciate John, Dirk, Dave-1, and Dave-2 for being supportive. 

Back of T-Shirt

Interviewing the Champion of Heroes, Jason M Waltz

 Simulcast on Black Gate May 29, 2025

Interviewing the Champion of Heroes, Jason M Waltz of Rogue Blades Entertainment and Foundation

Jason M. Waltz has published 16 Books under Rogue Blades Entertainment (RBE), another 3 under Rogue Blades Foundation (RBF), having lured in authors Such as Brandon Sanderson, Orson Scott Card, C.L. Werner, Glen Cook, Steven Erikson, Ian C. Esslemont, William King, Andy Offutt, and spurred the writing careers of dozens. Not all are Sword and Sorcery (S&S), with weird western and pirate anthologies appearing, but most are.  Two of my favorite introductions to anthologies cap the ends of the RBE series: Return of the Sword (2008) and Neither Beg Nor Yield (2024 BG reviewed by Vredenburgh and Mele), the latter JMW refers to as his Swan Song marking a shift toward focusing on his own writing. Coincident with that, he has recently sunsetted the related RBF.  We'll discuss some of his works to date, but note that he has three stories seeing publication in July 2025!

He’s mingled with the Black Gate crew in many ways over the years, invited John O’Neill to pen the introductions, published many contributors here, and now he is interviewing them. Yes, you will be glad to know that even as he steers from publishing to writing more, he is still actively building the community through his 24 in 42 podcast [broadcasted via the Rogue Blades Presents YouTube channel]. Heck he is even hand in the game by guest editing Raconteur Press' first Sword & Sorcery anthology.  He never tires.

As we salute his heroic efforts, let’s learn more about his journey!

“Heroes are those who continue to do the ordinary in extraordinary times, and to do the extraordinary in ordinary times.” -  JMW 2008

Parth Kelkar joins Dyscrasia Fiction Fan Club

 Parth Kelkar survived a PhD Internship at work, and unlocked a trophy achievement of Helen's Daimones T-shirt!  You rock Parth.