It's now less than three weeks (yikes!) before GenCon. As in past years, I'm on discussion panels as part of the Writer's Symposium and will be giving a two hour talk about medieval cooking. Below are the descriptions for this year's events.
SEM1118008 - Medieval Feasts and Food: Making the Fantasy Match Reality
Are you curious what medieval cooking was really like? Do you want your fantasy characters' dinner to be plausible? This seminar takes a look at medieval European cuisine as a whole, and discusses the misconceptions and misunderstandings that pervade the popular view. Some of the topics to be covered are food preservation, medieval dining on the road, common medieval food myths, and some of the strange things you can find in medieval books.
08/04/2011, 8:00 PM, ICC : 243
SEM1119600 - Fictional Food
(Daniel Myers, Linda Baker, Steven Saus, Anton Strout)
Real spacemen don't eat grilled cheese! Little details help make your fiction real and add depth to your characters. Fictional food can also reveal important information about the climate and culture you are crafting. Learn how to make up food and diets that are exotic but still believable.
08/05/2011, 12:00 PM, ICC : 245
SEM1119621 - Category 4 Brainstorm
(Kelly Swails, Daniel Myers, Anton Strout, Steven Saus)
Sometimes ideas don't come easy. It may take a lot of work and rumination to cull a workable idea for a story or book. We offer techniques for brainstorming and discuss the resources we turn to when our thoughts go stale.
08/06/2011, 10:00 AM, ICC : 245
SEM1119622 - Worldbuilding: Men, Monsters, and the Creatures Between
(Linda Baker, Sabrina Klein, Daniel Myers, Ramsey Lundock, Bob Farnsworth)
Men, elves, and the like cannot live in isolation, and monsters don't materialize out of nowhere. People and creatures need to fit into the world's ecology and have a life cycle that makes sense, otherwise your readers will see your world as unrealistic and not worth reading about. Find out what makes creatures and races believable.
08/06/2011, 11:00 AM, ICC : 244
SEM1119640 - Pick Our Brains
(Anton Strout, Jason Sizemore, Daniel Myers)
How dare you consider sleeping in on the final day of this year's Gen Con! We bet there're still questions whirling in your brain about worldbuilding, the publishing industry, sprucing up your manuscript, and whatnot. We're here to provide as many answers as possible.
08/07/2011, 8:00 AM, ICC : 244
At this point I'm a bit frantic (as usual) in trying to get everything ready.
