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scop (noun): Old English – bard, minstrel, storyteller

A Weekend of Fiction and Music

The latest installment of Context is shaping up to be one of the best ever.

In addition to conducting two of my favorite writing workshops, I’ll be moderating music-and-fiction themed panels with Alex Bledsoe (Fantasy Guest of Honor), L. E. Modesitt (Con Guest of Honor) Bill and Brenda Sutton (Musical Guests of Honor), and Tom Smith (who’s been featured on both NPR’s Sound and Spirit and The Dr. Demento Show).

I’ll also be joining my good friend Christopher Shearer of Cemetery Dance and Nightmare Magazine for a discussion of sf and music.

How we’re going to fit it all into two day is beyond me, but we’re going to try.

My con schedule is below. If you’re attending, be sure to say hello.

Friday, 6:00 PM
Monster Wrangling (Writing Workshop):
The depiction of your narrative’s most fantastic, alien, and frightening creatures can make or break your book. This workshop will consider effective ways of anticipating, revealing, and depicting monster by examining scenes from some genre classics and proposing a set of guidelines for describing the indescribable.

Saturday, 10:00 AM
Exomusicology: A Discussion of Alien Music Theory
(Panel with Christopher Shearer, Jan Province, and David L. Burkhead)
What characteristics of music might prove universal, and what are likely a Terran, or even Western European, bias? Would we like alien music? Would we even recognize it?

Saturday, 2:00 PM
Filk: The Horror, The Horror
Panel with Bill Sutton and Brenda Sutton(musical guests of honor) and Tom Smith (special musical guest)
Songs About Monsters, Demons and Other Nasty Things.

(Saturday, 7:00 PM
Endings and Beginnings (Writing Workshop):
Underscoring the importance of endings and beginnings, mystery writer Mickey Spillane once said “The first chapter sells the book, and the last chapter sells the next book.” But a well-structured novel contains many endings and beginnings. Each chapter and scene needs to start and end somewhere, and knowing how and where to begin and end them can make the difference between a reader putting your book down or turning its pages until the end. This workshop will consider patterns for effective opening and closing sentences, paragraphs, scenes, and chapters based on successful works of genre literature.

Sun 11:00 AM
Squishing the Notes
Panel with Alex Bledsoe (Fantasy Guest of Honor) and L. E. Modesitt (Guest of Honor)
Putting music and musicians in books – who gets it right? Who doesn’t?


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