I’m excited to see everyone at LTUE starting tomorrow! Three days of writing, gaming, and fantasy fun. There’s going to be some fun guests, including a handful of publishing acquisitions editors taking in person book pitches. I’ve been attending LTUE for a decade now, and the past 4 years I’ve been attending as a panelist.
Last year I was primarily on panels regarding mental health, both on writing characters with accurate representations of mental illness and on being a writer with mental illness. One of my favorite panels from last year was on using music in your writing. We talked about incorporating music into your fiction as well as taking inspiration from the act of writing music by using beats to help form the moments that push the story forward and to even perfect prose while editing.
This year I’m on panels about fairy tale retellings, rewriting classic fiction, using fabrics and textiles with world building, how to generate ideas when you have none, writing what editors want, irreverence in children’s lit, and even a gaming panel on finding the line between playing antiheroes while not being anti-fun. I’m also excited to be on panels with some of the same panelists I’ve worked with before. I love meeting writers and making new writer friends. And on Friday night, there’s a mass book signing that is free to the public!
Sometimes the best part of LTUE is just the energy of the atmosphere. As an introvert, spending so much time in crowds can be exhausting, but there’s something about being around so many other creatives that just fills the air with creative energy. And somehow just breathing in that air motivates me to keep writing. I love bouncing ideas off other authors. Seeing reactions to my own ideas is the best motivator.
If you’re going to be at LTUE, say hi! And stop by my table at the book signing to check out my new book stickers! I’ve got cats, dogs, dragons, romance tropes, and so many book puns.
