If you’ll be attending Farpoint Convention this coming weekend and would like to hear me speak on one of my panels, or catch up with me during my signing times, here’s my handy-dandy schedule for the show. Use this information wisely, my stalkers.

Friday, Feb. 13

FARPOINT COCKTAIL PARTY
7pm–8pm, Greenspring Ballroom
Come have a drink and be sociable!

FARPOINT BOOK FAIR
10pm–Midnight, Dulaney 1 & 2
This will be your prime opportunity to buy some of my backlist titles and get them autographed.

Saturday, Feb. 14

AUTHOR READINGS
10am-11am, Dulaney 1
I’ll be offering a short reading from one of my recent or upcoming works. Also reading during this time block will be fellow authors T. Eric Bakutis, Don Sakers, and Steven H. Wilson)

WAR AND PEACE IN FANTASY & SF
11am–Noon, Chesapeake 1
Wars in speculative settings are often presented as inescapable and morally unambiguous; it’s hard to be a pacifist when the enemy is a group of vampires or aliens bent on human extinction. What can be done in military settings that can’t be done in civilian ones? And how do we make space for pacifism and critiques of militarism as well as battlefield action and military strategy?

AUTOGRAPHING
1pm–2pm, Dulaney 1
I’ll be selling and signing books alongside fellow scribes Michael Dougherty and Janine K. Spendlove.

COPING WITH DISCOURAGEMENT
3pm–4pm, Chesapeake 1
I will moderate this panel about one of the less-discussed aspects of the writing life. As writers, we learn very early on to handle rejection, but how do you handle it when a story you’re sure is good is rejected by 20 different publications? Or when your carefully crafted novel is shrugged off by five different agents? Or your self-published novella is bought by only 25 people, all of them friends and relatives? Or your fantasy novel disappears from public view after a couple of weeks? Our panel of authors will discuss their personal strategies for dealing with disappointments, rejection, and other setbacks.

Sunday, Feb. 15

A FUTURE FOR FANTASY
11am–Noon, Chesapeake 1
I will moderate this discussion that asks, Why are there so few futurist fantasies? And why are so many of those that exist predicated on the return of magic to a world that has lived without it? What does the return of magic to a technological setting symbolize? Often, the return of magic is depicted as the harbinger of an imminent apocalypse; why isn’t it a herald of salvation?