I helped cover the New York City Comic Con in February ’09, and this post never ran. Its themes are eternal.

The Authors Round Table saw a standing-room only turnout at Comic Con: the moderator announced that it was one of the largest crowds ever gathered there for writers.

The panel featured ten popular genre authors, with grand dame Tamora Pierce a particular draw, judging by the cheers her introduction and answers generated. The gathering of so much talent could have been handled more smoothly — the experience was muddled by asking too-typical, boilerplate questions like “What made you want to write?” across the board, then waiting for ten separate answers. But as it turned out, we had a lot to learn.

By the time the authors had dutifully gone down the line of moderated questioning, there was little time left for the audience’s. The answers provided, however, never failed to prove illuminating. The event in full can be watched on host Suvudu.com’s website, but I wanted to share the best moments – and lessons – gleaned from some of today’s most successful masters of genre fiction.

The writers were:

John Birmingham, the Axis of Time series

Peter V. Brett, The Warded Man, The Painted Man

Alex C. Irvine, The Narrows, A Scattering of Jades

Kim Harrison, The Hollows series

S.C. Butler, the Stoneways Triology

Tamora Pierce, the Alanna series, the Circle of Magic series et al

Vicki Patterson, the Sign of the Zodiac



Jeff Somers, the Avery Cates series

Carrie Vaughn, the Kitty Norville series

Jackie Kessler, the Hell on Earth series

When the panel was asked how they first found out about fantastic worlds, and what initially brought on their interest in speculative literature, the answers were varied but often held surprisingly common threads. I was struck by the sheer number who cited parental encouragement and their parents’ bookshelves as the initial spark that got them going. Almost all were voracious readers from youth.





The influence of parents promoting books at an early age would seem to have a direct correlation with fostering creative thinking (and future writing careers). Some of the titles mentioned as particularly influential were The Lord of the Rings, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, The Wizard of Oz , The Princess and the Goblin, and “Dangerous Visions,” the ’60s science fiction short story anthology edited by Harlan Ellison, which left author Alex C. Irvine’s head “permanently bent” at age 12.

There were also freely-volunteered tales of using mind-altering substances as a gateway into other worlds. Irvine encountered Dungeons & Dragons via his father’s friends coming over to get “wicked baked” and playing all night to the sounds of Steve Miller. John Birmingham got to travel around Australia smoking weed and writing for a book, which, he said, led to a new perspective and his conversion to science fiction. The topic was mentioned enough that Irvine interrupted with “creative people never smoke pot” and “this is not a theme” to widespread laughter.

Others returned to books as a more conventional gateway into other spheres of thinking. Bradbury’s Dandelion Wine taught at a young age that you could do “magical things with words.” Neil Gaiman’s Sandman and the groundbreaking work of graphic novelists were hailed. Tamora Pierce declared that she writes “fantasy novels with girl heroes who kick butt” to even louder audience appreciation and applause.

She explained that her father was blessed with three daughters, “so I was the oldest son,” and she was brought up on a diet of Sir Edmund Hillary (the famed explorer who wrote about being the first to ascend Everest), The Boy’s King Arthur, The Boy’s Robin Hood, and other adventure books. Her only “feminine” literary influence was Louisa May Alcott and her steely ladies. Pierce’s father encouraged her early attempts at novel-writing, but “neglected to mention it might be difficult.” Reading Lord of The Rings finally got her off to the races.

The authors were asked: what influences your work now?

The answers were varied here. Many touched on the need to “be a sponge” and take in the world at large, suggesting that everything from history books to magazine articles to posts on the internet can be plumbed for ideas about alternate worlds and cultures. It was stressed that creatively recycling an old idea can be a very good thing, to take the standard tropes of a genre and turn it on its head, to do something unexpected.

Kim Harrison cited music as major influence while writing, pointing out that “musicians can do what I do, tell a story, in three minutes.” She recommended searching for music that well-fits your individual characters for further inspiration.

We were also told that “the real world is deeply inspiring” and much stranger than most things in books, though history books definitely seem to help. Pierce said it’s okay to be ruled by our weird obsessions, and that we should learn and absorb all the information that we can while in the grips of them. She thinks of it as “laying up the seed bed for your own creativity,” an invaluable future resource to return to: “You have no idea when you’re going to need those ideas.”

How much of an influence is the internet on your work today?

The internet evoked a strong reaction from our panelists. It was said to steal as much time as it gives, the “greatest time saver and greatest time sink.” They related that Wikipedia should, of course, never stand as the last word for research when work is under scrutiny, and that Encyclopedia Britannica should used instead: “Trust me on this, I am trying to save you pain.”

Quite a few of the authors talked about readers on blogs as invaluable contributors, and cited reader expertise as a fantastic resource. Twitter is starting to be a “big deal” for writers, with the ability to ask for specific help or audience opinion and receive it immediately. Several said they did so much intense location research because otherwise they’d hear about it in emails from local fans. Thanks to the Internet and libraries, writers can now elaborately map out distant, never-visited cities and claim to be able to navigate them.

How to you keep outside distractions from intruding while you write?

One idea was that you shouldn’t – you should always try to be “like a sponge” and take everything in. Writing should be a parallel process in both worlds, and everything you encounter in “real life” can be incorporated. But making a fixed time for creativity was also encouraged. Two-hour blocks set aside, with the internet turned off and distractions minimized, could be ideal. The ultimate goal when writing is to “make it your escape and then you’ll love being there.”