LTUE (Part II)

The last day of LTUE was quite enjoyable. We started out hitting the "Writers on Writing" panel, which was stuffed full of big names in fantasy: Tracy Hickman, Brandon Sanderson, L.E. Modesitt, and Dave Farland. It was a really good panel, with little nuggets of wisdom like "Talent without discipline is wasted air". Nathan particularly liked that gem, as well as Tracy Hickman's take on e-books.

We wanted to go to another panel on Religion in Science Fiction next, but we ended up missing that one in favor of signature hunting (Nathan had to get Brandon Mull's signature on his Kindle case, and also got Larry Correia's and Dan Wells' while he was at it. The case is pretty much completely filled front and back with signatures now, after WorldCon, World Fantasy, and ConDUIT last year and LTUE this year).

Then we grabbed lunch with Isaac Stewart (who drew the maps for Brandon Sanderson's books) and his brother, which was pretty awesome, and then dashed back for a panel on balancing plots and subplots. That was followed by a panel on schmoozing and how not to trap/scare famous people you want to talk to at cons, and another on urban fantasy. We rounded out the day with a few readings by Mary Robinette Kowal, Larry Correia, and Dan Wells. I unfortunately was not the lucky recipient of any ARCs, but I still fully intend to read all of their upcoming releases (or recent releases, in Larry's case). 

All in all, it made for a long day, but we had fun and saw a lot of people who are pretty awesome. I was surprised how many random people I saw that I knew from lots of other areas of my life: someone from my book group, a former roommate's sister, someone from our ward, someone from work... it got pretty funny by the end. 

And now,  in keeping with yesterday's tradition of ending with a link to a piece of short fiction, I give you Tanya, Princess of the Elves by Larry Correia (this is what he chose to read part of for his reading, which was hilarious). To get to it from the link, click "Next" in the upper right hand corner and then select the second link in the table of contents. Or feel free to browse the rest of the free short fiction found there. I will probably put them all on my Kindle soon for my reading pleasure in the next day or two.