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The author Kevin J. Anderson has done an interesting experiment to help promote his latest series of fantasy novels: he’s collaborated with some musicians to produce an album full of music based on his novel. He and his writer wife Rebecca Moesta wrote the lyrics and the music was written by Erik Norlander, a keyboardist and composer who has wor...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from the panel “How Roleplaying Can Help Your Writing.” The panelists were: Al Carlisle. Al is a professional psychologist who specializes in serial killers. I think someone misunderstood what type of roleplaying the panel was about when he got assigned to this panel! Adam Meyers. Adam is an actor...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from the panel “Plots, Subplots, and Foreshadowing.” The panelists were Bree Despain, James A. Owen, J. Scott Savage, Brandon Sanderson, and Stacy Whitman (Stacy is an editor for Tu Books). Subplots Part of the purpose of subplots is to make your story feel alive. They make your characters feel ali...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from the panel “How Does Geography Affect Your Story?” The panelists were Robert J. Defendi, Joshua Perkey, Isaac Stewart, and Howard Tayler. Defendi is a big (literally and figuratively) RPG writer, Isaac is an artist who does Brandon Sanderson’s maps, and Howard does a sci-fi webcomic. I don’t know Jo...

A while back I started playing Dragon Age II, a dark fantasy game that merges action and drama. It’s very bloody—excessively so, I would say, since giant gouts of blood accompany pretty much every blow in the game. But what can I say? I’m a violence monger, and I’ve really been enjoying the game. One of the interesting mechanics it has is the a...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from the panel “Building Different Economies” which in the booklet description was actually called “Building Different Economies/Politics.” The latter title turned out to be more accurate, which makes sense—it turns out economy and government are intimately related. The panelists were L. E. Modesitt, Ro...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from the presentation “From Idea to Story” by Jess Smiley, who is indeed a very smiley man. His presentation wasn’t very dense, but he’s an enjoyable guy and it was fun to listen to him. He’s a comic book artist, and his slides were full of great visuals. But this was also a very hard presentation to ta...

Today’s selection of notes from LTUE comes from a presentation on creating effective villains by Leigh Averett. Leigh is an unpublished writer who loves villains and has made a particular study of them. She was very interesting and entertaining to listen to, but the nature of how she presented things made it a bit hard to take good notes. Four ...