Dahlonega Literary Festival wrap up and a video chat

I recently returned from the Dahlonega Literary Festival, a great book festival in an artsy little town in the Georgia blueridge area. I had an absolutely wonderful time and met many amazing people during the weekend event. I also stayed at the cutest little bed and breakfast called the Lily Creek Lodge, and if anyone ever wants to escape for a weekend, I highly recommend it.

Finding your Topic panel

Over the last year I've had the opportunity to speak at a lot of fantasy and fan conventions, but this weekend was my very first literary festival. I've attended a couple literary festivals in the past, and at every single one I've found that genre fiction has been rather under represented and the fantasy genre conspicuously absent. There is often contention and rather nasty biases between literary fiction and genre fiction, so I admit I was a little concerned what reception I, as a rather young, newly published urban fantasy writer, would receive both from the audience who would attend the event and the other writers, but everyone was absolutely wonderful. The discussions on the panels were diverse and fun, my fellow writers were amazingly friendly and a pleasure to converse with both on and off panels, and everyone I spoke to was absolutely wonderful. And, for the first time at any literary festival I've attended, fantasy had a strong showing! There were three fantasists on the guest list: Seressia Glass, Susan Hubbard,  and myself. (Special shout out to Carol and Sharon for inviting us.)

I chatted with Susan and Seressia a good deal over the weekend, and near the end of the event, I asked if I could record a quick video chat. I apparently make faces when I talk and gesticulate horribly (I imagine I do this on panels as well) but it was a ton of fun to record the chat, so if you guys like this kind of thing, I'll try to take a video camera to all my events in the future. Check it out here:



Happy Tuesday everyone!