writing horror

Thursday, 10 AM
Twenty Types of Terror: Exploring Horror Subgenres in Fiction and Games
Marriott Ballroom 1 – Cost $16, duration 2 hours

Horror comes in a variety of flavors, each with its own special advantages and disadvantages. Content warning: horror writing may range into all sorts of sensitive areas, including graphic violence and death. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will run through the various forms, talking about how to write them, and performing exercises to generate storylines in several subgenres.

Thursday, 2 PM
Get in the Fight: Activism in Genre Writing
Marriott Ballroom 2 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers as they discuss the need for every one of us to do what we can in the fight for equality – and what that could look like within the pages of your stories. Featuring: Cat Rambo, Bryan Young, Danian Darrell Jerry, Khaldoun Khelil, Victor Raymond PhD.

Thursday, 4 PM
Book Signing and Meet & Greet with Cat Rambo and Jeremy Bernstein
Exhibit Hall – free, duration 1 hour

Swing by the back of the Exhibit Hall to meet the panelists of the Writers’ Symposium and get your books signed. Or, buy a book or game – and get it signed on the spot. Or, just stop by and say hello! Most panelists will have merchandise for sale, but you’re welcome to bring what you already own to get signed. You may stop by without a ticket and we’ll try and accommodate you, time permitting.

Thursday, 6 PM
Meet the Writers
Wabash Ballroom 1 – free, duration 2 hours

Join writers of the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium to say hello, get your existing books signed, or purchase new ones here). Tickets are nice but not required during this 3hr open-house event! Many authors will have books for sale, and the GCWS USB drive will also be for sale. Featuring: Akis Linardos, Anthony W. Eichenlaub, Ava Kelly, Ben Riggs, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Brady McReynolds, Brandon Crilly, Brandon O’Brien, Bryan Young, C. S. E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Cat Rambo, Kwame Mbalia, Danian Darrell Jerry, Daniel ‘Doc’ Myers, Dedren Snead, E.D.E. Bell, Erin M. Evans, Gabrielle Harbowy, Gregory A. Wilson, Howard Andrew Jones, James Farner, Jason Sanford, Jennifer Brozek, Jeremy Bernstein, Jerry Gordon, Jordan Jones-Brewster, Jordan Kurella, Khaldoun Khelil, Linda D. Addison, Marie Bilodeau, Michael R. Underwood, Monica Valentinelli, Richard Dansky, Sharang Biswas, Sheree Renée Thomas, Victor Raymond PhD, and Will Sobel.

Friday, 10 AM
Ageism in SFF: Broadening the Ages of Protagonists
Marriott Ballroom 3 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers as they discuss ageism in genre fiction, and the need for and techniques of writing diverse protagonists of a certain age. Featuring: Ava Kelly, Cat Rambo, Chris A. Jackson, Danian Darrell Jerry, and Jeri “Red” Shepherd.

Friday, 12 PM
Embrace Your Weirdness (and Find Where it Intersects with Markets)
Marriott Ballroom 2 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers and multi-media creators as they discuss how to effectively market authentic weirdness – and love yourself more for it!
Featuring: Cat Rambo, Akis Linardos, Briana Lawrence, Jerry Gordon, and Shauna Aura Knight.

Friday, 2 PM
New Books! New Games! New Love!
Marriott Ballroom 3 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of authors as writer and host S.E. Lindberg asks each about the inspirations and challenges behind their new books, games, and works. This fun experience back from last year by request! Featuring: S.E. Lindberg, Cat Rambo, Erin M. Evans, and Kwame Mbalia.

Friday, 5 PM
Story Fundamentals: How to Write Short Stories – Cost $34; duration 4 hours

A compressed version of a six-week workshop, this single-session class gives you all the tools you need to start writing and sending out your own stories. You will do some writing exercises in class, but most of the time will be spent on lecture and discussion. You should emerge from the class with a greater command of storywriting as well as a hearty store of encouragement and motivation for creating new stories. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will cover story structure, character-building, worldbuilding, plotting, and submitting the stories you’ve written.

Saturday, 10 AM
How to Unban Books
Marriott Ballroom 4 – free, duration 1 hour

Practical advice on how to challenge book challenges, run for school and library boards, and otherwise defend books. Featuring: Mikki Kendall, Cat Rambo, Dedren Snead, Kwame Mbalia, and Richard Lee Byers.

Saturday, 1 PM
Book Signing and Meet & Greet
Exhibit Hall – free, duration 1 hour

Swing by the back of the Exhibit Hall to meet the panelists of the Writers’ Symposium and get your books signed. Or, buy a book or game – and get it signed on the spot. Or, just stop by and say hello! Most panelists will have merchandise for sale, but you’re welcome to bring what you already own to get signed. You may stop by without a ticket and we’ll try and accommodate you, time permitting.

Sunday, 9 AM
Systems of Magic: How to Use Your Magic to Enrich Your Worldbuilding
Marriott Ballroom 2 – cost $16, duration 2 hours

How magic works in your world affects its inhabitants, its economy, and so much more, down to the smallest details. We’ll cover how to use a magic system to create a world that can cast a spell over its readers. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will provide tips, techniques, and writing exercises will enable you to create or flesh out a world’s intrinsic magic.

Sunday, 10:30 AM
Farewell Breakfast for Patreon supporters and Wayward Writers Academy supporters
Location TBD – free, duration 1 1/2 hours

Time to say goodbye! Let’s do it over a late breakfast in a location that will be announced on Patreon and the Discord server, or ping Cat in e-mail to get the details.

Literature is the best medium for horror, and comics are the worst. Literature succeeds because of the power of words to suggest, to take you ninety percent there, and leave that final ten percent up to you. The horror we imagine in the darkness of our minds far exceeds anything that can be set down on paper in words or pictures. We love horror because it allows us to exorcise our fears in a safe and fun manner. It usually delivers a moral epiphany, as Mary Shelley intended.

There’s also existential horror with no good guys or bad guys, like The Devil’s Rejects. Without a moral epiphany no film can hope to reach a wider audience. Exorcist is not only the scariest movie ever made, it’s one of the most moral.

This Sunday, Catherine Lundoff will be teaching a class that’s particularly apropos for this Halloween-laden month, on one of my favorite flavors of horror: gothic fiction. She talks about some of the influences that have brought her to gothic fiction, and what she loves about it.

Edward Gorey was one of the guiding lights of my teenage years. I saw his sets for “Dracula” on Broadway when I was about twelve and it was like coming home, aesthetically, at least. I loved his black and white drawings, his weird stories, his obsessions with cats and opera singers. I still do. I like to think of him as my posthumous Fairy Gothmother, who opened the door to a marvelous dark universe where I could wear black all the time and didn’t need to pretend to be happy if I wasn’t.

I read Dracula, of course, and “Carmilla” and Poe and Wilde and Northanger Abbey. Austen turned me on to Ann Radcliffe, but I found Byron on my own. I discovered fashion, the kind where you rim your eyes with liner and wear multiple black on black outfits that have, perhaps, a hint of lace or silk, if you are lucky. And when I got to college, it was 1981 and there I found Adam Ant and Prince and Siouxsie Sioux, along with glorious morbid folk rock bands like Steeleye Span. So many murder ballads! So much gender play and glorious costumes! All of it became a part of me long before I thought of myself as a writer or a teacher or as Goth.

I devoured Gothic romances by the likes of Victoria Holt and Mary Stewart, Gothic horror in its multimedia splendor, even more murder ballads, artwork, outfits with all the black lace my teenage heart could imagine. Starting to write ghost stories and tales of haunted mansions could not be far behind, though in my case it started with vampire stories and editing the first (to the best of my knowledge) anthology of lesbian ghost stories. From there, I moved on to writing ghost stories myself as well as monster tales, media tie-ins, psychological horror, each story shaped and honed by my earlier reading and watching.

These days, I’m a huge fan of Gothic horror and romance films and shows like Crimson Peak, Penny Dreadful and The Addams Family. I’ve written horror tales for publications like Respectable Horror, Fireside Fiction and one of the Vampire the Gathering 20th Anniversary tie-in anthologies, as well as my own collection, Unfinished Business: Tales of the Dark Fantastic. A childhood enthusiasm has morphed into a lifelong affinity for ghosts, haunted mansions and various interpretations of the monstrous.

I love watching authors and other creators turn their eye to new interpretations of female and queer monsters and different kinds of outsider survivors. The Gothic Heroine doesn’t have to be a cisgendered white Final Girl or married under dubious circumstances to a love interest who is, perhaps, not to be trusted. I want to read more of these stories, as well as classics like The Woman in Black and We Have Always Lived in the Castle. Let me help you bring your dark fiction into the light and help it come alive, no pun intended. Crimson Peaks and Menacing Mansions is an online class that I’m teaching on 10/13 from 9:30-11:30 PST at Cat Rambo’s Academy for Wayward Writers.. It will include a mix of lecture, discussion and writing exercises, as well as the opportunity to ask questions. I hope you’ll be intrigued enough to check it out!