Owning a renowned Fantasy website certainly has some perks. Next week I’ve been invited to London Film & Comic Convention to moderate not one, but two REALLY exciting panels:
Murder Most Magical
Three of the biggest names in crime/fantasy are coming to The Book Zone at LFCC to take part in a magical on stage panel “Murder Most Magical.”
Ben Aaronovitch (Rivers Of London, Doctor Who), Paul Cornell (London Falling, Doctor Who) and Suzanne McLeod (Spellcrackers) will be in conversation with our host from Fantasy Faction, Marc Aplin, to discuss what makes their murders the most magical.
The Panel will take place at 10am on Sunday 13th July on The Book Zone stage. Tickets are free and can be collected from the info point in the Book Zone from 9am on Sunday morning.
Bring Me My Dragons! Writing YA Fantasy Today
With Game of Thrones, The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings making fantasy increasingly popular in the mainstream, what does it mean to write fantasy for young adults today? Four authors who each take innovative approaches to the genre come together to discuss contemporary fantasy writing.
Four authors: Jonathan Stroud, Ruth Warburton, Amy McCulloch and Frances Hardinge – who each take innovative approaches to the genre – will join host Marc Aplin to to discuss contemporary fantasy writing.
The Panel will take place on Saturday 12 July from 15.30-16.15 in the book zone.
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Of course, Fantasy-Faction is wayyyyy bigger than just me. I might be the representative of our community in this case, but Fantasy-Faction is made up of every staff member, user and visitor. So, with that in mind, I’d like to give Fantasy-Factioners the chance to suggest questions for the panel too. You can do this in the comments section on this post or in the forums where I have created a topic.
In addition, I’d just like to add that I have LOADS of free time at the convention. If any one is there and would like to meet up and say hi then I’m up for it! Just drop me an e-mail at marc@fantasy-faction.com and we can sort something out. Always up for chatting Fantasy with other fans! If you can’t be bothered to e-mail me, but want to look out for me I’m the guy on the right!
Look forward to hearing your question suggestions and maybe even seeing you there 🙂
Richard Marpole
Jennie Ivins
What separates the genre of YA from other genres? (Themes?writing prose? grittiness? Complexity?)
What makes YA more appealing than other genres?
Thanks marc! 🙂
How do you keep the mystery in murders where magic is involved and a wizard could just have done it anyway anyhow anywhere?
My question is a bit of a muddle but its for the Bring me my dragons! panel.
There has been so much written in the fantasy genre over the years, decades, centuries even that its sometimes hard to find fresh ways to portray the more common elements of fantasy stories. At the same time YA fantasy fiction is often a young persons first experience with the fantasy genre so whatever they read will often seem fresh and new even if its just a cliche riddled paint by numbers fantasy novel.
What i’m asking is really two questions A) whether YA fantasy authors feel just as much pressure to find fresh ways to portray old ideas and B) whether they feel their own imaginations may be hampered by the common cliches and character stereotypes that have become part and parcel of the fantasy genre.
(For example the Tolkien version of elves has become so prevalent that for many readers and authors its now the default for what elves should be. Even when an author tries to be different a lot of the time they still end up just being Tolkien elves with a twist as though the author is just so used to Tolkien elves that they have trouble imagining them any other way.)