This years’ Genre-Con, was a weekend of panels, special events, and workshops – beginning on Friday 23rd of February and finishing on Sunday the 25th. Amongst the presenters were Julie Janson, Patrick Ness, Kate Cuthbert, Jake Corvus, Paul Mason, CS Pascat, Rachel Amphlett, David Shield, Kathy George, Gary Lonesborough, Ben Hobson, Kim Wilkins, Siang Lu, Vanessa Len, Sandra Markaresz and Lori-Jay Ellis.

The theme was Brave, Bold, Genre.

The first event I attended was the launch night at The Loft in West End. Attendees were greeted by a string quartet as they wove their way up the stairs and past the candles into the meeting area.

Many participants took the opportunity to take up the conference organisers invitation  to cos-play, with Wonder Woman, Peter Pan, Tank Girl, Emily Pankhurt, Moana, just some of the characters people chose to attend as.  The staff came as Effie Trinket in a variety of costumes.with one in a butterfly dress and Lori-Jay as promised in Effie’s queenly dress.

Patrick Ness, joked that he did not get the memo about the “fancy dress” but it would have probably made him too stressed to find a suitable costume.  He also read a winning work from one of the Queensland Writers Centre monthly competitions, Smooth by Laree Chapman.

Genre con was sold out! And this made for a packed auditorium for the opening address and throughout the weekend. YA was a central theme over the weekend, as YA goes across all genres.

The Opening Session

The opening session was introduced by Lori-Jay and included a short speech by Julie Janson, before Patrick Ness delivered the keynote.

Lori-Jay, CEO of the Queensland Writers’ Centre, after a brief acknowledgement, began with the metaphor of the conjurer, quoting from Terry Pratchett.

He’s not a wizard, in other words, but a conjurer.

Wizards don’t have to work. They wave their hands, and the magic happens. But conjurors, now . . . conjurers work very hard. They spend a lot of time in their youth watching, very carefully, the best conjurers of their day. They seek out old books of trickery and, being natural conjurers, read everything else as well, because history itself is just a magic show. They observe the way people think, and the many ways in which they don’t. They learn the subtle use of springs, how to open mighty temple doors at a touch, and how to make the trumpets sound.

And they take Centre Stage and amaze you with flags of all nations and smoke and mirrors, and you cry: “Amazing! How does he do it? Where’s the rabbit? Did he really smash my watch?”

And in the back row we, the other conjurers, say quietly: “Well done. Isn’t that a variant of the Prague Levitating Sock? Wasn’t that Pasqual’s Spirit Mirror, where the girl isn’t really there? But where the hell did that flaming sword come from?”

And we wonder if there may be such a thing as wizardry, after all . . .

Terry Pratchett

She invited us to find at least three golden nuggets, to take home from the conference, to apply to our writing craft and encouraged attendees to find their writing tribe and to take the opportunity to enter the Writers Centre micro fiction writing competitions.

Julie, after acknowledging the First Nations and a small joke about, she had thought whether she should do an interpretative dance instead of a talk, but thought better of it: addressed the theme Brave and Bold. 

Julie’s writing is a search for truth, looking at the crime of colonisation and its ripples into contemporary experience. This takes the form of crime fiction with First Nations characters centre stage. 

She shared her love of the library which lit her love for literature. She mentioned Oodgeroo Noonuccal and Roger Merrit  playwright (The Cake Man) as bold and brave inspirations to her writing. Other inspirations for Julie are writers like Alice Walker who look at the complexities of the past. 

Patrick Ness’s keynote was an honest and vulnerable speech of the role of love and spite in his writing process with an overall message of Whatever is happening in your life, Write anyway. Unpacking these three ideas as core philosophies, Patrick then shared with us aspects of his life story and the wisdom it led to, which he left totally up to us to accept or reject.

In his speech he acknowledged the First Nations, and commented that this is something he does not see happen in America.

He used the metaphor of his life being like a warehouse, where every age is there to draw upon for inspiration. But in doing so, the selections need to be used in a way that is worth it for the writer. He told us some of his life story, like thinking a lot about death, and that at eight he thought the world was going to end because of the religion his family followed.

Patrick shared that he made 72 queries, with 5 answers and 2 replies, and one of these then became his agent and is still his agent today. He noted that whilst he had won the Carnegie prize with his first novel, he then struggled with his next draft  novels to find his voice. He ended up being inspired by the narrative voice of the novel Riddley Walker which he discovered whilst living at Oxford and then kept going forward.

Patrick Ness Personal Writing Strategies

• He does not use outlines.
• He sets for himself rules like show love, without anyone saying it, and without hugs.  Try to portray love in a ‘real way’.
• He often has a Song or music for books as a background in mind
• He might have 3-4 scenes images that will be in the book to write towards 
• He has an emotional touchstone

After the opening plenary, there were several simultaneous sessions. These included panels, a speakeasy, workshops covering Romance, Crime, Speculative Fiction, YA, Science Fiction and Graphic novels as well as self publishing, audio books and the Queensland Writers suite of competitions. I will detail some of these in the next blog.

However, it is not just the knowledge and skills covered in the sessions but the friendships and connections at these events that make them a joy for Genre Conjurers. At the end of the first day many of us gathered to have dinners or after conference drinks.

More posts on genre con on their way.