One of my favorite cons is back! TBRCon, put on by FanFiAddict, was the last week of July (same as Shark Week! What a week for watching cool things!). This con is free, virtual, live-streamed, and recorded. It is packed with all things SFFH, writing, publishing, fanning, etc. It is my dream to someday participate in this convention, but until then I had a blast watching. I learned a lot, and I am thoroughly inspired to jump into my own projects with renewed creative vigor.
As usual, I have recorded my notes to share with all of you, but please do check out the convention yourself. All the videos are up. I have the ones I attended linked below my notes. You will not regret it.
On to the round up!
Gory & Grotesque: How to Balance Body Horror
Moderator: Nicole M. Wolverton
Speakers: Jess Hagemann, Neil Sharpson, Hailey Piper, Eric LaRocca
Description: A discussion about the details, skill, impact, and responsibility of writing body horror onto the page.
Key Takeaways:
The body is STRANGE!
Body horror is all about change/transformation, and the body is changing all the time.
change can be devastating or empowering in equal measures.
triumphant body horror—taking back your body.
body horror is not always horrific.
Bodies connect and separate us as corporeal beings, and bodies come with a lot of baggage from our own world and history (i.e. whose body is allowed autonomy, sympathy, validation, etc.)
Sparse description can be just as unnerving as graphic, lengthy description.
Pair “opposites” with prose style and content (ex: ornate prose to describe horrific violence).
Body horror is not just about the organics, but also about the perception, expectation, and performance of having specific types of bodies.
Tradition vs. Innovation in Haunted Houses
Moderator: George Dunn
Speakers: Stephen Howard, Tamika Thompson, Chris Panatier, Dan Coxon, Grace Daly
Description: Examples of haunted houses in storytelling, what makes a house haunted, and how to write your own haunted house tale.
Key Takeaways:
People have to have a reason to be in and stay in the haunted house. If they have the privilege to leave, why don’t they?
Haunted by the people that live there, not the house, or even the supernatural, itself.
What happens in the house, who lives there, can be just as scary as the supernatural.
Places hold onto echoes of emotions/events as well.
A reckoning with history.
Household objects, possessions, and decor are all deeply personal and intimate and including such within the haunting is a great way to anchor the story and make it real.
A haunting as a form of communication. What is the house trying to convey?
Dreadcrumbs!!!
Homes are supposed to be your safe space. What happens when you don’t have a home/safe space?
People can’t afford to buy a house anymore! How does this reality play out in fiction?
Homes are temporary now (renters). Living in a home you own is more fantasy than reality now.
Is the ghost going to pay rent?
Cities as Distinct Characters
Moderator: Beth Tabler
Speakers: Abel Montero, Ai Jiang, Nghi Vo, Robert F. Lowell, Tim Hickson
Description: The creation, function, and impact of setting, specifically cities, on characters, plot, and readers.
Key Takeaways:
Cities are constantly growing, shrinking, changing, etc.
They impact us, and we impact them.
Quirks, hidden gems, tourist locales, festivals, cemeteries, etc.
Cities can come about organically or be forced into being.
Do they work with the environment or in spite of it?
People live around water sources, and water makes a good starting point for worldbuilding a city.
Cities have layers and are experienced differently by different people.
City design can have a perspective, opinions, and comment on the themes of the characters and plot of the story.
Avoid worldbuilding dumps by NOT planning ahead with your city. Focus only on what is relevant as you move from scene to scene and let the city develop organically as you write.
RiP my inner planner.
Begin from a small point looking outward.
Moderator: Julie Vee
Speakers: Greta Kelly, Andrea Stewart, Maeve MacLysaght, Laura Crockett, John Baker
Description: Tips, tricks, guidelines, and rules when preparing your book and yourself for querying.
Key Takeaways:
The hook, the book, and the cook!
Revise your manuscript down before querying. It’s better to have “fodder” for when you have a publisher and can edit up and down with them.
Shows that you do know how to revise and are prepared to do that work.
Because you will revise. A lot. For all eternity.
Focus more on the conflict than the plot when writing your synopsis.
Writing your novel is about art and creation. Querying your novel is about capitalism and business and marketing.
Your book is now a product that needs to be sold.
You need to get really good at talking about your stories because you’ll be doing it for the rest of time.
Comp titles—books that your book will share shelf space with.
from the last 3-5 years
in the same genre and audience age range as your book
comp to fiscal expectations, theme, vibes, etc.
Should NOT be to viral things, high tier authors/series, etc.
Should NOT be your book’s doppelganger.
You can comp to movies, TV, video games, but ALSO comp to books.
Write a synopsis before you write the book or use your outlines to write your synopsis.
Synopsis is a tool to use to convey your story in a shorter and easier manner.
use limited proper nouns/names
include the ending
tell where things/motivations/goals change in the story
the shape of the story, the roadmap guide
no more than one page
should be compelling and not leave the reader with questions
Learning these skills is not a one time deal. You will be using these skills and doing these things for the rest of your author career.
Writing Fear on the Page
Moderator: Anna Dupre
Speakers: Sarah Langan, Johnny Compton, Annie Neugebauer, Michael T. Kuester, Joshua Hull
Description: In the absence of visuals and audio cues for scares, how does one create terror in text?
Key Takeaways:
A willingness to be vulnerable is necessary to translate fear onto the page.
Sense of fear is the same as sense of humor—everyone has a different taste of what scares them and what doesn’t.
Dread is the anticipation of fear, horror, etc.
it is also knowing with certainty that something is bad.
Horror has the advantage of the genre, but fear exists in every single genre.
all characters should be afraid of something.
when unexpected emotions come up in genres that don’t normally center those emotions, that can be very shocking and terrifying.
See (classic) Disney movies that have terrifying animations paired with song.
A sense of wonder can lead nicely into a sense of fear, marveling at something you do not understand and taking that thought to its dreadful conclusion.
Non-Western Worldbuilding Approaches
Moderator: Mihir Wanchoo
Speakers: Caskey Russell, Sara Omer, Tao Wong, Xueting C. Ni
Description: Examples, tips, and insights into exploring and creating stories outside western cultural influence.
Key Takeaways:
I, too, am a recovering English major.
Cultural signifiers are a challenge because publishing and western readers are very unfamiliar with the details of other cultures.
How far do you deviate from the norm when the audience doesn’t even know the norm? How much story-time do you devote to explaining?
it’s a constant negotiation that requires new skills with narration and format and style.
Readers and publishers might pushback because it doesn’t meet their narrow expectations of experience.
Or they might praise non-western worldbuilding as novel and inventive when it is actually representative of something that has been around for thousands of years.
Readers are smarter and more resourceful than we give them credit for.
Readers generally want to learn new things and puzzle out new things when they pick up speculative genres.
Cultural influence doesn’t stop at the story—it extends out into the business of writing and publishing, especially in marketing.
ARCs should go to relevant reviewers because their perspective will be important to share for readers within and outside of the culture.
The more diverse the landscape in publishing, in writing, in our own TBRs, the better it is for everyone.
How to Write a Great Standalone
Moderator: Frasier Armitage
Speakers: Luke Tarzian, Sunyi Dean, P. Djeli Clark, Catherine McCarthy, Chris Panatier
Description: Tips, tricks, and craft skills required to contain a complex, deep story in a single novel.
Key Takeaways:
You can get more experimental or risky with a standalone because there is no expectation to continue, explain, etc. the concept/format across an entire series.
What you choose to merely mention versus explain can be used to create tension and direct readers’ focus.
Standalones have a lot in common with short stories.
A great standalone leaves you satisfied but also wanting more.
and that leaves doors open for you as the writer to write a sequel later if you want to.
There is a baked in drop off in readership between books in a series.
A good second book seems to sell only about half of the copies of the first.
even with super popular authors/series
There is business risk in writing series.
Some genres work best as standalones.
horror, mystery, etc.
You can’t tackle everything in a standalone. You need to know what doors to shut and where to focus.
Efficiency of language in a standalone is important.
Prose style has to carry more weight because there is less space.
very similar to writing flash and micro fiction.
Foreshadowing Done Right
Moderator: D.W. Ross
Speakers: Stephen Aryan, C.L. Clark, Ryan Cahill, Eileen Mueller, J.D.L. Rosell
Description: The purpose and skill behind adding foreshadowing to your books.
Key Takeaways:
Foreshadowing is promises made to the readers (that are then fulfilled later via payoffs).
if you don’t pay it off, then you lose the trust of your reader, and that can ruin a book that is otherwise perfect.
“Surprising but inevitable.” “Weight of the insignificant moments.”
Foreshadowing can happen through setting, character, etc.
Genre itself can be a foreshadowing as the tropes and expectations of the genre bring baggage into the story.
Upending genre conventions can be difficult for this reason.
Depending on your style of writing, you can plan ahead and write the foreshadowing right in there off the bat, go back and sprinkle in those foreshadowing moments, and/or realize as you go what everything can be foreshadowing toward/for.
there is no one right way; it is whatever works for you and the story.
often the best ones happen in combination of all three methods.
Easter eggs are not the same thing as foreshadowing.
Easter eggs can be seen or not and make no difference to the plot.
Foreshadowing is a key component to the reader experience of the plot.
Sometimes foreshadowing is revealing early on exactly what will happen, but then take the reader on a journey where they forget that information so when it comes about it is still surprising.
foreshadowing reverse. Aftershadowing.
Red herrings needs to be rooted in the characters and plot, but the true one needs to feel inevitable by the end.
And that’s a wrap! I hope you enjoyed following along with my TBRCon journey, and I hope you enjoy even more exploring the videos, panels, and events yourself:
Hello!
I’m Catherine Tavares, speculative fiction author. My work has appeared on the Nebula Reading List, Reactor’s Must Reads, and Locus Online, and my short story “Ghosts of Summer” won the 2025 Apex Reader’s Choice Award for Best Original Fiction. You can find my stories in magazines such as The Dark, Nature Futures, Flash Point SF, Heartlines, and more. Learn more about me and stay up to date on my work by visiting my website and subscribing to this newsletter.
