A bit late to the party, my friends, but I was missing for good reason. I was attending the GenCon gaming convention, where I’m a part of the GenCon Writer’s Symposium. This was a busier year than most since I had, well, a book to plug this time. So preparations for and the participation in the symposium was a bit crazy.
And can I say, my goodness, Congratulations to Courtney! It feels like a long time since we started this blog early this year, but I’m sure it’s felt a lot longer for Courtney as she waited for The Whitefire Crossing to hit the shelves. She’s getting wonderful reviews, so do be sure to check it out.
Ok, on to humor. You know, I’m glad things worked out like they did. I’m not much of a humorist. I don’t read much humor, and I have a horrible time writing it. But while I was at GenCon this past weekend, I moderated a panel on tension in fiction. We were talking about lots of things like action and suspense and mystery and horror. And more things like political machinations, societal pressures, personal expectations, and so on. We started talking about varying tension so that the reader didn’t feel like the amp was always on eleven. I brought up the notion of tension, thinking it could be used to release pressure when it built too high, and another panelist, Dave Gross, said something very interesting about humor with respect to tension.
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Happy release day to Courtney and 

