I always feel inspired to write when I return from conventions and this is certainly the case following ConFuzzled this week.

We had around forty furs attend our Writing Historical Fiction panel on Saturday evening, which I presented with Dai for the first time. What struck me was how engaged and passionate our audience was, while their questions were detailed and thoughtful. On some occasions, they were quite tricky to answer, or presented things we hadn’t considered ourselves, which we hope to use in future panels. There was also quite a healthy and detailed discussion, making this panel different to the one I presented with Huskyteer at Scotiacon back in February. Hopefully everyone who went enjoyed the panel and found it useful. The feedback I have received has been positive thus far.

I also enjoyed the Writers’ Coffee Meet, which afforded the opportunity to talk to fellow writers about their projects and influences in a more casual setting. I always learn a great deal here and I’m looking forward to seeing how some of these projects come to fruition. It was also great meeting new writers for the first time and swapping contact details. The supportive environment of the writing community in the furry fandom will always be its main strength.

I wasn’t able to attend all of the writing panels this time around – con scheduling and other commitments made it difficult – but I did manage to check out some of Amethyst Mare’s talks. These were very good and the audiences here too were fully engaged. I particularly enjoyed Creating Conflict In Writing, which gave me a few tips for my own stories.

I picked up three books from The Book Badgers as well and hope to use the forthcoming sunny weather to get some reading done. They were in the Dealers’ Den and I hope that business was brisk. There certainly seemed to be great interest in books on the couple of occasions I stopped by for a chat.

The announcements for the Cóyotl Awards also took place during the convention, so I had to sequester myself away in the room and watch a live stream of the ceremony. Sadly, ‘Back to the Molly House’ didn’t win Best Story, nor did any of the anthologies in which I had stories featured, but it was a thrill just to be nominated and the competition was exceptionally strong. Congratulations to all the winners.

The strength of the furry fandom is its community and this is certainly the case for our writing sub-group. It has been a very good con from a writing perspective and I am happy to have met so many fantastic authors. I’m also proud to have been involved in the scheduling this year and hope to present more panels and talks in the coming years. We covered a wide range of different topics across the eight panels and hopefully we’ll be able to do even more next year.

If you were at any of the panels, please let us know your thoughts, while we would be happy to take suggestions for any future events too.