Westercon 65 Panel

I met Adam Gaffen while participating in the DragonCon mentoring sessions. He’s got a process to learning all about his novel’s characters and how that informed his decisions on the novel’s universe.   Today, I’d like to tell you about how I came to meet Cass and Ken, and how the process of getting to know them led me to creating an entire universe for them. It all started with a name – Aiyana Cassidy. I knew, immediately, that nobody called her Aiyana, that her friends, her family, they all called her Cass. Once I knew that, I started to get a picture in my mind: red hair, glasses, very serious. A woman who could have traded on her looks, but instead relied on her brains. Proved herself over and over, and is now professionally respected. She does something that requires lots of both practical and theoretical knowledge, how about...

I’ve met up with Erin off and on at various conventions. She is a great person to talk to and I’m pleased to know she, like me, has a fascination with villains and the point of view of the villain. Lesser Evils is the sequence to Brimstone Angels. —I can remember watching G.I. Joe as a child—four or maybe five years old—and wondering about Cobra. “They can’t,” I remember thinking, “just be evil.” No one would waste that many resources or poorly aimed red lasers on just being jerks. Not when being good, like G.I. Joe, clearly worked better.  Perhaps, I thought, Cobra believes they are being good. Perhaps they think G.I. Joe are the bad ones. And there began my fascination with villains. It’s a level of characterization that I won’t argue that old cartoon earned, but the idea of perspective affecting morality is one I love to read...