Some Semi-Random Musings
Recent Posts
When Words Collide Festival 2026 — 20 August 2026
The 2026 edition of When Words Collide Festival wrapped up on Sunday after a full three days of presentations and panel discussions. The venue was the Hyatt Regency hotel in downtown Calgary which, IMHO, was a significant step up from the two previous festivals I attended — bigger rooms which were closer together, and better amenities in and close by the hotel. The big change in Festival scheduling this year was the extra time (15 minutes) allocated between sessions so we didn't have to run from room-to-room, only to find it was SRO or closed. That, and the fact the rooms were close together, resulted in a more relaxed atmosphere, and allowed for a bit of time to network.
Being downtown, I was (almost) committed to riding my bike every day. Day one had a forecast of rain, so I wussed out and took an Uber. Day two was great so I rode to the hotel, which, BTW, has free, secure, valet parking for bikes. Unfortunately, the weather started to turn when I was leaving. By the time I made it to Sunnyside station it was coming down hard. Also, unfortunately, Sunnyside station was closed. My choice was ride back downtown and catch a train there, or just ride home. It was a toss-up, but I chose to soldier on and ride the rest of the way even if it was uphill, and into the rain and wind. My alleged rain jacket was great for keeping out the wind but not the water, so I was thoroughly soaked by the time I dismounted. Of course, the rain stopped when I put my bike away. I didn't bother on day three. If we're downtown next year (which, I hear, is quite likely) I will try bike commuting again.
My biggest (minor) complaint with the festival, as for both previous years, was there were too many sessions and too little time. I started out with 60+ selections spread over about 20 time slots, sometimes 3 or 4 at the same time, After a last minute panic, I managed to whittle it down to one per slot. That filled up all available time from the first session in the morning to the last one at night, barring the special events. Overall, I think I made some good choices, along with some less-than-ideal ones. You can see the complete festival schedule here.
I had a number of top choices this year and no particular favourites:
- Angela Ackerman, always an excellent presenter, gave two presentations on a couple thesauri she's co-authored: How Fear Rewires Your Character’s Behaviour, Logic & Responses and The Most Powerful Characterization Detail You're Overlooking: A Character's Job. Hank Retzer already has a job, so that session was interesting, but not particularly relevant, although I picked up a few things I might be able to use for some of my secondary characters, and other stories.
- Any presentation with Dave Sweet is going to be entertaining and informative. I took in a couple of his this year: He co-presented a Bucket of Bones: Building the Skeleton of Your Murder Mystery, and was part of a panel discussion on Inside the Villain's Mind: The Psychology Behind The Crime. I also had an opportunity to talk with him later about his work as a security consultant.
- Something I did that was a surprise, because it's not something that is a significant part of my writing, was Brenna Bailey-Davies' presentation, Let's Talk About Sex: Writing Effective Sex Scenes. I have written a couple short stories that had more sex than usual in them: a romance for the NYC Midnight Short Story contest, and, as a lark, more-or-less, an erotic thriller, both as a screenplay and short story, which I considered quite salacious.
- My detective is (almost) fully formed, but the panel discussion with Jonathan Whitelaw, Creating a Unique Detective Figure, was interesting. I'm not sure I learned anything I could use, but I was entertained. Also on the panel was Lexie Angelo who, apparently, teaches a crime writing course at the University of Calgary.
- The panel discussion, Writing Beyond the Self: Creating Characters Outside Our Lived Experience, featured a lot of back-and-forth about writing characters outside of your own race, gender, orientation, culture, or identity. The general consensus was you can, but tread carefully, be respectful, and engage sensitivity readers, if possible. The panel featured SF writer Robert J. Sawyer and Finnian Burnett.
- The presentation I found very interesting but with nothing, literally, more-or-less, to do with writing, was Butterflies and Plot Twists: Chaos Theory for Writers, by Ron Friedman. The overview of the science underlying Chaos Theory was the presentation, and it was done very well, but Friedman admitted he really didn't know how to apply it to writing. Our homework, I guess, was how to introduce Chaos Theory into our writing.
- I took in the panel discussion on Tricks, Tips & Traps for Successful Writing Groups, but came away with no new information. Most of the advice related to very large writing groups (upwards of 40 people), or to groups where everyone writes in the same genre, or about drop-in groups. I am part of the Fictionists critique group which has been successful for the last six years. We are a small (very small, by some standards) multi-genre, novel writing group. Part of what made us successful seemed to be at odds with some of the sage advice coming from the panel. Perhaps I will elaborate on our success in a later blog.
- The presentation I probably got the least out of was Offstage Characters: What Are They Up To? by Susan Forest. She introduced an interesting template but I found I already did a lot of the character development using other tools that were more adapted to my process.
- I had my lunch on the last day while listening to Kevin McDonald, of Kids in the Hall fame (at least that's where I know him from) talking about his Stupid Career. He is funny and engaging, but he only touched on his writing career very briefly (at all?).
Adventures in Website Development — 8 August 2026
Soooo.... Having done this before (hand-crafting websites), poorly, some would say, and after much contemplation, I made the decision to build my website using bare metal programming instead of with commercial website building services like WIX or SquareSpace. I was also seriously contemplating doing something with Wordpress but gave up because it seemed more complex than building my own from scratch.
Actually, it wasn't entirely from scratch. I suppose some would call it cheating, but I had ChatGPT layout the rough framework based on some basic concepts. I added my content and some specific functionality, and turned to Claude for debugging assistance. My last hands-on experience with website development was decades ago and technology has changed in the interim. Anyways, still a work in progress. Also, I'm not sure I'll be totally engaged with this blogging thing.
Comment on this post