C.S. Friedman, Author Guest of Honor
From the author’s website:
“Celia S. Friedman is a best-selling author of fantasy and science fiction, as well as an accomplished costume designer. Critics have acclaimed her complex and compelling characters, richly textured worlds, and keen insight into the shadows and twists of human nature. Her stories are often dark, always intense…hard to put down, impossible to forget.”
She is the author of In Conquest Born, the Coldfire Trilogy, and her latest work, the Magister Trilogy along with many other novels, short stories and gaming works.
–Check out her website for more information.
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Katherine Kurtz
The author of the Deryni novels and many other works of “historical fantasy” and what she calls “crypto history.” Find out more about Katherine and her work at her website.
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Rob Balder, Comic and Filk Guest of Honor
Rob Balder is a professional webcomics creator and comedy musician, among many other things.
He has recorded two solo CDs. The title track from the first, “Rich Fantasy Lives” was co-written with Filk Hall of Famer Tom Smith. It won the Pegasus award for Best Filk Song of 2007. In 2009 he collaborated with -=ShoEboX=- of Worm Quartet on a CD called “Baldbox: the Dumb Album.” Rob’s songs have often been heard on the syndicated Doctor Demento Show, including “Gamer Funk,” the third most requested song of 2009. In January 2006, he and six other comedy music performers founded The Funny Music Project, where they present new songs every single day, released under a Creative Commons license. The FuMP won the 2009 Parsec Award for Best Speculative Fiction Music Podcast.
Rob is also the creator of the clip-art comic strip “PartiallyClips“, which is widely read online and has appeared in more than two dozen newspapers and magazines. A book collection of the strip, “Suffering for my Clip Art: the Best of PartiallyClips, volume 1″ was published in 2005. Rob retired from PartiallyClips at the start of 2010, passing the comic to the aforementioned -=ShoEboX=-, who plans to rework the strip into a functioning lamp.
Along the way, Rob has also had some modest successes as a game designer, editor, poet, graphic designer, public speaker, and internet entrepreneur. Somehow, it all adds up to something resembling a living.
At this point in his strange career, Rob Balder is probably best known as the author of Erfworld, an ongoing fantasy epic which Time Magazine named one of the Top Ten Graphic Novels of 2007 and Wired.com called “Geekiest Comic Ever.” Co-created with illustrator Jamie Noguchi, Erfworld is the story of Parson Gotti, an obsessive strategy gamer summoned into a real war. Jamie took his leave of the project after successfully completing Book 1. Book 2, which began in October 2009, continues with illustrator Xin Ye.
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Brian Glass, Gaming Guest
Brian has been a long-time Art Director for Exalted (White Wolf) and is also a JMU Alumnus. Make sure to ask him about when he ran Madicon.
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COMARR is a medieval recreation group based in Waynesboro Virginina. We are interested in re-creating the middle ages from 850-1650 as they should have been not as they actually were. We recreate medieval combat, archery, arts and sciences, and other parts of the Middle Ages.
