MarsCon 2025 - Virginia Beach: Full Schedule

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12:00am EST

Smash or Pass: Space Opera Characters

Sunday January 19, 2025 12:00am - 2:00am EST

What are your favorite space operas? Which characters from this subgenre would you smash in a hot second, and which ones would you pass on? And most importantly, why? Join our panelists for this NSFW panel. Not recommended for children 14 and under without parent attendance.

Speakers

H.Y. Gregor

Author

H.Y. Gregor was born in Portland, Oregon, but will always call the mountains of Colorado home. She holds a bachelor’s degree in political science but put it down often enough to narrowly avoid law school. Now she spends her free time weaving fantasy tales and battling plot gremlins... Read More →

J.E. Pittman

Author, Dealer

J.E. Pittman dabbles in many speculative worlds. He blurs the borders between genre and crafts salient lies to tell a measure of truth. His work has been described as: capriciously chimeric, dreamlike, and a vivid enigma with indelible images stamped on your brain. He’s currently... Read More →

David Shadoin

Author

David "Shady" Shadoin is a trouble-making, corn-fed Nebraska boy the United States Air Force managed to turn into a somewhat decent pilot of whirly birds. An avid reader from a young age, he has always found inspiration listening to rock music while reading Fantasy and Sci Fi novels... Read More →

Kacey Ezell

Featured Space Opera Guest

Kacey Ezell writes emotionally charged adventure fantasy and science fiction. She is a two-time Dragon Award Finalist for Best Alternate History and won the 2018 Year's Best Military and Adventure Science Fiction Readers' Choice Award. She has written multiple bestselling novels published... Read More →

Sunday January 19, 2025 12:00am - 2:00am EST
Salon L

Literature, NSFW

10:00am EST

Genre Blending

Sunday January 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am EST

Main Programming Room

Many authors, when asked to define the genre of their writing, often hemming and hawing between two or more genres. "It's like urban fantasy, but there are also elements of mystery and thriller." Can we blend together more than one genre? Should we? Are their genres that should not be combined? Which combos are you most interested in reading? Join our panelists as they discuss cool things about writing in multiple genres at the very same time.

Speakers

Alyssa Hazel

Featured Horror Guest

Alyssa Hazel is a Weird Fiction and Horror writer who enjoys exploring the weird, horrible and wonderful through her work. Her pieces have found homes in Bluestem, the Red Coyote, and the Dark River Review. While her specialty is anthologies (she has four) she’s rather proud of... Read More →

Sam Robb

Author

Sam Robb is a Pittsburgh native, a former US Navy officer, and a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. Over the course of his life, he has acquired a wife, three daughters, several quadrupeds, and a penchant for walking down back alleys and taking pictures of graffiti. When he's... Read More →

Scott Sykes

Author

S.M. Sykes never saw himself as a writer, facing struggles with English classes in school. Even his wife, who doubles as his editor, can attest to occasional challenges with organizing his thoughts. However, despite these obstacles, he discovered a passion for storytelling that he... Read More →

Kacey Ezell

Featured Space Opera Guest

Sunday January 19, 2025 10:00am - 11:00am EST
Main Programming Room

Literature, Writing Techniques

11:00am EST

Unblocking Writer's Block

Sunday January 19, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm EST

Salon L

How do you write when the words just aren’t wordin’? See what these authors do to re-inspire the muse once they stop screaming at their empty pages.

Speakers

Dennis Myers

Author

Born and raised in central Minnesota, Dennis M. Myers developed a serious reading habit early in life due to the influence of his grandmother. In late high school he read one particularly "awful" book and, with all that teenage hubris, decided that he could do better. After spending... Read More →

David Hensley

Author

David is an East Coast Hepaw born and raised in southwest Colorado. The town of Dolores, to be specific. He's been a lot of places and done a lot of things since then, including cowboying in the Utah desert and twenty years as an aviation structural mechanic for the United States... Read More →

J.E. Pittman

Author, Dealer

J.F. Posthumus

Author

Wife and a mother of five, J.F. Posthumus is an IT Tech with over a decade of experience. When she isn’t arguing with computers and their inherent gremlins, or being mom to the four younger monsters (the eldest was a police officer, lost to us all in June of 2023), she’s crafting... Read More →

Sunday January 19, 2025 11:00am - 12:00pm EST
Salon L

Literature, Writing Techniques

12:00pm EST

Cannon Publishing Roundtable

Sunday January 19, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST

Salon L

Join the senior staff at Cannon Publishing and their principal authors as they discuss their new and upcoming projects.

Speakers

John Holmes

Publisher

J.F. Holmes is a retired Army Senior Noncommissioned Officer, having served for 22 years in both the Regular Army and Army National Guard. During that time, he served as everything from an artillery section leader to a member of a Division level planning staff, with tours in Cuba... Read More →

Daniel Kemp

Author

Finishing at Ole Miss in 1998, Dan spent the next decade in infantry assignments in South Korea and the 101st Airborne. That lasted as long as his knees and his back held out. A master's in military history (Norwich University '12) and a somewhat turbulent personal life after the... Read More →

Michael Morton

Author, USSF

Michael Morton is a retired USAF space operations officer and wishes the Space Force happened earlier. Still, he gets to work for them as a civilian, so life isn't all bad. He writes award-winning military sci-fi and fantasy and lives in Colorado Springs with his family. When he's... Read More →

H.Y. Gregor

Author

Sunday January 19, 2025 12:00pm - 1:00pm EST
Salon L

Literature, What to Read

2:00pm EST

Storytelling in Anime and Manga

Sunday January 19, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST

Shenandoah Room

Some think that Anime and Manga are just comic books and cartoons, while others swear they are art forms in their own right. Join our panelists as they discuss Anime and Manga and the storytelling that is an inherent part of these forms. Come with an open mind, these people are very persuasive.

Speakers

Sean Korsgaard

Author, Publisher, Fandom

Sean CW Korsgaard is a U.S. Army veteran, award-winning freelance journalist, author, editor and publicist who has worked with Analog Science Fiction & Fact, Baen Books, and Writers of the Future, and recently became the editor of Anvil and Battleborn magazines. His first anthology... Read More →

J.E. Pittman

Author, Dealer

Sunday January 19, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST
Shenandoah Room

Literature, What to Read

2:00pm EST

The Business of Writing

Sunday January 19, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST

Salon L

Come learn about the nuts of bolts of getting your writing to produce income. How do you find a publisher? Is it worth is to try and publish your own work? How difficult is it navigate services such as Amazon for distribution? Should you even try?

Speakers

Claire Merrick

Author

Tired of writing about bad news as a producer at a news station, Claire Merrick began using her free time to write urban fantasy stories. She attended FantaSci in Durham, hoping to learn from authors about the business side of publishing. One of the guests, Kevin Ikenberry, asked... Read More →

H.Y. Gregor

Author

John Holmes

Publisher

Kim Iverson Headlee

Author

Kim Iverson Headlee lives on a farm in the mountains of southwestern Virginia with her family, cats, fish, goats, Great Pyrenees goat guards, someone else's cattle, half a million honey bees, and assorted wildlife. People and creatures come and go, but the cave and the 250-year-old... Read More →

Sunday January 19, 2025 2:00pm - 3:00pm EST
Salon L

Literature, Writing Techniques