Month: August 2018

Posted on by

Atthis Arts at Gen Con 51

Chris and Emily at Gen Con 51
Chris and Emily at Gen Con 51

We just got back from a busy week at Gen Con 51 in Indianapolis. Emily signed books and met readers in Authors’ Avenue, and I (Chris) spent time at the Gen Con Writers Symposium meeting authors and writers and moderating panels.

About Gen Con

If you are unfamiliar with Gen Con—Gen Con is the original, longest-running gaming convention in the world. It attracts about 60,000 unique visitors, taking over Indianapolis for 4 days of gaming, cosplay, entertainment, family events, and the Writer’s Symposium: one of the largest and fastest growing professional events for speculative fiction writers in the world.

Games

Here’s a secret: We especially love Gen Con because we love games. Emily and I grew up playing board games with our families and friends, and the idea of gathering around the table still brings us all the feels. We talked to a few of our favorite game creators: like Jason Anarchy of Drinking Quest fame and Jason Tagmire of Button Shy Games. I also stopped by and got a demo of Root by Leder Games and Lucky’s Misadventures by Great Northern Games, both of which we had backed on Kickstarter to play with our kids. We also picked up a fun game from Deep Water Games and managed to get a little time away to play it in the lobby—where Emily was happy to see some of the readers who had stopped by.

Do you play table top games anymore? If not, you should! It’s great fun for friends and family.

Panel Discussions

I loved moderating panels at the Writer’s Symposium this year. I had such a fun time meeting people, and I picked up new reads—I listened to Robyn Bennis‘ The Guns Above on audiobook on the way home, while Emily worked edits for our upcoming titles.

I also learned some new things about Fantasy, that made me think about our current projects at Atthis Arts. I moderated a panel titled “What Makes a Story Fantasy” with Tor/Forge editor Chris Morgan, author and English professor Gregory Wilson, and best-selling author Erin Evans. This panel brought out a fascinating discussion on fantasy fiction that doesn’t rely on action and violence, but instead explores a non-violent approach to conflict resolution. Greg referred to this sub-genre as “Quiet Fantasy.”  I had never heard this term—and I believe Greg coined it during our panel.

It got me thinking about how different some of our approaches are to the genre. And if you’re interested in more, I invite you to check out Diamondsong. 🙂 I think Emily is out there pushing boundaries on non-violence themes and the social impacts of progressive world-building, and I’m proud of her for being passionate about taking that risk.

For me, the clock resets—only 358 days until Gen Con 52! Maybe we’ll see you there?

Chris

Posted on by

Introducing Our Fall Catalog: Now Live on Kickstarter

2018 Atthis Arts Fall Catalog Kickstarter

We have a big announcement:
Our first Catalog campaign, using Kickstarter.

We’ve used crowdfunding over the years to help with the initial production costs needed to make the high-quality artistic products that we believe in. We’d still appreciate your help by pre-ordering these products. However, we have so many wonderful things coming out that we’ve decided to combine them – a big ol’ party and we’d love for you to join us. : )

Here’s how it works: Go to the campaign page and look through our upcoming titles at:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/atthisarts/atthis-arts-catalog-2018/

Follow the instructions there to select an author and reward level. (You won’t have to only pick one author, just pick one for now.) Then when the campaign is over, you’ll be able to add more titles by other authors (only if you’d like to, of course). We promise we are doing everything we can to make this easy and low-hassle for you.

We hope you’ll give all these great titles a look! The details are at the link, but it includes both adult-level speculative fiction (and ok for teens) as well as lower and upper middle grade fantasy (meaning great reads for elementary and middle school students).

Thank you so very much for your support. We know you don’t need to go out of your way to pre-order these titles, and we are very grateful for that support. We’re trying to make things happen for our small press so we can continue to publish unique, artistic writing and amplify important issues and voices—and this campaign is a big step in that process.

Thanks and please let us know if you have any questions!

The Team at Atthis Arts