Turn the page and discover the next collection of celebrated authors…
In this post, we are excited to introduce a third group of brilliant storytellers who will be heading to the Gen Con 2026 Writers Symposium this summer. Settle in and be ready to be inspired by the creative minds behind some of our community’s most beloved stories.
LaShawn M. Wanak
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
My grandmother was a huge paperback reader. She read many genres: Western, romance, and speculative fiction; she let me take home so many thick fantasy and science books, much to my mother’s dismay.
I read way too many books that were supposed to be for adults and in college, which expanded to many, many, many short story anthologies. I loved the short story fiction form so much that I thought I would try my hand at it, and I’ve written over thirty published stories since.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about? What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
I’m going to combine the above questions and answer the latter first. I’m currently working on a novel about an older Black nun who is called to the Fae World to search for her estranged sister. Some years ago, I learned that my great-grandmother, Vashti, had an older sister named Ebenezer. With names like that, I had to write about them.
That said, I’d love to sit with Ebenezer and Vashti to talk about their Catholic faith. Many of my stories deal with faith in some form or another.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
My advice is to read stories. Books, short stories, audiobooks, it doesn’t matter. If you can take your time reading a story slowly, making notes as you go, that will help improve your craft.
You can find LaShawn on Facebook, Bluesky, her website “The Cafe in the Woods”, and her Patreon.
Richard Dansky
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
The earliest real inspiration came from reading The Halloween Tree, by Ray Bradbury, when I had chicken pox in third grade. Up until that point, I basically read non-fiction books about dinosaurs and volcanoes, and that was about it. The Halloween Tree, though, was a book that was simultaneously a story and about stories, and that took root in ways that eventually manifested in role-playing games and LARPs, in writing for games, and, finally, in turning my hand to fiction.
As for my voice, it’s evolved as I’ve read more and worked across more media. I’ve learned from so many fabulous writers I’ve read, and incorporated their lessons where I could. And then if you take that hodgepodge of Ray Bradbury, Charles Grant, HP Lovecraft, Kage Baker, Lloyd Alexander, Manly Wade Wellman, Raymond Chandler, Julian May, and so many others, then run it through a deep dive into academia and then four years in the TTRPG business, and then video games on top of it, you get my voice. Or at least, my voice right now. I’m still evolving.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
To be fair, for certain of my characters, sitting down to dinner would mean that I was dinner, so I have to be selective here. If I had to choose one, it would probably be Reb Palache, the magical pirate rabbi with an angel on his shoulder, simply because I’d be getting twice as much conversation.
Also, Palache is a very well-read kind of guy, and widely traveled, and I figure he’d have much better stories than any of the programmers, game devs, or whatnot that populate a lot of my work, because those guys barely leave the house.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
I have to blame Douglas Clegg for this one. We were at Necon one year, back when it was on the campus of Roger Williams University, and a bunch of us were just sitting around very late at night talking about writing. Doug said something I found very interesting: you should try to make it so the publisher can sell your story to sell the book. What he meant by that was tying your experience into the subject matter you were writing about in an intrinsic way. That got me thinking about writing a video game horror novel, and in doing so, I realized I wanted to tell a story about video games that I, as a game developer, was uniquely suited to tell.
This led me to realize I should write the story of the horrors of game development, based on what I’d seen or experienced, or what I’d heard from friends in the industry, and then add some supernatural oomph. (I’d had enough of “monster escapes from game and eats everyone.”) That ultimately became my novel Vaporware, and while it may not have achieved marketing escape velocity, it’s been called one of the most realistic books about game development ever, and I’m proud of that.
If you could switch genres for a day, which genre would you choose to write in, and what kind of story would you create?
I would totally put my Tom Clancy hat back on from the Ubisoft days and write a sprawling technothriller that went all over the globe, had a huge cast of characters, and was well enough researched to make people who read it go “wait a minute, is this real?”
We’re talking 900 pages minimum and enough action set pieces with massive explosions and high-tech jargon to choke a hippopotamus, a real doorstop of a novel that could be used to stop a bullet in a pinch. Hang on, I’m getting an idea…
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
The best writing advice I ever got was to have something to say, say it, and say it to someone. That still holds true, I think, but there are a whole lot more ways to say it, and a whole lot more ways to say it to someone. So do that, but do it in a way that expresses your voice. Write, and write more, and then write some more, in a way that’s yours because that unique voice born of your experience and approach and reading and everything else is the most valuable thing you possess in this biz. And don’t get discouraged, and don’t give up, even if it seems like the odds are stacked against you.
Maybe you don’t get the agent and the New York publishing deal, but maybe your story in a magazine or on a website or in a chapbook you’re selling at a local coffeehouse gets read by somebody and means something to them.
It’s a different kind of success, and I know we’d all prefer the type that comes with movie deals and large contracts, but even so, there are a lot of ways to measure success, and you owe it to yourself to let yourself be open to all of them.
To learn more about Richard, visit here. Follow him on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and join his Patreon.
Sean CW Korsgaard
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
My grandmother, Mary Wright, was a writer who penned several books with Eva Kor, a Holocaust survivor in Terre Haute. I picked up so much from her. I’ve been an avid reader for years, and I pick up bits and pieces of the craft from everything I read, as well as a decade working as a reporter. Can’t forget the US Army either, like many before me, I eagerly traded my sword for a pen when I came home.
As to what finally put me on track as a writer? In no small part, the Gen Con Writers Symposium. I took some workshops there during the online year during Covid-19, one led by an author whose work I’d long admired, Howard Andrew Jones… and so much clicked into place as a result. So much of what I’d been taking stabs at in the dark was given direction and form, be it how to craft an opening line, to the very name of the fantasy subgenre I’d been chasing much of my life, sword-and-sorcery.
I’m one of many who can testify that the road from student to master to teacher as a writer can very quickly pass through the Gen Con Writers Symposium. After Howard died of cancer last year, far too young, the Symposium’s scholarships were named after him, so he’ll be helping new writers find their footing for years to come. I hope to be able to say the same.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
You know, I’m always shocked by how many times this question gets asked.
The protagonist of several of my sword-and-sorcery stories, Kham Soturnson, because he is canonically a skilled cook, earning his keep with that alongside more violent mercenary work, so he’ll know his way around a good meal… and because I’ve run the poor man ragged across many a misadventure, and I feel perhaps I should apologize.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
Gaming! Two of what I feel are some of my strongest stories were directly inspired by video games. The setting of much of my sword-and-sorcery work has been directly inspired by a mixture of Legend of the Five Rings, Icewind Dale and the Forgotten Realms, with a dash of Thai and Russian mythology, Shaw Brothers flicks, and Lovecraft tossed in. My first short story, the debut of Kham Soturnson, who I mentioned above, following a doomed expedition to an underground city, was partly inspired by a story mission from Skyrim.
Or to offer another example – I was under a deadline for a short story anthology, had gone through a half dozen failed drafts and ideas, and was near giving up. So I did one of the worst things you can do under a deadline, boot up a Paradox grand strategy game/time sink extraordinaire, Stellaris. There’s a flavor event in-game where you find an alien sarcophagus floating in space, and something about that image burned into my mind.
I put down the controller, and 24 hours later, what would become my first-ever published short story, “Black Box,” was completed and turned in. It’s been republished several times since then, including in this year’s Gen Con Writers Symposium Showcase charity anthology. So if you’d like to see how that idea evolved as a story, and support a great cause, pick up a copy at Gen Con this year!
If you could switch genres for a day, which genre would you choose to write in, and what kind of story would you create?
Ironically, for a man who lives and breathes for sword-and-sorcery fantasy, most of my published work so far has been military science fiction. I tend toward more action-heavy, character-driven fiction, no matter the genre… so I’d like to go far outside that box.
If I can confess something? I struggle a lot with hard science, so having a chance to pen a proper crunchy science fiction story, the kind that runs in Analog and the like? That’s been a dream since I first read the magazine over 15 years ago. Speaking of, you should pick up an issue of Analog Science Fiction & Fact if you haven’t, top notch magazine.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
Never ever give up – everyone talks about wanting to be a writer, and 90 percent of them never go beyond talking about it, and a further nine percent of the rest either give up before completing a story or spin their wheels trying to craft something perfect on the first draft.
That is where so many new writers struggle for years; that’s what held me back for years, and I still need to catch myself now and again. Do whatever it takes to finish that first draft – you can polish and punch things up later, that’s why it’s called a DRAFT. A bad or rough story can be edited and improved, while an incomplete story, no matter how much promise it shows, remains incomplete.
You are a writer, first, second, third. So do whatever it takes to put pen to paper, hands to keyboard, and drag what’s burning in your imagination to completion on page.
Stephen Kozeniewski
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
It’s less what inspired me to become a writer – I’ve always written, since I was six years old – but more what inspired me to finally publish. For a long time, I didn’t publish because it would have meant getting my parents’ permission, and that would have been mortifying. Then, when I was old enough for that not to matter anymore, I was simply terrified. But around the time I left the army, I realized it was either try now, or this will forever be a pipe dream.
Speaking of the army, I think my unique voice comes from a combination of being both grounded and artistic. I spent four years in the army and the rest of my adult life as a civil servant, hemmed in by a wall of paperwork and enough bureaucratic regulations to fill the Library of Alexandria.
I’ve known (many) artists who simply flounce about all day, dancing to the sun god and thinking about what beautiful thing they would create if only they could ever get around to it. And I’ve known bureaucrats who let the weight of their day job crush their creative spark. So, I’ve been fortunate to have the discipline to be able to sit down and write a few thousand words a day, as well as an outlet for the deranged, Kafkaesque humor that builds up in me all day.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
Hmm, well, if dinner were provided and I were not, I would probably enjoy a nice conversation with Cicatrice from Hunter of the Dead. At nearly a millennium of age, I think we could talk about almost anything. But I would also need a guarantee of safety when leaving the dinner table.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
Well, as I mentioned above, I have a rather grinding day job. One day, driving home in the rain, in a particular fit of pique, I began yelling (to no one) in the car about how I was just as good as my boss at their job, and we’re all interchangeable cogs in a grand machine. And then I asked myself, “What if we were literally interchangeable cogs?” And thus was Billy and the Cloneasaurus born, positing a world where everyone on Earth is an identical clone.
If you could switch genres for a day, which genre would you choose to write in, and what kind of story would you create?
I would greatly enjoy creating a fantasy. I have an idea for a fantasy world that essentially answers the question, “What happens to all the socks that get lost in the dryer?” (And, no, it’s not just a dryer repair manual with diagrams of the waste catcher.)
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
Well, getting published is the easy part. If you just want to get published, hand me your manuscript, and I’ll have you published on every major platform in about six or seven hours.
So don’t make your goal to be published. Make it crafting a piece of art that materially improves the world or the lives of your readers. Make it building bridges between yourself, the people you know, and the people you’ve never met. Make it by establishing a community. Do that, don’t just “get published.”
To learn more about Stephen, visit his blog here. Follow him on Facebook, X, Instagram, TikTok, and Bluesky.