Turn the page and discover the final collection of this year’s celebrated Writers Symposium authors…
In this post, we are excited to introduce the fifth 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.
George Jreije
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
A desire to be heard was what first drew me to think—quite arrogantly—that I had what it takes to write. Fortunately, I stuck through the early failures and learned to be patient in pursuit of my voice, which came after writing a couple of novels. I’d realized that I was writing stories for others and not myself, and from then on, I began drawing from my experiences and culture (I’m Lebanese-American), which helped unlock my authorial voice. It turns out that the key to being heard is to speak authentically, even in your writing.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
I would love to have dinner with the jinn from my HarperCollins-published children’s novel, Bashir Boutros and the Jewel of the Nile, which is a twist on the classic tale of Aladdin, in which Aladdin is the villain. His jinn, which finds itself in the hands of a young boy, has thousands of years of good stories to share!
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
The most unusual place I’ve found inspiration for my writing has to be in Maine, where I recently moved as my wife’s family comes from there. I can see how Stephen King found inspiration for all his creepy stories, and I have to say that I’ve been exploring horror writing more since the move. There’s nothing like dark forests that house untold mysteries to feed the creepier parts of our imaginations.
If you could switch genres for a day, which genre would you choose to write in, and what kind of story would you create?
If I could switch away from the speculative fiction—fantasy, science fiction, and horror—that I’m accustomed to writing, I’d love to try memoir. It’s not that I have some extraordinary personal story to share per-se, but I always loved self-deprecating humor, and there’s quite a bit from my own life that I can poke fun at.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
Write the types of stories that you feel are cool. If you’re not fully behind a project, it’ll be hard to find the motivation to pull through and commit. Also, study the published books you like and interrogate what about them—from the writing itself to the high-level story—makes those books compelling.
You can learn more about George Jreje on Instagram and on his website.
Howard Tayler
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
Reading inspired me to write. I was reading Hardy Boys novels at age 4, picked up Tolkien in 5th grade, and was drawn into SF by Niven in 10th grade. I really wanted to tell these kinds of stories. Decades later I discovered webcomics and thought they looked like a great way to tell a story.
My voice isn’t something I actively found (I wasn’t looking for it), it’s just a thing that happened. My art style is an accident of “I am in too much of a hurry to actually study drawing.”
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
I am an information sponge, so I’d talk to one of the lesser-known characters from the later books. Everness, from A Little Immortality, would be a good choice because they’ve been around for many, many millions of years, and their whole job was to be an archive and a probability matrix. Also, Everness doesn’t eat, so they could talk the whole time and there’d be more food for me.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
Waiting at the airport for my sister-in-law, I was thinking about lost luggage, and teleportation, and then thought “what if Big Travel made copies of everyone and all their stuff, interrogated them, and then used this to maintain their monopoly?” This led to the plot of The Teraport Wars, which in turn led to the major arc of all twenty books of Schlock Mercenary. That one idea was the spine that held the whole body of my work together for twenty years.
If you could switch genres for a day, which genre would you choose to write in, and what kind of story would you create?
Just a day? I guess I would switch to “humorous microfiction” and I would try to create a story with a beginning, middle, and end. Give me more than just a day, I’ll give you a different answer.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
Don’t chase the market. Follow your passion and make the thing you really want to make. If you write a story that ignites your own soul, people will read it. If you write it well then people will buy it. If you still want to follow the market, do it the fun way by reading new stuff.
You can learn more about Howard Tayler and his work by visiting his website or checking out the Writing Excuses podcast.
Richard Lee Byers
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
Since childhood, I’ve loved stories and storytelling. I remember finding old copies of The Master Mind of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs and Best Supernatural Stories of H. P. Lovecraft on a bookshelf in my grandparents’ home. I’ve never figured out how they came to be there as all the other books were quite mundane. But anyway, I loved them, and from them came my resolve to be not just a fiction writer but a writer of fantastic fiction.
I don’t know that my voice is all that unique. I do know I’ve never tried to cultivate a unique voice, rather, to write as clearly and effectively as I can. I’m inclined to think that if writers focus on that, whatever’s unique about their voices will naturally emerge.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
That’s a tough one. I’ve created many characters I like. But I’ll go with Aoth Fezim, the mercenary commander from my later Forgotten Realms novels. Ideally, I’d ask him about a number of things, including his perspective as a quasi-immortal (he hasn’t aged much since the Spellplague) and how he balances the grim realities of being a mercenary with the prompting of his conscience.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
My horror novel Dark Fortune has a pastor as its hero. Since I’m not religious, a story centered on a church was a challenging thing for me to write. I had to do some creative imagining to portray my protagonist’s inner life convincingly. (At least I hope it’s convincing.)
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 currently write (mostly) sword-and-sorcery, urban fantasy, and horror. I guess if I were to switch genres, it would be to straight-up private-eye fiction since I read and enjoy a lot of that. The story would feature the typical cynical but idealistic, wisecracking PI operating in a corrupt world where people and events are rarely what they seem.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
This is another tough question for me because I broke in so long ago. The business has changed a lot, and to be honest, I haven’t kept up. Self-publishing is apparently a viable option, relentless self-promotion seems to be a necessity, it’s a rare writer who manages without beta and sensitivity readers, and I’m not really the right person to discuss any of that. I do think these old Three Rules are still applicable and so I cite them here.
A. You must write.
B. You must finish the stories you begin.
C. You must submit the completed stories relentlessly until somebody buys them or you run out of markets.
You can learn more about Richard Lee Byers on his Facebook page.
Jessie Scoble
What inspired you to become a writer, and how did you find your unique voice as an author?
Start with an easy question, eh?
I had written a short story for a “creative assignment” in my senior year at high school, and after the teacher read it to the class, I was surprised and delighted by how many classmates told me they’d enjoyed it. But I didn’t do much creative writing during university, although I was in an English Lit program. I did do a lot of roleplaying in those years, and I ran a lot of games, so it would be more accurate to say I didn’t write traditional fiction, but was writing campaigns.
A year after graduating, I fell into working at a small pen&paper game company, initially as office manager. After a few months, I was offered a chance to co-write an RPG (the El Hazard RPG & Resource book) and seeing my name “in print” for the first time was a thrill.
The vast majority of my writing career has been for games – first pen&paper games, then video games. Only more recently have I been working on a comic, short stories, and a novel.
As for my voice? I still think it’s a work-in-progress. Like most writers, I’m heavily influenced by a few significant authors who I imprinted on very strongly, in particular Roger Zelazny, Harlan Ellison, Charles de Lint, Joe Straczynski, David Milch, and Hunter S. Thompson. Do I sound like any of ’em? Probably not. But bits and pieces here and there come together to form the gestalt.
If you could have dinner with any character from your books, who would it be and what would you talk about?
I would talk with Zabi (Elizabeth Marquez) and her grandfather, Jeronimo, from my unpublished sports novel, because Jeronimo would cook, and it would be a fabulous, rich Mexican meal (which is hard to come by in Montreal, where I now live). And I’d love to know if I “captured” Zabi’s insight into competitive gaming accurately.
What’s the most unusual or unexpected place you’ve found inspiration for a story, and how did it shape your writing?
When I left Texas (the first time), I invited one of my best friends, Devinder Thiara, to fly down and help me drive back to Canada. I had been heavily immersed in southwestern and border culture stories the year I was living there, and had also gotten heavily into script writing due to the influence of the Austin Film Festival. Devinder said he wanted to try to write something together, and I suggested an “action horror, western cowboy” thing, which he thought about for thirty seconds, and then said it was, “The stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of.”
Let me tell you, it was a very long, three day drive, up through Arkansas, Illinois, Into Michigan, and across the bridge into Ontario. We talked about anything and everything on that drive, but NOT that story. Then, two weeks after I’d gotten back home to Toronto and resettled, Devinder came over for dinner and said, “Okay, I figured out the cast and the basic plot for your horror western. I hate it, but If we are going to do it, let’s do it right.” And thus the first seeds of Dead Money were planted in the bitter ground.
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’d love to write a “classic” Marvel superhero story, something big and bold heralding back to the stories I loved as a kid, whether dark and serious like the Death of Spider-Man, or something audacious and over-the-top (and a bit ridiculous) like the original Secret Wars, or a story that harkened back to the Claremont X-men era (Dark Phoenix or Days of Future Past or the Brood).
I’d return to the roots, rather than trying to sort through decades and decades of very cluttered history (and twists, and turns, and clones, and not clones, and…), but give it a touch of modern sensibility. Modern stories often have more depth and complexity, and allow us to explore more nuanced takes on characters, but it’s important to preserve the core of what we liked in the first place. That would be a blast.
What advice would you give to aspiring writers looking to get published in today’s evolving literary landscape?
It’s tough out there. While the barrier to entry is the easiest it’s ever been, the barrier to entry is the easiest it’s ever been. You’re competing with an infinite amount of competition — it was already incredibly hard to stand out against so many options in the last few years, but the wave of slop due to generative AI makes it almost too hard to continue. And yet if you want to tell stories, if you need to tell stories, I’d say don’t let anything stop you.
It’s important to learn the traditional routes, the self-publishing routes, and see what works best for you. It’s also vitally important to learn how to finish stories, how to invite and accept critique, and to stay well read.
Finally, while there are many trends one can chase, because the chance of big success is very rare, I’d say it’s better to write for yourself, to write the stories YOU want to read and that you can’t find out there unless you put them out into the world.
You can check out more of Jessie Scobie’s work on Bluesky and on his website.