Saturday Afternoon at the Festival

He's dead, Jim.

Ah, yes, those three iconic words from Classic Trek, uttered by Dr. McCoy himself... how they resonated in my mind during the "Another One Bites the Dust" panel at the LLF on Saturday afternoon.

Hey, authors writing in our genres (F/SF) must, from time to time, deal with death; of characters, of groups, heck, sometimes even of whole species.  So talking about how to deal with death scenes, the hows, whys, and repercussions thereof, was a lot of fun.

The verdict; if you're going to do it, do it with style.  Death should be shocking; to the other characters in your story, to the plot in general, and most of all, to the reader.  You want the death to resonate in the reader's mind and have an effect on the remainder of the story.  Don't kill characters needlessly, but don't hesitate to do the deed if it makes a better story.

The late afternoon panel "Creatures of the Night", dealing with why vampires and werewolves are so popluar in current Fantasy and Horror literature, was cancelled unfortunately.  However, our consensus was, vampires should not sparkle, and anyone falling in love with a vampire or lycanthrope (eewww!) only gets what they deserve.