Greetings friends of Speculative Fiction!

It’s been a busy couple of months around the Faith and Fantasy Alliance camp. As we work to mesh all the moving parts of this conference, things are coming together one facet at a time. It’s overwhelming and the risk of implosion is always out there, but the God-sized nature of this task is a good thing–it keeps us mindful that few ideas of impact can come to fruition without the hard work of the servants determined to make the idea a reality (plus a few miracles along the way.)

One hiccup we ran into was the fact that the name Spec-Con and its variants are protected under trademark. While there are ways to carefully navigate the laws surrounding intellectual property and make the name work for what we’re doing, the more I looked into it, the more I asked myself, “Why take the chance of ambiguous brand identity?” And so the hunt for a new name for the conference began.

Several agonizing weeks later, I think we’ve finally landed on the name we’re going to use. And that name will be…

Realm Makers: 2013

I truly think this name captures who we are–artists who build worlds, whether high technology or bronze age, urban, high, or alternate in setting. My hope is that the conference content will speak to what unifies us, with as varied as our work may be.

In other news:

Faculty session proposals are rolling in, and I hope to have the schedule figured out by the 1st of March (subject to revision, of course.) Then we can really get the promotional campaign going, and by May it will be registration time!

So keep your eyes peeled. It’s going to be a great gathering, where we’ll talk about worldview, magic, technology, author platform, constructive critique, sales strategies,  combat scenes, and more! We hope you’ll be there, bring a friend, and meet more like-minded what-iffers than you thought existed.