A first for me: I watched a bad author panel.

This has been a crazy fun week for me. I’m attending a conference with several other authors I know and it is enormous. I’ve never been to one this large. There’s so much going on, so many free books, so many opportunities to connect with readers and writers. It’s sometimes a little overwhelming, but in a good way.

As I write this, I’m taking a break from my biggest “authoring” day of the conference. I woke up dark and early—because at 4:15 a.m. it is still quite dark—and got my six mile run done along a beautiful waterfront, got back to the hotel and showered quick enough to be at the conference for a 7 a.m. signing with six other CamCat authors. We were signing books until 10 a.m. I was on a panel at 10:20 a.m. with a separate signing immediately following. I then had a Sister’s In Crime meetup, so I was booked until essentially 1 p.m.

I had a blast. It was great to meet other authors with my publisher that have become long-distance friends in person. My panel was amazing! Full of five other paranormal authors. All women. And we had great chemistry. I want to be friends with all of them—I told them this, and exchanged cards with them, and I hope we keep up with each other—and the audience enjoyed it. We had several people come up to take pictures of us afterward and I had many come to my signing and say how much they enjoyed it. It was a good panel.

Today I also had the interesting experience of going to my first bad panel.

I don’t mean bad in the sense that it was disorganized, or that some authors were hogging the mic too much; all of which I’ve experienced. But even in those situations, I’ve always found some nugget to pull from. No, this was something I’d never seen before.

It was a packed panel and my friend and I had crept in just as the doors shut. We both had a lot of baggage we were carrying around, and so decided to just hang against the back wall and stand. We were both tired and didn’t want to force our way through people already seated.

As I was arranging my bags to be the most out-of-the-way, I heard the moderator give a question, and the panelist answered in a very combative way. Something along the lines of, “wow, that’s incredibly subjective and general, I don’t even know how to answer that in a useful way.” That’s not a direct quote, but that is the tone. I was looking at my bags at the time, but I’ve only moderated one panel this early in my author career, and I remember thinking, “Man, I hope I never get a panelist like that when I’m moderating.”

It continued along the same vein and I found myself tuning out. I wasn’t even watching them, the bits of conversation that did reach my ears simply made my brain go, “wow, that was a bit much.” I started discretely digging out my power bank and charging my phone.

My friend leaned over to me and said, “This panel is horrible.”

I turned to whisper back, “Do you want to ditch?”

“Would you be okay with that?”

“Absolutely.”

We gathered up our things as quickly as possible and shuffled out. I stopped right outside the door to stuff charging cords into more secure places and she asked me if I was really okay leaving. I replied that I was because I felt that they were being really combative with each other and it was uncomfortable.

Unlike me, she had been watching them while I quietly futzed around with my things and said that they were giving each other blatant side-eyes, glancing at other panelists and rolling their eyes. She said it was awful. Even though I hadn’t seen that, I caught the vibe. We found a spot to sit in the sun and discuss it.

There are a lot of writers out there. There are a lot of published authors out there. But the writing community still feels very small. It seems so odd to burn bridges like that in a packed panel. I couldn’t fathom it. Even if you were on a panel with someone you didn’t agree with, the professional thing for both of you would be to just answer the question to the best of your ability and be as courteous as you could be. Giving the moderator blatant shade when they ask a question just seems unwise, not to mention downright rude.

We went to another panel afterward that was lovely, interesting, and all about social justice. The panelists acknowledged each other and pointed out specific things their fellow authors had said that they wanted to bounce off of or that they really agreed with. They all left with new fans in the audience and probably some new professional friends who write in their genre.

That’s how things should go.

And most of the time it does. I am very happy to say that this is the first time I’ve witnessed something like this, and I hope it will be the only.

My takeaway this week is that you should always be kind. You never know who’s watching and who won’t feel like giving you a chance to turn it around.