As some of you may know, I participated in The Conference for Canadian Content in Speculative Art and Literature last weekend, and spoke on a few panels. One of those panels was titled “No More Sparkly Vampires! Scary Monsters in Fiction, and I had the privilege of having a very lively and incredibly interesting conversation with Kevin T. Johns, Timothy Carter, Derek Newman-Stille and Mike Rimar. The conversation started by us describing what monsters mean to us, and went on to be about humanity (or lack thereof) of the characters themselves, the concept of black and white and all the gray areas in between, bullying, and social relationships in general. I’m glad someone filmed it!