WonderCon 2025: Renee Coloman Explores This Pop Culture Scene

Festival season is one of my favorite times of the year. Especially when authors, artists, editors, screenwriters, and producers join panels to share their insights, experiences, and wisdom. It’s truly icing on the cake!

At the end of March, WonderCon hosted their annual event at the Anaheim Convention Center, right across the street from Disneyland. And the event was magnificent! WonderCon is organized by Comic-Con International. The annual convention celebrates all things related to comics, graphic novels, films, television, cosplay, fantasy worlds, sci-fi, horror, movie technology & robotics, and other forms of pop culture. I’ve attended for the past three years, and at the end of the event, I feel more inspired, more creative, and more ambitious to challenge my writing style and try new genres.

This year, I attended several great panels, including Gunslingers & Ghosts: Insurgence of Weird Westerns, Graphic Novels vs. Prose, and my favorite: Writing Psychologically-rich Characters. Seven writers sat on this panel. Each one shared their tips and tricks on the importance of human emotion—conveying complexity, vulnerabilities, strengths, triumphs and failures, choices, regrets, and the characters’ responses to obstacles, hindrances, risks, losses, and deaths. Emotions that resonate with readers and audiences. An echo of real life.

What truly stood out that I hold dear to my heart is the panelists’ insistence that every writer’s and every creative person’s voice is important. Especially during these trying times in our country and in our lives. Their words have made a significant imprint on me:

Art is more important than ever. Use your voice—because art is what will make a positive difference in our world.

In paying it forward, stay encouraged. Keep doing what you do and don’t ever, ever give up. An audience exists for every writer, every creative, every voice. Stay strong, my friends. In this world we share together, all that you do truly matters.

Check out my 2-minute video below highlighting the fun at WonderCon :)

Renee Explores WonderCon 2025 - Watch this fun video to catch a glimpse of why panel discussions are one of Renee's favorite events at WonderCon. #writerslife #creativeminds #cosplay #inspiration

Coming in late-April, the Los Angeles Times Book Festival. I can’t wait to share details about this wonderful event with you.