Elizabeth Moon will appear at ArmadilloCon 48 in Austin, Texas, September 11-13, and for a writer who almost never works the convention circuit, that alone makes the show worth circling on the calendar. The con’s announcement read in full:
“ArmadilloCon #48 - Sept 11-13, 2026. Special Appearance by Elizabeth Moon. Elizabeth Moon grew up on the Texas border, served three years of active duty in the USMC (1968-71), and now lives with her husband, also a veteran, near Austin, Texas. She has published more than twenty-five novels, including Nebula Award winner The Speed of Dark, Hugo finalist Remnant Population, and the enduring epic fantasy series The Chronicles of Paksenarrion. She has published more than fifty short-fiction pieces in anthologies and magazines and in four of her own short-fiction collections, most recently Moon Flights and Deeds of Honor. When not writing, Moon enjoys photographing native plants and wildlife, knitting socks, and cooking.”
According to Moon’s own site, her last convention appearance of any kind was ArmadilloCon in 2024. That is the full extent of her public schedule over the past two years, which makes a second ArmadilloCon booking a real event rather than a routine stop on a tour.
Moon’s ArmadilloCon appearance lands just weeks ahead of the biggest Paksworld news in years. Baen Books releases Horngard on October 6, the opening volume of a new trilogy set in the world she built almost forty years ago. Moon had gone quiet after mentioning health problems to fellow authors, and her last novel-length release was Into the Fire in 2018, a return to her Vatta’s War space opera series. Fans had no clear signal of whether new Paksworld fiction was still coming. Word that Moon has finished all three books in the new trilogy, with book two set for spring 2027, turned that silence into one of the year’s better surprises for military fantasy readers.
Horngard centers on a power vacuum at an empty throne, with a dragon moving to install one of his own kind as ruler while two pairs of siblings, Mikeli and Camwyn, Gwenno and Aris, get pulled into the fight over who controls it. Baen kept the Paksenarrion world in print through the gap with Deeds of Wisdom in 2025, but Horngard marks Moon’s first new novel in the setting since the five-book Paladin’s Legacy sequence wrapped in 2014.
Moon’s foundation in the genre starts with The Deed of Paksenarrion, published across three volumes in 1988 and 1989 and still counted among the defining post-Tolkien fantasy epics. Sheepfarmer’s Daughter, the opening volume, won the Compton Crook Award for best first novel. The trilogy follows Paksenarrion Dorthansdotter from a mercenary company recruit fleeing an arranged marriage to a paladin who reshapes the kingdoms around her, and Warner Bros. acquired film rights to the books in December 2019.
Moon’s range beyond Paksworld is its own case for why this appearance matters. The Speed of Dark won the Nebula Award, told from inside the perspective of an autistic narrator facing a forced medical procedure. Remnant Population was a Hugo finalist. The Vatta’s War series built a devoted military science fiction following of its own, running parallel to her fantasy work for over a decade.
Before any of that, Moon served three years of active duty in the United States Marine Corps from 1968 to 1971, one of a small number of major fantasy authors of her generation with a direct military service background feeding into the realism of her battle scenes and command structures. She holds degrees in history and biology, was elected to public office, and spent six years working as a paramedic on a rural Texas ambulance service before her writing career took off.
ArmadilloCon has a reputation as a literary-focused convention built around panels and craft discussion rather than a media-guest autograph circuit, which fits a writer of Moon’s habits better than a large commercial expo would. For Texas fans who have waited years for a chance to hear her speak in person, and for readers anywhere planning a trip around one of the only public appearances she is likely to make this decade, September 11-13 in Austin is the window.
You can get tickets at https://armadillocon.org/
Given how rarely Moon takes a convention stage, is ArmadilloCon 48 the moment Horngard gets introduced to a room full of readers who have waited a decade to hear what happens next in Paksworld?
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Well dang, I had considered going this year, my last Armadillo Con was 1986 or so. Between her, Bruce Sterling and Rudy Rucker, there is some serious old school scifi authors in attendance.
I think I'll stick my toe in with "Remnant Population."