#worldcon 2025

13-17 August 2025 in Seattle WA

Come find us at Table 7!

I was going to do this whole post about how genAI is ruining so much of what makes us human - human thought, human creativity, human connection - but as it so happens, I am also tired. So let's run this down:

On April 30, the con chair of WorldCon posted a statement answering questions about whether WorldCon had used ChatGPT in any of its processes. The answer was yes. It was used in panelist vetting.

The reaction was immediate and negative. Writers in general don't like genAI, especially writers who've had their work stolen for the LLM to train on (which is most of us). We also dislike the environmental impact of this!

Because it was used for vetting, a lot of panelists chosen for WorldCon began doubting whether they were chosen fairly.

On May 2nd, an apology was issued. The chair promised another update on what actions WorldCon would take to remedy the problem. Unfortunately, WorldCon had already lost a lot of trust in the community.

An explanation of what ChatGPT was used for and the prompt given to it dropped on May 6.

I was one of the authors who'd applied to WorldCon but got ghosted (I don't even get newsletters from them despite signing up). I'm not on the panelist list. Neither were some authors whose voices I thought truly belonged at WorldCon. Well, when I get cranky, I move. I decided that I was going to create a fringe con to run during one day of WorldCon, with stellar programming and wonderful panelists - and I'd do it with no genAI. No LLMs, no GPT, nothing but human brains and human work.

I present to you: ConCurrent Seattle.

Credit goes to @inkcurlsandknives for the logo design!

ConCurrent is a one-day, in-person only, masks required SFFH programming track intended to be an alternate to WorldCon. If you're in Seattle on Thursday, August 14, 2025, please drop in to see us! Admission is free, but registration is required (we'll have that process sorted out soon). I've got a bananas lineup of authors, I can promise you that. The sparklecorns will be sparkling.

But to make it run, ConCurrent will cost us 5000 USD. I've been crowdfunding for the last couple of weeks and we're halfway there! That's the good news. So now we need another push to get fully funded. If you wanna put your middle fingers up at genAI, I'd super appreciate it if you could send some dollars my way.

Yeah, that's it. This con is happening. It's gonna be a blast. I'm hyped for these panels. Please help defray the cost and I'll see you in Seattle!

I don't know how many of you are Dead Boy Detectives fans and planning to attend the World Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention (WorldCON) in Seattle this year, but if you are, please consider nominating the show for a Hugo Award!

The Hugo Award is the the award that fans attending the convention vote on every year. There are a bunch of different categories: best short story, best novel, best fan writer, but the two that are relevant here are Best Dramatic Presentation Long Form (for the whole series) and Best Dramatic Presentation Short Form (for individual episodes). You can nominate up to five entries in each category.

Full confession: I've attended WorldCON off and on for years, but only ever watched the Hugo Awards once and this is my first year voting. So there's a lot of stuff I don't know. But you can view the rules about eligibility here: https://seattlein2025.org/wsfs/hugo-awards/nominations-eligibility/ and you can participate in the nominations so long as you purchased your membership before January 31. If you purchased your membership later, you can't nominate, but you can vote on the finalists. Whichever entries receive the most nominations become finalists that people can vote for on the ballot.

I don't know if Dead Boy Detectives becoming a Hugo Finalist will make a difference to Netflix, but it means a lot to us fans of the show. It's also something that will get the attention of the larger fandom community. It will send the message that we like shows with diverse casts, positive LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent representation, female characters with diverse strengths and skillsets, teenage characters with flaws and trauma and journeys of healing, and stories about loneliness and found family and friendship. (And also ghosts, psychics, witches, cat deities, sea monsters, librarians, and so forth.)

Found the video of Ink to Film's interview of Martha Wells at this year's Worldcon. Congratulations Martha on being Guest of Honour!

It’s been over 20 years since I started attending WorldCons. Since before Gail was even a twinkle in my pen, so to speak.

Despite drama, crisis, politics, and more shakeups than my hips in a belly-dancing class, I keep going back to WorldCon because, quite frankly, I enjoy it. It’s a good mix of meeting up with my beloved readers, also my beloved author friends, and my own favorite authors.

The very first day I ran into Madame Askew, the Grand Arbiter, and T.M. Kuta – three of my very favorite magical beings. Madame Askew and The Grand Arbiter come to me from my early steampunk convention days but this was their very first WorldCon and they had tons of panels. (Madame Askew would go on to WIN the masquerade, we are all very chuffed.) They were, if I do say so myself (and I very much do) quite popular with the WorldCon peeps. Since I was the major instigator behind their attending, I’m pleased they were well received.

I’m wearing an eShakti (RIP) maxi dress (yes it has pockets) which I also use for my steampunk Star Trek looks.

For WorldCon I paired it with black flats decorated with red fuzzy shoe puffs that make most shoes look more retro.

That massive red teapot purse is from a vendor who used to be on Etsy but is no longer. It is responsible for my only viral TikTok clip, which is me giggling like crazy when opening it because it is so much bigger than I expected.

The gloves are vintage leather ones and the head wrap is no longer available.

Other Outfits?

I would say my most popular one was this little number, which I dubbed Cupcake Galaxy Gail.

Normally this purse only goes to teaching conferences with me, it’s my grown up Gail bag. Teapots are for conventions. But because I was packing the big red one and my bog boots I decided to check a suitcase and bring this one along. (It’s hard to travel with carry-on only.)

This was not my final outfit, but it was the last one I remembered to snap a pic of. (I am a terrible fashion blogger, it’s one of the reasons I stopped. I rarely remember to get outfit shots.)

That is another eShakti dress (yes, pockets).

The head wrap is the same as before, only in navy, from the Zon,

Vintage gloves.

20 year old gold heels. (Held together these days by superglue and pure will.)

The binder clip bag again.

I miss eShakti a lot. Although these days I rarely buy dresses new anymore. I’ve been so disappointed in the quality. I’m back to simply thrifting & tailoring, or (rarely) vintage.

The Panels (with notes)

I had a lot of fun panels this WorldCon.

About half of them were business of writing related, mostly the kind of thing that will show up in my next non-fiction book, Going Hybrid.

WorldCon 2025 Seattle “Direct Sales” Panel  photo by Oriana Leckert. L-R Jessie Kwak, Cassie Alexander, self, Oriana Leckert, Amy Wolf (and my stupid-big teapot purse)

Links from some of the panels I was on

Boarding Schools in Genre 

Found Family: The New Social Paradigm

The Kdramas I love and talked about as great examples of Found Family are all mentioned in this post.

Almost all Heroine’s Journey narratives are found family.

Pretty much all of my books are found family but the most intentionally activated used of this trope are in The Custard Protocol and Tinkered Starsong series.

Food In History  

I don’t have a ton of resources for this one since it was mostly me talking with the hat on of my pervious life as an archaeologist. But you can read all about that in this post here.

Direct Sales Strategies 

I mentioned the recent Shopify Bot Attack Leaving Indie Authors with Financial Losses and here is someone who knows talking about defensive strategies.

I talked about how important it is to know exactly how much your time is worth. Here is a Value Of Time Calculator.

Here’s a blog on 30 Habits That Have Improved My Author Life

Newsletter Stuff 

I use MailerLite for all my newsletters. It’s fine.

I talk about how I track and gather data (so I can decide where to best spend my time) in this whopper of a YouTube interview on Data Analytics.

Being Hybrid 

There are a ton of resources for this already provided on the Going Hybrid book landing page.

I also did a ton of socialization. Met some really lovely readers at both a table-talk and meet-up.

Ran into many of my longest running author friends (still writing), one I meet at that first WorldCon over 20 years ago! Others, I have known through all 15+ years of my writing career. Since Soulless debuted.

Since we are mostly around the same age, at lot of us are going through major life changes, with parents and relationships passing away. Also big changes in our respective careers. So it was a pretty emotional con as well. But very necessary to get all caught up.

I’m lucky enough to have collected some pretty awesome friends around me at home, but there are some things that only my fellow authors truly understand. If I were to give one survival tip to my fellow authors just starting out on this madcap journey, it is… make author friends.

Yours (destined to be killed by a tumbling TBR pile),