What Colors for Worldcon? You Decide.

Thursday, 10 AM
Twenty Types of Terror: Exploring Horror Subgenres in Fiction and Games
Marriott Ballroom 1 – Cost $16, duration 2 hours

Horror comes in a variety of flavors, each with its own special advantages and disadvantages. Content warning: horror writing may range into all sorts of sensitive areas, including graphic violence and death. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will run through the various forms, talking about how to write them, and performing exercises to generate storylines in several subgenres.

Thursday, 2 PM
Get in the Fight: Activism in Genre Writing
Marriott Ballroom 2 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers as they discuss the need for every one of us to do what we can in the fight for equality – and what that could look like within the pages of your stories. Featuring: Cat Rambo, Bryan Young, Danian Darrell Jerry, Khaldoun Khelil, Victor Raymond PhD.

Thursday, 4 PM
Book Signing and Meet & Greet with Cat Rambo and Jeremy Bernstein
Exhibit Hall – free, duration 1 hour

Swing by the back of the Exhibit Hall to meet the panelists of the Writers’ Symposium and get your books signed. Or, buy a book or game – and get it signed on the spot. Or, just stop by and say hello! Most panelists will have merchandise for sale, but you’re welcome to bring what you already own to get signed. You may stop by without a ticket and we’ll try and accommodate you, time permitting.

Thursday, 6 PM
Meet the Writers
Wabash Ballroom 1 – free, duration 2 hours

Join writers of the Gen Con Writers’ Symposium to say hello, get your existing books signed, or purchase new ones here). Tickets are nice but not required during this 3hr open-house event! Many authors will have books for sale, and the GCWS USB drive will also be for sale. Featuring: Akis Linardos, Anthony W. Eichenlaub, Ava Kelly, Ben Riggs, Bradley P. Beaulieu, Brady McReynolds, Brandon Crilly, Brandon O’Brien, Bryan Young, C. S. E. Cooney, Carlos Hernandez, Cat Rambo, Kwame Mbalia, Danian Darrell Jerry, Daniel ‘Doc’ Myers, Dedren Snead, E.D.E. Bell, Erin M. Evans, Gabrielle Harbowy, Gregory A. Wilson, Howard Andrew Jones, James Farner, Jason Sanford, Jennifer Brozek, Jeremy Bernstein, Jerry Gordon, Jordan Jones-Brewster, Jordan Kurella, Khaldoun Khelil, Linda D. Addison, Marie Bilodeau, Michael R. Underwood, Monica Valentinelli, Richard Dansky, Sharang Biswas, Sheree Renée Thomas, Victor Raymond PhD, and Will Sobel.

Friday, 10 AM
Ageism in SFF: Broadening the Ages of Protagonists
Marriott Ballroom 3 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers as they discuss ageism in genre fiction, and the need for and techniques of writing diverse protagonists of a certain age. Featuring: Ava Kelly, Cat Rambo, Chris A. Jackson, Danian Darrell Jerry, and Jeri “Red” Shepherd.

Friday, 12 PM
Embrace Your Weirdness (and Find Where it Intersects with Markets)
Marriott Ballroom 2 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of writers and multi-media creators as they discuss how to effectively market authentic weirdness – and love yourself more for it!
Featuring: Cat Rambo, Akis Linardos, Briana Lawrence, Jerry Gordon, and Shauna Aura Knight.

Friday, 2 PM
New Books! New Games! New Love!
Marriott Ballroom 3 – free, duration 1 hour

Join our panel of authors as writer and host S.E. Lindberg asks each about the inspirations and challenges behind their new books, games, and works. This fun experience back from last year by request! Featuring: S.E. Lindberg, Cat Rambo, Erin M. Evans, and Kwame Mbalia.

Friday, 5 PM
Story Fundamentals: How to Write Short Stories – Cost $34; duration 4 hours

A compressed version of a six-week workshop, this single-session class gives you all the tools you need to start writing and sending out your own stories. You will do some writing exercises in class, but most of the time will be spent on lecture and discussion. You should emerge from the class with a greater command of storywriting as well as a hearty store of encouragement and motivation for creating new stories. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will cover story structure, character-building, worldbuilding, plotting, and submitting the stories you’ve written.

Saturday, 10 AM
How to Unban Books
Marriott Ballroom 4 – free, duration 1 hour

Practical advice on how to challenge book challenges, run for school and library boards, and otherwise defend books. Featuring: Mikki Kendall, Cat Rambo, Dedren Snead, Kwame Mbalia, and Richard Lee Byers.

Saturday, 1 PM
Book Signing and Meet & Greet
Exhibit Hall – free, duration 1 hour

Swing by the back of the Exhibit Hall to meet the panelists of the Writers’ Symposium and get your books signed. Or, buy a book or game – and get it signed on the spot. Or, just stop by and say hello! Most panelists will have merchandise for sale, but you’re welcome to bring what you already own to get signed. You may stop by without a ticket and we’ll try and accommodate you, time permitting.

Sunday, 9 AM
Systems of Magic: How to Use Your Magic to Enrich Your Worldbuilding
Marriott Ballroom 2 – cost $16, duration 2 hours

How magic works in your world affects its inhabitants, its economy, and so much more, down to the smallest details. We’ll cover how to use a magic system to create a world that can cast a spell over its readers. In this workshop, award-winning author and teacher Cat Rambo will provide tips, techniques, and writing exercises will enable you to create or flesh out a world’s intrinsic magic.

Sunday, 10:30 AM
Farewell Breakfast for Patreon supporters and Wayward Writers Academy supporters
Location TBD – free, duration 1 1/2 hours

Time to say goodbye! Let’s do it over a late breakfast in a location that will be announced on Patreon and the Discord server, or ping Cat in e-mail to get the details.

I’d noticed that reserving a table at the Northwest Book Fest was around 100 bucks. So I asked some other people if they would be interested in sharing a table and enough of us clubbed in that it ended up being very reasonable. We had Brenda Cooper, Louise Marley, Vicki Saunders, Jeanine Southard, Django Wexler, and myself as well as books from Hydra House, including the new Clarion West anthology, Telling Tales, and KC Ball’s short story collection.

As far as selling goes, the first day was not particularly successful and on that day 50% of the book sold were to each other. The second day was more of the same, although we didn’t sell as many to each other. Overall, doing a group thing was definitely a good idea: it made for a table packed with attractive, professionally done books along with some table display stuff like a robot, a war-elephant, and some fantasy stuffed animals (including plushie Chtulhu). It also meant we had people to chat with and the livelier appearance of our table helped pull people in, I think. (Plus we had candy.) We might have done better on the first floor than the second, and there were some lighting issues.

I presented a workshop on podcasting, which was well attended, and I ran them through some whys and whats of recording your own podcast as well as ranting a bit about rights and not paying to publish. A number of them signed up to get advance notice of the Building an Online Presence for Writers book.

Overall, it was fun, and there was some decent networking, plus I passed out some postcards on my classes. On the other hand, did we sell many books? Not at all. However, the cost of the $100 table, split between all of us, was pretty darn reasonable, and it meant we could attend workshops. We didn’t have a formal name, so I’d put “Seattle Speculative Fiction Writers” down. So many people asked about our group the first day that Django ended up putting out a sign-up sheet for news of group activities and gathering two pages of e-mail addresses. I look forward to the first wine and chat party.

If I ran an effort like this again, I’d focus more on selling: perhaps do book bundles, make a sign letting people know the books were priced at special rates for the book festival, maybe have some lower-priced items or stocking-stuffer type trinkets, and would have a signup sheet for other mailing lists, like each author’s. However, the location was so difficult to get to that there was no foot traffic and some people had difficulty finding the place — if they do it in the same location next year, I’ll pass and spend that time writing instead, but as Brenda noted, if they move it back downtown, it might be worthwhile.