Live From VirtuousCon
On community and inspiration
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Mentioned in the podcast:
The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass – coming August 11, 2026
The following is an edited transcript of my podcast episode.
I am fantasy and paranormal romance author Leslye Penelope, and welcome to My Imaginary Friends, a look behind the scenes of an author mapping the worlds in my head and making them a reality. Hello friends, today is Sunday, February 22nd, 2026, and this is a very special edition of the My Imaginary Friends podcast. I’m Leslye. I am recording from an undisclosed alternate location, somewhere other than my normal setup because I’m recording from VirtuosCon. I’m in the virtual world.
As a reminder, you can sign up for the Foototes newsletter, which gives you show notes for each episode, as well as inspiration, strategies, and ideas for you to grow as a writer and as a creative. You can find that at https://myimaginaryfriends.net/footnotes. When you sign up, you can become an imaginary best friend for a few dollars a month and get access to premium posts, long-form craft essays, discounts on my courses and coaching, and other great stuff. I hope to see you there.
This week’s best thing has been VirtuousCon. I’ve done this event ever since it started, and I think I’ve been a panelist every year they’ve had it. I’ve taught master classes for them, and this past weekend I was on three panels that were fantastic. I was with some other amazing writers, artists, and creative people, and we had really good discussions and moderation. It’s top quality.
I want to give kudos to my very good friend, Cerece Rennie Murphy, whose brainchild VirtuousCon is. I have known her for many years; she’s in my mastermind, and we hold an in-person retreat together, the Ink & Magic Retreat.
If you are a published writer or a writer who has completed a manuscript, we are having a mastermind retreat in September over Labor Day weekend. You can go to InkandMagicRetreat.com to learn more, as we’re going to open the application soon.
Cerece is doing amazing things. We’re all busy, but kudos to her for putting together this event from her brain to reality for the past five years. It started during COVID, which is why it’s all virtual. I just wanted to talk a little bit about some of my takeaways from the panels and also what I’ve been up to.
I have a book coming out in August, The Inevitable Undoing of Zahara Douglass, which I finished proofreading last week. This was probably the ninety-leventh-millionth time that I’ve read this book.
I was reading it again carefully and paying attention to the formatting because the proofreading stage is where I get to see it laid out in the font and typefaces it will be in for the actual book.
Right before I left, I got my ARCs for Zahara. I want to do a video when I get back to show everybody and maybe do a giveaway for ARCs. If you’re not on my newsletter, go to lpenelope.com and you will see a newsletter sign-up at the bottom of every page or in the menu under Get a Free Short Story. I’m doing giveaways for the ARC, and I know I’ve gotten lots of inquiries about it, which is super exciting for me.
I’ve also been writing a little bit. Whenever you’re writing a new thing, it always has to take a backseat a little bit to the book that you have been contracted and paid for. I had to stop working on draft two of my next book to work on proofreads. But now that those are all turned in, I’m back to drafting my “Blitches,” which stands for Black Witches.
This story takes place at a kind of Blitches University, so it’s my magical HBCU Black witch story. I think I have about 5,000 words of draft two. If you are a podcast listener, you will know that I wrote the first draft as a script. Now I’m doing it in prose. So it’s the second draft, but it’s the first time I’m writing everything out in prose.
I absolutely adore the first 5,000 words or so. I’ve been going over them with a fine-toothed comb, which is not how I usually draft, but this is a different process since I’m going from script to book instead of a dirty first draft to a cleaner first draft.
It’s kind of an experiment. I’m not under contract right now, so I will sell this book after I’ve written it, which has both good and bad aspects. I’ve sold my last few books on proposal, but for this one, my agent suggested I write the whole thing out. That puts off the contracting portion, but it allows me to make sure the book is really good and finished before I have any kind of deadline, which is very freeing. I’m really enjoying that.
Regarding VirtuousCon, the first panel I was on was about using AI for productivity. That’s a really touchy issue because so many artists, authors, and people in the book community are extremely anti-AI. I get it, and I understand the concerns. Regarding the Anthropic lawsuit, where they took and trained their AI on our books by pirating them without consent, I think I have five or six books in there. If that goes through and they pay out $3,000 a book—which I highly doubt—I will get paid, but I didn’t have the choice to consent. I can’t go back in time.
Some people say they want AI to know their books, and I see that point. If they don’t know about you, will they be able to recommend you? Google is still the number one search engine, but ChatGPT is now number two or three.
If we want to be found, we need AI to know about us and our books. I didn’t give my consent and I don’t like that they pirated my work, but I do want to be found by AI where people are looking for books to read. I had a friend looking for a book this weekend who asked Claude for recommendations based on specific genres, and it spat out answers. If someone asks for black historical fantasy, I need to be coming up there.
The panel was really about using AI for productivity. I’ve talked about it before on my podcast, which I feel is a safe space where you choose to opt in. I don’t like to say people who don’t use AI will be “left behind” because that feels very negative, but I am a tech person, a web developer, and I love gadgets and coding. I want to know about it and see if it’s overhyped or if it’s living up to the promises.
I find it very helpful for some things, though I’m less excited about “agentic” uses like buying groceries or plane tickets. I don’t want it having my credit card. However, using it as a research assistant, a brainstorming partner, or for drafting email subject lines and marketing hooks has been extensive and helpful.
We have to keep in mind the downsides, including that it can be very racist. If I don’t specify I want an image of a Black person, it defaults to white. The environmental impacts are also definitely concerning. On the panel, Tim Fielder pointed out that we use cars and air conditioning, which also take up energy and natural resources. AI is another one of those things.
AI companies know they are drawing resources, but can AI be used to solve these problems in five or ten years? It’s possible there could be real solutions for climate change that don’t rely on the government. We all have to weigh what we are comfortable with. For instance, I’m trying to reduce my reliance on Amazon by 85 to 90%, and I stopped shopping at Target last year. My point is that we are all making choices about the corporate entities we support, and it would be great if people weren’t so virulent about other people’s choices.
My friend Ines Johnson was also on the AI panel, and she is in contact with many authors using it for deep marketing and market research. These conversations aren’t always had in public because of the backlash, so it’s worthwhile to find communities where you can learn more if you’re interested.
On my next panel, we had a conversation about awards with Audrey Williams, who is involved in the World Fantasy Convention. I’m planning on going to that this year because it’s in Oakland, and I love the Bay Area. I was with an illustrious panel—Eden Royce, Tananarive Due, and P. Djèlí Clark—and it was fabulous. We talked about how the awards process is a bit of a black box, but we also dug deeper into success. I mentioned my interview series on success, which was my attempt to answer the question, “What is making it?”
I have a certain level of success, and I’ve worked hard, but I’ve also been lucky to meet people who gave me opportunities. I also don’t discount my innate privilege, being born to college-educated, middle-class parents. My mother was a teacher and taught me to read when I was three. My grandparents were college educated. My grandfather was a college professor, so there’s reasons, I think, for different people getting to different places. Everybody is coming from a different place. Awards are another one of those things people don’t always talk about when it comes to success.
And so my interview series, interviewing people who are considered to be successful authors and talking to them about what that means to them and where do they go from here? And so having that awards conversation kind of brought up some of those things that I’m really fascinated in. I haven’t done an interview in a while, but talking to the people on my panel gave me a great perspective.
My favorite interview was probably with Beverly Jenkins, the iconic Black romance author known as Ms. Bev. She has touched so many lives and has a huge impact, yet she’s never hit the New York Times bestseller list or had a major award. She is beloved because she writes with purpose. That was incredibly inspiring for me.
Success is something we all define for ourselves. Awards and bestseller lists are amazing, but they aren’t the end of the story. You have to be grounded and grateful for where you are right now, because if you aren’t, you never will be, no matter how much you achieve. There is a lot of comparison in the author world, but we are all on a journey to figure out our purpose.
This morning I also had a great conversation with Keisha from the Blood Library, who moderated a talk on writing and resistance with Nicole Glover and P. Djèlí Clark. We got deep into the role of resistance in historical fiction and fantasy. If you weren’t there, you can watch the replays through the VirtuousCon.
It’s been a wonderful con. Getting to talk to other writers and hear their perspectives always makes me feel energized. I’m ready to go back this week and get into the second draft of my Blitch University story. It’s a little daunting to get back into writing, but that’s what I do. I need to be writing or planning to feel solid. I have so many more ideas than time, so I need to finish this project and move on to the next.
My voice is starting to go, so I will see you all next time. If you are still at the con, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your time. For show notes and to sign up for the Footnotes newsletter, go to myimaginaryfriends.net. You can subscribe to the podcast, watch on YouTube, or email me at podcast@lpenelope.com.
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