Coming in 2025!

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While 2024 is gone but not forgotten, I thought it would be cool to talk about what I’ll be up to in 2025—that I know of, because of course, new things are likely to pop up as we go. Or suddenly open beneath us like a pit trap, as the case may be.

This Wednesday, January 22nd, at 9pm ET, I’m going to read my stories “Lies Seek Shadows” from 99 Fleeting Fantasies and “Courier’s Honor” from Traveling Light: Tales of the Magical Gates by Worldbuilding for Masochists live on my Twitch stream. If you’ve already read them, come hear my take on how it all sounds; if not, come enjoy some cool fantasy fiction that’s new to you! You don’t need an account to listen, only if you want to chat.

On February 7th at noon ET, I’ll be reading a short excerpt from Where Peace Is Lost at the Strong Women, Strange Worlds First Friday QuickRead. 6 authors, 8 minutes each, this is a free “book tasting” reading from science fiction, fantasy and horror stories, also featuring Fiona Moore, Ioanna Papadopoulou, Jennifer L. Hart, Shveta Thakrar, and Anne E.G. Nydam. Register and come on by to find a cool new thing to pick up!

My next book, Witch You Would (formerly known as Mage You Look), is all done and edited and currently scheduled to come out on September 2nd. The cover is amazing! I can’t wait to show it to you! Is there a pre-order link, you may ask? Sort of… It’s available all over the place if you look for it, but this is supposed to be my first novel under a pseudonym (Lia Amador), and everywhere I see it, it still has my real name attached… So I have no idea what’s going on. But I’m going to find out and get back to you.

The Beating Hearts & Battle Axes anthology of sword & sorcery romance funded last year, which means later this year, my novelette “The Cold Curse of Drathe” is going to be published. Despite the title, it’s a hot, sexy trek through a hot, sweaty jungle, with monster fighting and ancient ruins and eldritch magic being eldritch. Did I mention the sex? That, too. No firm dates yet, no buy links for those who didn’t already order it from Backerkit, but I’ll also share that info as soon as it’s available.

I’m still streaming video games every Monday through Wednesday on Twitch, and usually hanging out in the stream on Thursdays and Saturdays when my husband is gaming or making music, respectively. We’re slowly working through all the Dragon Age games together since he’s never played them before, beyond a brief foray into Origins many years ago. I’m not sure how long it will take us to get to Veilguard, but we’re having a good time regardless! Also, you can spend channel points to make me say things using my best Leliana impression.

And I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: if you have any questions for me, any topics you’d like me to pontificate about here on the ol’ bloggerino, please feel free to let me know! You can ask in the comments to this post, or contact me privately here or on BlueSky, my most frequently used form of social media these days.

That’s it for now! This is where I should probably offer platitudes and positivity for a better new year, and sure, let’s be kind to ourselves as best we can. But also: rest, resist, rebel, repeat. It’s a dark timeline, but we can each try to hold a candle, and maybe use it to light one for someone else.

What I published in 2024

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As noted in my previous post, life was A Lot last year. In putting this list together, to my shame and frustration, I had to do forensic work to even figure out what, if anything, I had to write about. Part of this is due to lag between writing a thing and it actually being published; part of it is that stress has turned my brain into a basketball hoop, where memories go in and then immediately fall right back out and bounce off into a bush somewhere.

That said, I did indeed make things that people can read, and here they are!

Novella/Serial/IP Story

Bloomburrow is a Magic: the Gathering serial that qualifies as a novella if it’s taken as a single story. It was released in July, and gave a lot of furries and Redwall/Mouse Guard fans a new world to explore and new characters to love. Both of the main characters, Helga and Mabel, let me show parts of myself in fiction, namely my (undiagnosed) AuDHD and experiences as a mom and wife. Being able to introduce readers to a whole new plane was both intimidating and awesome, and I was delighted that so many people loved reading the story as much as I loved writing it.

Novelette

My story “Courier’s Honor” appeared in the anthology Traveling Light: Tales of the Magical Gates by Worldbuilding for Masochists. Equal parts The Warriors and Mirror’s Edge but fantasy flavored, it’s the story of a courier trying to deliver a package in a city made of walled gears that turn periodically, opening and closing doorways between them. She’s pursued by members of rival gangs trying to steal the package, and she has to fight and run her way to her own gang’s home base. Action! Adventure! Sass! Check it out.

Short Story

“A Magical Correspondence, to the Tune of Heartstrings” appeared in Uncanny Magazine Issue Fifty-Seven in March 2025. This story let me process some of my feelings about hobbies and overwork and the ways that even well-meaning family and friends can stress us out, especially when we’re trying new things. It’s also a sweet love story with magic and musical instruments and dancing and little a smooching, as a treat.

Flash Fiction

“Lies Seek Shadows” can be read in 99 Fleeting Fantasies, an anthology of fantasy flash fiction. In this story, a particular kind of seer is asked to answer a thorny question, and the customer is definitely not always right. I wrote this one a long time ago, inspired by some events that were current at the time, and it was nice that it found a home in this great book.

That’s it! Unless I memory holed something, which is entirely possible.

And of course, if you happen to be reading this for award eligibility reasons, may I humbly ask that you consider Escape Pod for best semiprozine or best podcast or whatever similar category it might fit, and Mur Lafferty and myself as best editors of the short form variety. We work pretty dang hard to bring you some truly awesome fiction on a weekly basis, along with our amazing teams of editors and producers, and so do all the folks in our sibling podcasts at Escape Artists.

What about 2025, you may ask? We shall see what unfolds…

Life comes at you slow

- Valerie 4 Comments

CW: animal illness and death and a lot of big feelings

My last blog post was in July, and looking back at it, I’m not entirely sure how I even managed that much.

When Bloomburrow came out, I had to put one of my cats to sleep. Wash had been ill for so long, and I’d spent so much time and energy and money caring for him, and it still felt like… there isn’t even a good analogy for it. I felt like I’d failed him, even though I knew I’d done everything I could. But what if there were something I missed? What could I have done differently? Thoughts like this don’t have to make sense for them to hang around like ghosts, making awful noises and startling you when you least expect it.

Inara died last week. She’d been sick, too, but she kept perking up every time she had a bad spell, until it seemed like she would always bounce back if I just did the right things. Gave her the right care. That’s not how anything works, I know, and yet. The thoughts. The ghosts. They’re hard to ignore.

I think it’s been at least a year since I slept through the night, since I didn’t flinch and rush into another room when anything made a sound like vomiting, since my daily life wasn’t divided into a series of alarms going off every four hours to remind me to do something for a cat. It’s been 19 years since my house has been empty of pets. It’s weird and I’m not sure when I’ll get used to it.

Still, life goes on, work never ends, and deadlines, despite the name, don’t stop for death.

I finished the copy edits for Mage You Look, which is now called Witch You Would, the day Inara died. I sat on the couch watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice, and I cried, and I made myself do the work. I’m crying now as I type this, blowing my nose over and over. If I waited for the tears to stop, for the feelings to fade, I’d never get anything done.

Anyone who’s ever been to therapy is probably reading this and wishing they could reach through the internet and shake me. It’s okay; I also wish I could shake me sometimes!

There’s a theory that juggling obligations is like juggling a mix of things, some of which are breakable and some that aren’t, and when you have to drop things, it’s best to choose the ones that won’t break. This blog is one example of a thing that, compared to the other stuff I was juggling, wasn’t so fragile. My newsletter is another. I prioritized my day job, my writing, Escape Pod, and figured this would be waiting for me when I could come back to it.

Am I back? I’m not sure. The world is on fire, quite literally right now in Los Angeles, and we’re all juggling as best we can as life keeps throwing more things at us. It’s always been easier for me to make a small, random post on social media than to attempt to dredge up a longer form series of cogent ideas or observations here. But given the way social media is trending, I think it behooves me to at least use this space, which is most wholly mine, to update people on me and my writing and such.

So hi. It’s 2025, and I have no particular resolutions, just obligations and due dates. But it snowed here and my kids had a ton of fun playing in it, and the trees around my house are full of puffed-up birds trying to stay warm, and a deer is walking through my yard looking for something to eat. Life comes at you slow until it doesn’t.

New Magic: the Gathering story!

- Valerie 9 Comments
Mabel gets the party started

I am so excited to finally share my story for the Bloomburrow set for Magic: the Gathering!

When I was first approached to work on this, everything about it appealed to me. So cute! So wholesome! Adventure and community and nature and talking animals? Sign me up! But I was also intimidated, because I’d never read a single Redwall book, and I knew at a glance that it would be a huge touchstone for a lot of people, even if it wasn’t the only one. I armed myself with Mrs. Frisby and Tolkien and Diana Wynne Jones and Frog and Toad and other pastoral vibes, and went to work.

Thanks to the outline and guidance of the story leads, what I got to write was one of my favorite stories ever. Helga, a neurodivergent frog artist with a gift for prognostication, struggles to find her place in the world. Mabel, married mouse mother of three, leads her team of neighbors on a long and dangerous journey with her family’s magical heirloom sword for protection. There’s fighting and spells, fun and drama, giant beasts representing forces of nature, and through it all, there’s hope and light and friendship and love. There’s small people without big powers being brave and helping each other as best they can, even when it’s hard.

And, of course, lots of descriptions of food!

I did so much research on the actual animals I was writing for this, from basic stats like their typical sizes and colorations, to their body language cues and what sounds they make, to, as noted, what they eat. It was super fun coming up with particular gestures and quirks of movement and voices for each character, as well as the overall speech patterns and narrative style. Ensemble casts are always a challenge, because you want everyone to shine, and I’m really happy with all the special moments I was able to give the individual characters.

I also dug into the various plants perhaps more than any sane person should. What would be flowering at a given time? What sorts of things grow in particular climates? How big would a certain flower be in comparison to a mouse or rabbit or frog? What part of the plant is edible or would make a good tisane? I went down so many rabbit holes for this, pun extremely intended.

Perhaps what I most loved was being able to write two things that are personal to me: neurodivergence and family. I channeled a lot of my own experiences and those of my friends into Helga when it came to struggling with attention issues and hyperfocus and underachieving. I, too, zone out at inconvenient times, or disappear into my work and forget to do important stuff, especially eating. I am so clumsy; my super power is getting things caught on other things, even when it seems physically impossible to do so. If I look at a cable, it tangles up and is guaranteed to trip me at some point. And I have imposter syndrome and rejection sensitivity that gang up on me at the worst times and make me want to walk into a lake and burrow into the mud and never talk to anyone again. But I persevere, and so does Helga!

I’m also a mom and a wife, and while I’m not nearly as cool as Mabel, I love my husband and kids and wanted to avoid the kinds of sitcom stereotypes we often see for family relationships. Many of us have issues with partners and parents, but in this specific story, I aimed for aspirational and happy and healthy to fit the overall tone. I showed the kinds of love and deep affection and tender moments that I wish we could have more of, in fiction and the real world. When my husband read it, he kept recognizing bits of our lives that I peppered in, and being able to do that was such a source of joy for me.

I’m hoping to do a full behind the scenes write-up of stuff at some point, the way Seanan McGuire does for her stories, but for now I’ll gladly answer anyone’s questions to the best of my ability, either here or on socials.

And for the record, if I was in Bloomburrow, I would probably be a birdfolk. Caw!

New story and interview in Uncanny Magazine

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Cover of Uncanny Magazine Issue 57, featuring an astronaut in a space suit with their helmet off, sitting in lotus pose at the base of a tree while birds fly above

If you’re looking for a sweet romantic story about a woman juggling work, family and a new hobby, good news! “A Magical Correspondence, to the Tune of Heartstrings” appears in Uncanny Magazine Issue 57, along with an always excellent array of other fiction, poetry and essays.

Caroline M. Yoachim also interviewed me about why I wrote this story, among other fun stuff, so I won’t repeat myself too much. But a thing I didn’t mention, that was nonetheless rolling around in my mind among all the other things cluttering up the place, was an old story from Kurt Vonnegut that you’ve probably seen before, repeated below:

When I was 15 I spent a month working on an archeological dig. I was talking to one of the archeologists one day during our lunch break and he asked those kinds of “getting to know you” questions you ask young people: Do you play sports? What’s your favorite subject? And I told him, no I don’t play any sports. I do theater, I’m in choir, I play the violin and piano, I used to take art classes.

And he went WOW. That’s amazing! And I said, “Oh no, but I’m not any good at ANY of them.”

And he said something then that I will never forget and which absolutely blew my mind because no one had ever said anything like it to me before: “I don’t think being good at things is the point of doing them. I think you’ve got all these wonderful experiences with different skills, and that all teaches you things and makes you an interesting person, no matter how well you do them.”

And that honestly changed my life. Because I went from a failure, someone who hadn’t been talented enough at anything to excel, to someone who did things because I enjoyed them. I had been raised in such an achievement-oriented environment, so inundated with the myth of Talent, that I thought it was only worth doing things if you could “Win” at them.

—Kurt Vonnegut

In my story, the main character, Lissa comes from a family of artisans, luthiers specifically, but she was deemed insufficiently trainable in the trade at a young age for various reasons, including that she was tasked with helping to raise her siblings instead. Hers is a very one-track-mind family, devoted to their craft, while she becomes responsible for all the administrative duties, the non-art business portions. It’s not quite a “myth of Talent” upbringing, but it is definitely one where “being good at things is the point of doing them” to a large extent.

Lissa decides to do something she doesn’t expect to be good at, something that isn’t for money or fame. She hides it from her family because she knows they won’t understand—and they don’t! But she’s taking to heart, even if she can’t articulate it to herself, the notion that she’s allowed to do things she isn’t good at simply because she wants to and thinks she’ll enjoy it.

As I note in the interview, society these days in a lot of places seems to fight this idea, and I hate that for us. Instead of moving towards a future where we work a few hours a week and machines handle mundane chores, thus allowing us free time for self-actualization and recreational pursuits, we have algorithms attempting to push us out of the creative spaces that give us life. We have jobs making more and more demands on what should be our leisure time, with expectations that we must always be available to answer questions or handle problems or crunch to make unreasonable deadlines. But I digress.

“A Magical Correspondence, to the Tune of Heartstrings” isn’t a morality fable or an “in this essay, I will” kind of story. But I do hope it will encourage more people to do things just because you’re interested in giving them a try—as much as anyone can these days. Indulge your curiosity and exploration without pressure to perform! Or if there is some pressure, let it be self-imposed and motivating rather than anxiety-inducing. And normalize moving on from hobbies that you decide aren’t really for you, because life is short.

Seize joy where you can, friends. Don’t worry about “winning” unless you want to. May the process of doing a thing always be its own reward, whatever the final product.

Escape Pod is a Hugo finalist!

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I tend to view awards season as a thing that happens to other people. Sort of like when it’s raining, and you’re all cozy inside your house with nowhere to go, and you think, “Wow, look at that, it’s really coming down, must suck for anyone who has to go out today.” And you sip your tea and do whatever you were doing. I make my eligibility post, and that’s about it for me.

But! I have the honor and privilege of co-editing a truly excellent magazine and podcast, and we are once again a finalist for the Hugo Award for Best Semiprozine. If I continue my metaphor, this means I’m now outside in the rain, but of course being an award finalist is awesome and not uncomfortably moist.

If you’re a voting member of WorldCon, I’d be honored if you’d consider giving us your vote for the category. Our voter packet isn’t up yet, but you can check out all our original fiction from 2023 here. We’re really proud of our reprints as well, but that’s a good place to start.

Huge thanks to all the writers who trusted their stories to us, and to the narrators who brought them to life. Our magazine literally would not exist without you!

Thanks also to my co-editor slash co-conspirator, Mur Lafferty; to our assistant editors Benjamin C. Kinney, Premee Mohamed and Kevin Wabaunsee; our hosts Tina Connolly and Alasdair Stuart; our producers Summer Brooks and Adam Pracht; our social media manager Phoebe Barton; and the rest of the Escape Pod crew, for all their hard work. We did it! Jumping high fives all around.

And of course, I’m filled with gratitude toward everyone who voted for us in the first place, to get us where we are now. As I always say in my sign off, thanks for joining us, and may your escape pod be fully stocked with stories.

Rigidity vs. malleability

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sculpture with balls of clay, twisting pieces of clay sprouting from them, with flowers at the top
Photo by Vika Wendish on Unsplash

As I make my way through Mage You Look while also pondering side and future projects, and chat with all kinds of writers in various places about our respective processes, a thing I think about is seeing how people approach… I’ll call it rigidity vs. malleability.

For some writers, specific characters or world elements or plot points are fixed, immutable, and everything else must be built up around those things. They’re the foundations of the story house; they’re the seeds that grow into the story tree, or bush, or flower. Even if the furniture in the house moves around, or the bush gets trimmed into a topiary, those essential starter components don’t change, no matter how big or small they are.

For me, most things are negotiable. When I’m planning, I brainstorm and feel my way around, looking for shiny stuff like a corvid. And that stuff can be surprisingly vague: traits or themes rather than specific details. Archetypes or aesthetics. Vague plot shapes. I research and iterate. I fiddle and test. I make notes. I accrete. I roll around a katamari and see what sticks to it.

There comes a point for me where things do solidify, like I’ve finished my clay sculpture and I’ve fired it and now its form is set. Eventually the katamari is large enough to get yeeted into space and become a star. Except even then I may still make fundamental changes, beyond playing with the colors or extra decorations or whatever. There’s always room for that: the play, the tweaking and revision.

I think sometimes writers forget we control all the variables in a story. If something doesn’t make sense, we can rework it until it does. A character who wouldn’t make a choice in one scenario may do so if the conditions change, or if something in their back story shifts. A setting detail that doesn’t fit can be taken out or made to make sense. One plot point can be substituted for another.

Character, setting, plot, theme… they’re all up to the writer. They’re all the result of a series of choices. How you make those choices is up to you! But you have the power to control them, to set the parameters. And that power can be exercised at any time in the process.

Even after a thing is published and set in stone, there is still room to play. Things have to be internally consistent, logical, believable within the confines of what’s established. But within that framework, there are often ways to retcon, to reveal new layers that recontextualize the existing ones, to create ambiguity and uncertainty, add unreliable narration… There are many available tools to reshape or repaint or refine.

So I guess my bottom line is: embrace your process, but also internalize that you control your story. You can always add a room onto your house regardless of its foundation, or plant a vine to wrap around your tree. Take the reins! Embrace your agency! Revel in the act of creation! You’re the deity in this universe you’re crafting, and you can do anything you want with it.

99 Fleeting Fantasies

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Cover of 99 Fleeting Fantasies, a Fantasy Anthology Edited by Jennifer Brozek

It’s finally here! 99 Fleeting Fantasies, a flash fiction anthology full of fantastic stories, edited by Jennifer Brozek, will be available in ebook and paperback on February 15th.

You can read my story, “Lies Seek Shadows” in the anthology, along with other works by folks like Cat Rambo, Charles Stross, Crystal Frasier, Jody Lynn Nye, Jonathan Maberry, Premee Mohamed, Seanan McGuire, Wole Talabi, and many more!

A future Kickstarter will include hardback and (faux)leatherbound editions as well, if those tickle your fancy.

Preorder your copy now, and it will be yours imminently!

Season of Lists

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A side effect of award nomination time is various people and groups assembling suggestion lists for the many different categories. Not being on a list doesn’t mean you’re Not Worthy, but being on a list is a cool sign that someone likes what you’re doing. This year, I’m honored to be on a few lists in particular.

The first is the 2023 Locus Recommended Reading List. Where Peace Is Lost is included among the science fiction novels. The list feeds into their poll and survey, where you can vote for the winners of the annual Locus Awards. Voting is open to anyone! The poll closes April 15th, and awards are presented in June.

You can also find me twice on the Nerds of a Feather, Flock Together 2024 Hugo Award Recommendation List. Where Peace Is Lost is listed under Best Novel, while “In Time, a Weed May Break Stone” can be found under Best Short Story.

Last, but certainly not least, Where Peace Is Lost is also included in the Tor.com Reviewers’ Choice: the Best Books of 2023 list. I’m honored that not one, but two reviewers loved my book enough to mention it among their favorites of the year. Team Paladin!

And, as Columbo would say, just one more thing… Uncanny is currently running their 2023 reader favorites poll. You can vote for your top three favorite stories published in the magazine last year; maybe “In Time, a Weed May Break Stone” might be one of them?

P.S.: Yes, the post title is a Sandman reference!

New book alert!

- Valerie 1 Comment
Publishers Marketplace Deal Report. Mage You Look by Valerie Valdes. Imprint: Avon. Where Peace Is Lost and Chilling Effect author Valerie Valdes's Mage You Look, first in a romantasy series, pitched as Witch Please meets The Love Con, in which a magic shop technician in Miami must win a spellcasting competition reality show before she's unemployed, broke and evicted, only to find herself partnered with a celebrity best known for his spectacular spell fails.

I’m so pleased to announce my next big project!

Mage You Look is the first book in a new contemporary romantasy series. It’s about a magic shop technician in Miami who has to win a spellcasting competition reality show before she’s unemployed, broke and evicted… except she ends up partnered with an internet celebrity best known for his spectacular spell fails.

The drama! The magical mishaps! The inevitable smooching!

This book has had a long and winding journey. It started out as secondary world fantasy, in a Caribbean-inspired Regency-adjacent setting, and the competition element was apprentices vying for a place in a mage’s renowned workshop. Then, everything changed when the fire nation attacked.

Okay, no fire nations, but the book languished until I started watching the Great British Bake-Off. I hadn’t realized I needed that puzzle piece to make my story complete, but there it was! And so instead of apprentices trying to become mages, it was amateur casters trying to win lucrative prizes and prestige in a spellcasting competition.

As much as I loved that book, it didn’t win over any editors, alas. But Tessa Woodward, who’s been working as my editor since I debuted, asked me: what if we make this modern instead?

Oh, the possibilities! I jumped right in and reworked the characters, the setting, the plot. Still a woman working in a magic shop who dreams of more, still a magical competition where she might win her way out of customer service drudgery, but now we’re filming reality TV on a sound stage in Miami. We’ve traded carriages for a party bus, and a fancy manor house for a boutique hotel. Totally sweet.

I’ll be sharing more details as we get closer to publication time, so stay tuned. For now, let’s Snoopy dance together in excitement!