We chat with author Valerie Valdes about her new release Where Peace Is Lost, which follows a refugee with a secret, a dangerous foe, and a road trip that could either save a planet or start a war.
Hi, Valerie! Can you tell our readers a bit about yourself?
I’m a writer! I’m also co-editor of Escape Pod, a weekly science fiction podcast. For fun and profit, I stream video games three nights a week on Twitch, and I do actual/live plays of TTRPGs with the Strange Friends crew once a month. Shockingly, I’m a nerd! But there are many flavors of nerddom, so I’d say I’m a dilettante nerd. I zip around between a lot of nerd planets but don’t live on any of them. I like swords and pewpewpew and cats, not necessarily all at once. Unless…?
When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
I got hooked way back in first grade. I can’t remember why, but I wrote a story about aliens trying to steal my skin, except I tricked them by giving them a piece of skin-colored paper. Thankfully I’ve moved past writing self-insert characters, but I’ve never stopped loving to write, especially science fiction and fantasy.
Quick lightning round! Tell us the first book you ever remember reading, the one that made you want to become an author, and one that you can’t stop thinking about!
- A tiny abridged kid version of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
Your latest novel, Where Peace Is Lost, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Swords, lasers, robots, knights, kissing!
What can readers expect?
Unlike my Chilling Effect trilogy, this book isn’t especially funny or full of hijinks. It’s closer to something like The Mandalorian; there’s a stoic, honor-driven main character named Kel gets roped into a quest that involves protecting other people and helping to save the planet she now calls home. It’s a journey book, with four people going on an adventure and learning about each other and themselves along the way. There are swamp critters and bandits and robots big and small, sword fights and lasers and little a spaceships, as a treat. I lean into magitech more than science in this fiction, too.
It’s also a container for some of my thoughts on colonialism and war and violence, the ripple effects and lasting consequences to people both directly and indirectly. I’m Cuban-American, so I have my share of generational trauma from my family living through revolution and leaving the country to settle in a new, unfamiliar home. I also started working on this as the US and other places were extremely going through it in terms of protests and increasing police militarization. I’ve grown up and older through wave after wave of actions and reactions and escalations and shifting of the Overton window, and there’s a particular flavor of conflict avoidance that even the most well-intentioned people sometimes embrace. I wanted to dig into all of that a little, so I did.
Where did the inspiration for Where Peace Is Lost come from?
A lot of places! I’m a magpie writer; I collect random ideas and thoughts and throw them in a pile together and admire the shinies. Eventually some of them feel like they belong together, and I start building a nest. In this case, most of the ideas revolved around iterations of knighthood: Arthuriana, the Jedi in Star Wars, the paladins in Voltron, the Templars in Dragon Age… In terms of the main character, Kel, she’s my amalgamation of different characters and vibes from those worlds: Bradamante, Obi-Wan, Shiro, Aveline.
I also keep coming back to Superman conceptually. I wouldn’t say I’m a fan, despite my current obsession with the new cartoon, but periodically The Discourse serves up stuff like “Superman is boring because he’s too powerful” or “Superman is boring when he’s too lawful good” or “there’s no interesting way to write Superman.” I disagree! There are a lot of nuanced stories to tell about people who are fundamentally good and law-abiding in a world where those qualities are undervalued, or even taken advantage of by unscrupulous people. There are stories not just about how those people stay true to themselves within a broken system, but also how they work to dismantle and replace it with a more just one, from inside or outside. And if we can’t tell aspirational stories about power being used for good rather than inevitably corrupting its wielder, what does that say about us?
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
I love all my weird fictional children, but I have a major soft spot for the cinnamon rolls. In this book, that’s Lunna, who is basically Kel’s only friend through sheer force of will and persistence. Lunna is a mechanic who wants to leave the planet to explore the vastness of space, but they’ve stayed at home out of love for their family. They’re chatty, inquisitive, and relentlessly positive in a way that makes them seem younger than they are—basically Kel’s polar opposite, except that they’re both naïve in their own ways. I think it’s easy to descend into cynicism, and tempting to write a cast of characters who are jaded and bitter; it’s more difficult but satisfying to me on some level to instead have this bright star around whom everyone else can orbit and bask in the glow. Lunna is just as complex and driven as the others, but when life gives them lemons, they’re not just going to make lemonade, they’re going to make lemon cookies and lemon meringue pie and lemon drop candies, and they’re going to share them with anyone lucky enough to be nearby.
This is your fourth published novel! What are some of the key lessons you have learned when it comes to writing and the publishing world?
I can only speak for myself, but even when I feel like I have a solid outline and a robust story bible, there are always things that surprise me as I’m writing. This can be good or frustrating depending on the surprise, but I’ve learned that either way, those unexpected ideas or elements or problems can yield interesting results if I don’t freeze up or reject them. A random side character can be so fun that you invite them back for more scenes later; a plot hole can be an opportunity for deeper worldbuilding if you rappel into it and dig.
What’s next for you?
Secrets… If all goes according to plan, I’ll be swerving harder into fantasy. I also have short fiction coming next year in Uncanny Magazine and the Worldbuilding for Masochists anthology, both of which just funded.
Lastly, do you have any book recommendations for our readers?
If you like my books, I always recommend checking out Annihilation Aria by Michael R. Underwood. I think I’m finally caught up on Spy x Family, for which there is an approximately three month wait between volumes at my library due to demand. Love it! I’m also looking forward to the new October Daye books, Chaos Terminal by Mur Lafferty (the sequel to Station Eternity), The Jinn-Bot of Shantiport by Samit Basu and Capture the Sun by Jessie Mihalik. The latest Neo-G book from K.B. Wagers is also out now, The Ghosts of Trappist. My TBR pile is more of an impregnable fortress, but other stuff I am making grabby hands at: Hybrid Heart by Iori Kusano, and Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon by Wole Talabi.
