Pacing is the speed and rhythm of a story. In this class, author and editor Valerie Valdes will break down how pacing works at every level of a story, from big-picture structure to individual scenes and emotional beats. You’ll look at ways to vary tempo and intensity, while moving beyond rigid percentages and strict beats to focus on the natural cadence of a story. Whether you outline extensively or write more intuitively, this class will help you understand pacing as a flexible, powerful tool you can adapt to your own process.
Treat yourself to a weekend of creative learning! Tell a friend! Hope to see you there.
I am once again delighted to be paneling and moderating at Flights of Foundry this year! If you want to catch my Chill-n-Chat, be sure to sign up for the lottery now since it’s a limited-seating session.
My schedule:
Saturday, September 19th, 2026
12:00pm ET: Chill-n-Chat
9:00pm ET: You’re here! Now what? – Making the Most of Conferences
Sunday, September 20th, 2026
3:00pm ET: Kiss First, Save the World Later: Balancing Romance and Plot
11:00pm ET: What is a “living” and how do we make one?
Also, the Defying Reality: Supernatural Romance panel at Worldcon has been moved to 3pm PT (6pm ET) for anyone who was planning to check that out.
I’ll be attending Worldcon virtually once again this year! If you’re also attending virtually, or you’ll be in Anaheim but are happy to take a break from peopling in person, here’s where you can find me.
My full schedule is on my “Person” page for ease of description reading and adding to YOUR schedule; just click the star icon between the time and the panel name.
Friday, August 28th, 2026
3:00pm PT (6:00pm ET): In Space, No One Can Hear You Laugh: Humor in Sci-fi
Because I am perpetually behind on telling people about things I’ve done, here on this convenient digital record of my life, you will be shocked to learn that I did a thing and neglected to post about it. No longer!
I was delighted to participate in a conversation with ML Dumars, Lauren Teffeau, and host Marisa Wolf on the Strong Women, Strange Worlds Inspiration & Insight podcast. In the “Magic Beyond the Stars” episode, we talked about space fantasy, and I got to not only discuss Where Peace Is Lost, but also the subgenre more generally and what I love about it.
I also dropped a perhaps TOO long list of potential stories you might check out, if you’re interested in adding to your TBR pile. Don’t mind me, just precariously positioning tomes atop the teetering Jenga tower of your unread books. Just don’t take any from the middle and you should be fine.
I am so delighted and honored that Escape Pod is once again an Ignyte Award finalist for Outstanding Fiction Podcast! You can read our official announcement here.
Recently, I recorded a panel for WriteHive that will be shared on July 11th at the conference. The topic was “Predicting the Future: Where Science Fiction Could Explore Next” and I had both my writer and editor hat on for that one. Two hats, one head, zero chill.
Anyway, one of the things the other panelist and I discussed is that the future is for everyone. I think when we say that, some people envision every story being turned into a Miss Universe pageant, where a character from every possible group must be paraded onto the stage and given a brief spotlight somehow. Instead, one thing I mean is that when we look at the breadth of futuristic science fiction, the whole shelf rather than one book, it’s important that we try to make space for stories about all the different kinds of people who are alive today. To quote Lilo & Stitch: no one is forgotten, no one is left behind*.
We are living in a time, like so many other times, when marginalized people are being persecuted to varying degrees in different places. It is, pardon my language, some really gruesome shit. At Escape Pod, our stated ethos is that we try to showcase stories that are hopeful, optimistic, escapist—which can mean very different things to different people, especially depending on what they’re going through at any given moment. It can also mean that it feels as if we’re turning away from harsh reality, pretending nothing is wrong, avoiding hard truths and experiences.
That’s one way to handle escapism, but not the only way. I think that instead we try to fulfill our mandate, at least to some extent, by taking the people who are getting it in the neck today and showing them living, breathing, dreaming in the future. We show them surviving. We show them thriving. Maybe we don’t show how the dots connect, how we get from here to there, but we want to believe that we will. That we must.
Whether we win any awards or not, I hope we can keep offering people that vision of the future. One for everyone, where no one is forgotten, and no one is left behind.
*Well, paradox of tolerance, of course. Some people can eat dirt. They know who they are.
Being a finalist for a prestigious award is pretty incredible. Having it happen more than once is downright humbling and amazing.
Escape Pod has again made the finalist roster for Best Semiprozine at the Hugo Awards. It is, as always, an incredible list of publications to be on, and it only scratches the surface of the robust, diverse scope of short fiction available today.
We already made an official post about it, so I won’t belabor the point, but I would like to reiterate, with every part of my heart from the bottom to the top, that we wouldn’t be here without our amazing team. This includes not only the writers who create the stories and the narrators who bring them to life, but our hosts and audio producers and assistant editors and associate editors and admins, without whom the ship simply would not fly.
If you’re a voter, or maybe if you just want to see or hear what we’re about, you can check out our Voter Packet for a sampling of stories that represent the kind of work we publish. And if you like those, go ahead and read or listen to the rest!
Thanks to everyone who voted for us, everyone who has supported us throughout the years, and highest of fives to my partner in crime, Mur.
Special shout-out to my husband, Eric, whose uncredited audio work on my host spots and narrations deserves to be credited somewhere. Go vote for him and PodCastle next time, too!
My side story for the upcoming Secrets of Strixhaven set, “Off the Record,” is finally available to read online! I’m so excited by all the speculation this is causing. Red string sales have skyrocketed. Silver fox jokes abound. My delight levels are over nine thousand.
Every time I write for Magic: the Gathering, I have these dueling impulses. How do I make something that fully embraces the depth and breadth of lore in the multiverse, while also feeling personal and accessible to me, living on our planet, in our time?
When I was asked to write this specific story, I read and reread all the Strixhaven material I could find to see what might be cool to include. There is so much! And yet there are also many gaps and unexplored places, names that are mentioned but not explained, dangling threads begging to be woven into new parts of the larger tapestry. Not to mention things that amused me to invent whole cloth. Who wouldn’t queue up for a Void to scream into?
Since this focused on a Silverquill character, and specifically a journalist, I really wanted to dig into notions of how words can be manipulative. They can inspire, and they can insult. They can reveal truth or obfuscate it. A glance at virtually any news headline today, clickbait or propaganda or otherwise, is ample proof of the ways we bend words and phrases to alter perceptions of reality.
The same can be said for photography, which I have somewhat casually invented an analog for among the Prismari students. The angle of a picture, what is included and what is left out of the frame, which precise moment is captured in a series of connected moments, what context is known or unknown about the subject—all of these things and more can manipulate the viewer in a multitude of ways.
There are so many additional psychological challenges that come into play as well, the intricacies and fallacies of logic and argument that Silverquill students would no doubt be trained to understand and use themselves. People are fallible, and sometimes the most fallible of all are the ones who think they know all the tricks and are immune to them. Being good at reasoning can also make you very good at rationalizing and lying to yourself. Social engineering can be more dangerous than any machine.
College students in particular can be extra susceptible to the kinds of manipulation that prey on their unique hopes and fears. We all, on some level, want to be admired for our skills, and are often positioned to be rewarded or punished for our performance by authority figures. Teenagers can be both malleable and fragile, learning and growing and developing their senses of self as they figure out the adults they want to become. The desire for positive feedback and in-group status can lead to some very bad choices indeed.
Silverquill is also fun for how its color combination manifests. One of the school’s core traits is ambition, which can be a positive force, pushing you to do better and be better for noble purposes. It can also lead to crab mentality, to climbing over your peers and kicking them on your way up so they can’t excel more than you. It can be cooperative or competitive, invigorating or soul-consuming. It can make you take dangerous risks for the elusive promise of praise and prestige, even if your intuition—or your Prismari friend—is warning you.
You may notice I’m dancing around discussing the new professor Ral Zarek and his role in all of this. Guess you’ll have to buy your own red string and start a murder board about it.
The main story for the set should be arriving later this month, so stay tuned. You can also preorder Strixhaven: Omens of Chaos by the inimitable Seanan McGuire, which comes out in April. If you do, you’ll get a special Strixhaven Command Tower card to add some mana to your pool.
Until then, as the Silverquill might say: may your style be sharp, and your wit be sharper.
New Edge Sword & Sorcery, aka NESS, is a magazine that’s been slowly growing since its inception a few years ago. You may recall when the publisher, with guest editor Jay Wolf, put out the Beating Hearts & Battle Axes anthology that I wrote a story for. (You can buy that now, if you haven’t yet!)
For the next week-ish, they’re crowdfunding this year’s issues, which include the usual S&S fare, along with a special dying earth-themed selection. As a stretch goal incentive, I’ll be writing a sword & sorcery flash fic for one of the issues!
As of the time I write this, they’ve just unlocked another author pay raise and a story by June Orchid Parker. There are still a few other goals between that and my story, but that just means there’s a lot to look forward to: digital art, bonus fics, and the lucky people who unlock the goals get special prizes as well.
I’m not only a stretch goal for this, I’m also the copy editor, which means I get the chance to see all the stories in advance. I’ve already edited a half dozen of them, plus a nonfiction article by Catherine Lundoff, and this year’s crop is looking great, as usual.
If you’re like me, you maybe watched the Conan cartoon as a kid, loved the aesthetics and the swords and the magical shuriken, then drifted away from the genre because it didn’t feel like it was for you. In my case, it was mostly the objectification of women; why read S&S when I could instead indulge in other kinds of fantasy where sexist stuff happened with less frequency and force?
What I love about NESS is that they’re working to change that, while still keeping the cool bits. The range of voices and perspectives is broader, but the snakes are still big and the swords are still sharp.
So! Let’s see if we can ride this hype train to the end of the line and unlock a bunch of fun stuff. As the NESS folks say, swords together!
A few months back, I had the pleasure of being interviewed for the Angie & Christie Write Now podcast, and the episode is finally out! Give it a listen when you get the chance.
If you peruse their channel, you’ll find other cool interviews, Q&As and book recommendations from various authors as well. So you can start by listening to me yammer, then dive into the backlist. Backlisten? That’s a word now, I just decided.
Your keen eyes may also detect the Strong Women, Strange Worlds logo in the above image. They’re an organization dedicated to showcasing women and nonbinary authors of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. They host regular virtual live readings, with a few coming up quite soon! Check them out as well.
If you’ve been waiting for word on the sequel to Witch You Would, the wait is over! Witch Is Minepreorder links are now up, and so is the extremely adorable cover by artist Jess Miller.
The benefit of writing a sequel, in terms of cover art, is that you’ve already set a precedent. It’s good to maintain the format of what you’ve already got in some way, and change up the details to fit the new book. Cohesion! Continuity! You love to see it.
The challenge, then, is to figure out what to keep and what to change. What exactly do you want to add in terms of different elements? What are the symbols you can pull from the text and plop into the art so readers can judge your book by its cover?
For Witch You Would, I knew I wanted butterflies and a slate, and the rest was up to the artist. For Witch Is Mine, I asked for books and peacock feathers. I also requested a dragon plushie, providing some sample photos of how I’d love it to look. Why these things specifically? You’ll find out when you read it!
Without further ado, check out these two nerds! I can’t wait for you to meet them.
You may remember Emelia, Penelope’s sister, from the first book. Here she is, in all her professional yet resting-murder-faced glory! Sebastian is a new character, a stoic cinnamon roll librarian who loves his bow ties. Bow ties are cool, as everyone knows.
Right now, the book is set to release on October 9th, but discussions are in progress about potentially pushing that back to the beginning of next year. I’ll be teaching at Viable Paradise again in October, and for those of us in the US, that time is probably going to be… stressful, to say the least.
We shall see what unfolds! I’ll keep you updated. Meanwhile, join me in gazing raptly at this cover and emitting the occasional excited squeal and kicky legs. And hey, drop a preorder if you’re so inclined!
