About Sandra Vale

Meet Sandra Vale

Okay, Cliff Notes version first.

First-time author. Wife. Mother of three. Nonprofit grant administrator. Lifelong reader. Amateur mythologist. Accidental web designer. Collector of books, hobbies, and creative projects. Full-time chaos coordinator—although it remains undetermined whether I actually manage the chaos or merely instigate it. Oh, and there’s a squirrel. We’ll get to him later.

“I write the stories I want to disappear into.”

I have been disappearing into books for as long as I can remember, so perhaps it was inevitable that eventually I would start building worlds of my own. I’m the author of The Morrigan Cycle, an enthusiastic collector of mythology, and a frequent victim of creative rabbit holes that begin with one innocent question and end somewhere completely unexpected.

Awaken the Raven began simply because there was a story I wanted to read. Eventually, I came to the unfortunate realization that if I wanted to know how it ended, I was going to have to write it myself.

And somehow one book turned into an entire world.

The Story Before the Stories

Stories came first. I learned to read ridiculously early and never really stopped. Books were places to explore, people to meet, mysteries to solve, and worlds I could disappear into whenever the real one became considerably less interesting.

Figuring out what I wanted to do with the rest of my life was somewhat less straightforward. I have always been interested in far too many things at once, which meant there was never one obvious path waiting for me. I wandered through different subjects, different ambitions, and an assortment of creative and practical pursuits before eventually building a career in work that let me keep learning, solving problems, and doing something different on a regular basis.

Writing fiction came later. Not because I had spent my life dreaming of becoming an author, but because one day I had a story in my head that would not leave me alone. I knew the kind of book I wanted it to become—the sort of story I would happily lose an entire weekend reading—but unfortunately no one else was going to write it for me.

And somewhere along the way, Awaken the Raven stopped being an experiment in whether I could write a novel and became the beginning of an entire world.

Why I Write Fantasy

Fantasy has always offered me something other stories cannot quite replicate: the sense that another world might be waiting just beyond the edge of this one.

I love old mythology and folklore—not simply for the gods, monsters, and magic, but for the very human stories buried inside them. Love and betrayal. Loyalty and ambition. Family, identity, sacrifice, grief, belonging. People making impossible choices and then having to live with what those choices cost.

Those are the things that interest me when I write, too.

I want magic to have consequences. I want characters who love each other and still manage to hurt one another. I want found families, uncomfortable truths, dangerous bargains, and places that feel real enough that you might stumble into them if you took the wrong road at exactly the right moment.

Most of all, I keep returning to stories about home—where we find it, who we find it with, and what happens when the place we belong is not necessarily the place we came from.

Deep Inside the Vale

On My Nightstand

Project Hail Mary

by Andy Weir

This isn’t my usual genre, but I’ll try just about anything that interests my youngest enough to actually crack open a book. I’m glad I did. I really wish the main character lived next door—his level of sarcasm would make us all instant besties.

Last Updated Sept. 1, 2026

A Spark of Inspiration

Elizabeth Elder Photography

This appeared in my Facebook feed and immediately hijacked my imagination. I can’t decide whether I want to visit this place, be this woman, or just write her story. Elizabeth Elder’s photography is full of images that make me want to wander straight into them.

Last Updated Sept. 1, 2026

Dispatches from the Vale Squirrel

The Spider Treaty

The spider living in my husband’s shower violated the terms of our negotiated treaty. Consequently, Clause 5B was invoked, and Bob the 22nd is no longer with us. We remain hopeful that Bob the 23rd will prove a more cooperative ambassador.

Last Updated Sept. 1, 2026

Life Beyond the Pages

I live in a very small town in rural coastal Virginia with my husband, who is also my best friend, and the last of our children still at home—a teenager who is rapidly making the word child feel increasingly inaccurate.

We also seem to be operating a small and largely unlicensed zoo. At last count, the household included four dogs, two cats, three birds, a turtle who has apparently claimed our pond as his permanent residence, and Juan and Maria Ramirez, the groundhogs living beneath the shed and showing no indication that they intend to contribute toward the mortgage. Juan’s name comes from my husband’s eighteen-year campaign to name absolutely everything—including one of our children—after Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez, Chief Metallurgist to King Charles V of Spain, from Highlander. Maria simply inherited the consequences of her husband’s name.

Life here is rarely quiet. There has been plenty of chaos over the years, some genuine heartbreak, more than a few things we never saw coming, and an impressive number of situations that could probably have gone better. Somehow, though, we keep making our way through it—usually with a fairly questionable sense of humor, and the firm belief that sometimes all you can do is look at the absurdity of the situation and laugh.

And then, of course, there is the squirrel.

He does not live outside. Unfortunately he lives inside my brain.

He is responsible for an alarming number of unfinished thoughts, unexpected projects, creative detours, and the occasional entire publishing company that appeared because I was supposed to be editing a book.

I’ve learned to live with him… mostly

echoesfromthevalepress@gmail.com