Alex Valdiers
The Short Version:
Alex Valdiers is a French indie Space Western Fantasy author of Laotian descent who currently lives in the South of England. The lack of a suitable platform and market for French Fantasy prompted Valdiers to move to the UK in 2012. After years of practice, his debut novella The Choice of Weapons, the first Raoke Gang novella, was released in August 2023 and reached the SFINCS Semi-Finals.
His debut novel, A Wolf in Space, the first Raoke Gang novel, comes out on January 23rd. Valdiers has over 40 novels planned for the Raoke Gang series.
The Full Story:
I was born in Lyon, France, in 1988 from French and Laotian parents. Growing up, I always wanted to become a writer, a full-time writer. Early on, I developed two passions: one for SFF with the movies of John Carpenter and Conan, and one for great writing with the prose of Albert Camus and Alexander Pushkin. My dream was to combine the two: awesome SFF stories with great prose. I read and wrote tirelessly all my teens and early 20’s.
I wrote and submitted four novels to French publishing houses (France doesn’t use the agent system). All my manuscripts were returned with a similar note: ‘we do not publish this genre of books (aka Fantasy or Science Fiction). It took me a while to come to the evidence that was staring me in the face all these years: there was no viable market for SFF in France.
I could either give up my dream to become a full time SFF author writing beautiful prose or… I could go where there was a SFF market.
Since you are reading this, it is no surprise to you that it’s exactly what I did. I moved to the South of England in 2012. I knew writing in a new language was incredibly risky and almost doomed to result in failure, but I never hesitated or looked back. It was make or break. It still is.
So between 2012 and 2023 when I released my debut novella, The Choice of Weapons, 11 years elapsed. What happened during the 11 years? I got married; I worked 100 hours a week at a job I hated, I briefly ran a wine import company (before Brexit killed our margins), and I learned English. Not just learning how to speak English but writing beautiful prose in English. It took me years to write decently in English, and only when my writing became readable did I realize my biggest problem: sensibility.
The sensibilities of the French and the English language differ vastly. Not only that, but the narrative tradition I mastered in French was outdated. All those great writing skills I developed through decades of writing were not as easily transferrable as I hoped they would.
So here I am. This is 2024. I have found the indie fantasy community and have been welcomed with open arms. Lots of wonderful people from all over the world have read, supported and reviewed my work. My debut novel A Wolf in Space releases in January. The second novel Death of a Mad Dragon releases in June, and I hope to squeeze in a third novel by the end of the year. Am I a full-time writer? Not yet. Is my prose as beautiful as I aspire it to be? Not yet. Have I found a platform for my stories? Yes. A thousand times yes. I might be at the bottom of the ladder, with a huge handicap (not being a native speaker), but at last (!) I have a ladder to climb.
Not having a platform to showcase your art is one of the worst thing that can happen to any artist, and it sadly happens to most of them. I know there are thousands like me with great stories to share but no way of sharing them. Very few of us can successfully do the transfer I operated, for a thousand reasons: travel access, language skills, resistance, belief, abnegation, etc.
Life as an unpublished writer has been very hard, all these years, be it in France or in England. And I suspect the years ahead of me as a published writer will be even harder. But I will never complain. Now, I have a platform to showcase my art. It’s a gift. A gift I earned through blood, sweat and tears. And I will never spoil it. My deepest thoughts will always go with all those wonderful artists all over the world and the ages who didn’t have a platform to express themselves — and could not find one.
I cannot express how grateful I am for all the people who have come across my work, The Raoke Gang series, and have supported it in whatever shape or form. I know where I come from and now you do too. Thank you for giving my stories a chance.
Alex Valdiers
Alex Valdiers 