Catherynne M. Valente

Queen of Lasers and NYT/USAT Bestselling author of Fairyland, Space Opera, Deathless, The Past Is Red, & more. Any/All 

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npub1jv9ztv5v7suycyxru9mn6em4tycn3qtcm7g39rh505kfanuwgy6s9sptvj

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Catvalente@wandering-shop.mostr.pub

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nprofile1qqsfxz39k2x0gwzvzrp7zaeava64jvfcs9udlygj3m686ty7e78yzdgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsdk2gpg

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nostr.mom

nos.lol

relay.damus.io

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npub1jv9ztv5v7suycyxru9mn6em4tycn3qtcm7g39rh505kfanuwgy6s9sptvj

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Last Notes

2026-04-28 12:35:38 UTC

Oh, wow, this is definitely how the government investigates a very unexpected serious & real crime that was really committed, seriously, whose details totally matter, so we basically HAVE to give Trump $400 million & shut down the Democratic Party forever about it, that’s just the law, you guys.
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/116/482/358/262/828/827/original/f4597003a01ebc0f.jpeg

2026-04-21 17:24:59 UTC

AHHHHH!
*deep breath*
AHHHHHH!
My twisty summer gothic story When He Calls Your Name is a #HUGO FINALIST!
I am so beyond happy—I’m so proud of this story & so hoped it would find its people.
SEE YOU IN LA DARLINGS, IMMA WEAR A VAMPIRE GOWN
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/when-he-calls-your-name/
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/116/443/859/859/878/810/original/bc52e0398f8e3289.jpeg

2026-04-09 17:33:24 UTC

The use of “hallucinate” is a stroke of true evil genius in the AI world.
In ANY other context we’d just call them errors & the fail rate would be crystal clear.
Instead, “hallucinate” implies genuine sentience & the *absence* of real error.
Aw, this software isn’t shit! Boo’s just dreaming!

2026-04-07 13:44:28 UTC

Just in case nuclear war starts tonight I wanted to say, despite all the complaining, it’s been a jewel of a life with all of you, hanging on a golden chain of moments of togetherness and connection and care.
Smoke em if you got em I guess.

2026-03-31 14:49:46 UTC

From my new piece concerning the Anthropic settlement:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/blood-money-the-anthropic-settlement
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/116/324/341/009/852/125/original/fe2e07a1ce08d1dc.jpeg

2026-03-30 22:19:50 UTC

I just finished filing my claim with the #Anthropic settlement, which used FIFTEEN of my books to train the goddamned Temu Terminator, and I am fucking furious and heartbroken about it:
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/blood-money-the-anthropic-settlement

2026-03-02 20:10:47 UTC

Concerning the war in Iran, and probably one of the saddest things I've ever written.
https://catvalente.substack.com/p/whats-a-panama

2026-02-28 17:30:51 UTC

If any Danish speakers follow me...
What would be the Danish equivalent of the name Bob in English?
Being a standard very common male name w/uncle vibes, pleasing to say but old-fashioned & kind of pedestrian? Lars? Peet?
Thanks for your help! (Happy to take any other Danish tidbits too!)

2025-11-14 13:38:16 UTC

The Vanilla Kraken AWAKETH

2025-10-27 21:13:45 UTC

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@nprofile…pmx6 short for Velveteen :)

2025-10-02 02:39:46 UTC

Sure, pretty late-night insomniac dumbslop but…
…in worlds with tons of superpowered humans, the ones who just got like, basic-ass superstrength + healing must be DEEP in their feels about not getting the wild shit like shapeshifting, time/dimension manip, animal-related powers, flight, time travel, sex-ilithid whatever

2025-07-16 21:18:55 UTC

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@nprofile…skq8 That was actually my first thought.
Wild animals can’t put things leftvlying down delicately upright.
And a neighbor just reported she saw someone in there with a flashlight that night.

2025-07-16 16:09:25 UTC

My streak of gross luck continues…
someone broke into my office (wee studio in backyard) last night. Didn’t take anything, but smashed my computer screen, moved things around, left it open to the rain
I live on a little island. No one locks their doors. This doesn’t happen, ever. I’m really shaken.
Obviously everything locked up now. Got security cams. But after 18 years of a pervasive feeling of safety…it’s a rough jolt.

2025-07-11 23:27:55 UTC

FUCKING WHY
Did somebody’s wife leave them for a lady?
It will NEVER stop with transfolk, just like it was never just about trans kids, so stop pretending we GNC people are acceptable losses as long as the alligators don’t come for the rest THEY ALWAYS COME.
https://www.lgbtqnation.com/2025/07/gop-erases-all-mentions-of-bisexuals-from-stonewall-monument-webpages/

2025-06-27 16:38:12 UTC

I need the phrase (or its equivalent in everyday casual speech) of “What the fuck” in as many languages as possible.
Go.

2025-06-24 01:57:31 UTC

I need a Muslim consult for the book I’m working on.
Preferably a woman, but any gender expression is fine, I just need to take a quite odd & reproductively confrontational SF concept very seriously from a devout Islamic perspective.
Can anyone on masto help me out?

2025-06-15 21:08:38 UTC

It’s hard to escape the dawning realization that part (or all) of the goal of Google’s AI Overview is to simply eradicate the concept of anyone else having any kind of website at all.
Why click on a link & explore when Google told you the answer & you didn’t know it was wrong?
Google’s long-con loss-leaders have been nothing but a ramp-up to replacing the entire internet with itself—& a single content creator they never have to pay.
Except in the energy of the whole planet.

2025-06-09 02:16:36 UTC

In retrospect, the flaw in the Turing Test was always using human discernment as the model to measure against.
LLMs easily pass the Turing Test, not because they’re sentient, but because we’re dumbasses who interpret the most dopamine-supplying response to ourselves as the most intelligently human.

2025-06-06 13:26:19 UTC

You know you can just not use AI, right?
You can make a choice not to be part of this.
Even if your job uses it, YOU don’t have to in your normal life. You don’t have to let your kids use it.
You didn’t have it three years ago. You can just…be on Team Human. You can choose.

2025-05-31 19:11:59 UTC

New Recipe up at Patreon!
This month: Brown & Black "Mac & Cheese"
...which is neither mac & cheese nor brown OR black, but a brown-butter, black garlic, & bold cheese pasta I invented for my kid's WEIRDO PALATE. They INSISTED I tell "the internet" how to make it:
https://www.patreon.com/posts/130350375

2025-05-02 22:04:07 UTC

The thing people still don’t seem to get?
Trump backs down at ANY kind of pushback. Resist a little & he folds.
SO FUCKING QUIT FOLDING IN ADVANCE DING-DONGS
https://www.pressherald.com/2025/05/02/maine-settles-case-over-frozen-usda-school-funds/

2025-04-05 19:40:23 UTC

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@nprofile…0nz2 @nprofile…fp32 I actually used to DIY a kind of Patreon-Before-Patreon back in the day. The amount of extra work it was on top of producing the content for it took over a huge swath of my life. We DO need these sites, few of us are big enough to make it happen alone. It's not such an easy solution to go it alone.
Especially since many of us have built that community over a decade and more

2025-04-05 18:57:31 UTC

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If you want to help out, obv. becoming a patron if you weren't before would help shore up the gaping hole we're all grappling with. But do it through a BROWSER, which circumvents all these issues
You could also email #Patreon, as we've all done, & complain. I'm not sure they're listening, though

2025-04-05 18:57:12 UTC

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Basically: any subscriptions made through the iOS/Apple store now have the 30% fee applied, which comes out of our portion of the sub. It also seems iOS subscriptions are subject to a 75 DAY hold, which is truly beyond any normal processing time
This is why most folks lost around 30% overnight.

2025-04-05 18:56:33 UTC

Many changes took effect at #Patreon today, all devastating to creators' income,especially those of us who rely on Patreon to...not die
I woke up to my income slashed by 28% despite no change in patrons. I'm not alone--all while our economy burns
I'm not sure what to do, but there's a few things 🧵

2025-03-16 17:31:10 UTC

I don’t want to hear one more female character referred to as a motherfucking Mary Sue ever the shit again
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/173/297/717/917/610/original/0abbc127d9f5f67a.jpeg

2025-03-14 21:03:47 UTC

At school drop-off awhile back, one of the other parents pulled me aside & whispered the most 19th century thing anyone’s ever said to me:
“I‘ve heard your…situation has changed. And I just wanted to say that I know several well-to-do mariners if you ever look for love again…”
WELL TO DO MARINERS

2025-03-06 19:34:32 UTC

Delightful Linguistic Distraction of the Day:
Though it's obscure & obsolete, English has a word for the moment icicles fall from the roof of a house.
Stiricide. Which comes very simply from the Latin words for "icicle" & "to fall."
Yet so specific, so delicate, so strange, so lovely.
Crack. Thunk.

2025-03-03 15:42:44 UTC

Also, those men, & any who fantasize about being the orgiastic cannibal warlord of their sub-development, have no idea how to feed, clothe, educate, inspire, organize, or heal anyone.
They didn’t even stock their prepper pantry. Their wives did. And the second pure violence isn’t going to fix a problem, they’d be the problem that needed fixing.
https://mastodo.neoliber.al/@Legit_Spaghetti/114082033665061340

2025-03-03 15:06:05 UTC

The last six weeks have been nothing but these spoilt princes lighting things on fire, then strutting around pretending it’ll be better burnt while privately scrambling to somehow un-burn it because turns out the thing did something pretty fucking important.
IT ALL DOES SOMETHING, YOU CREATURES
https://www.axios.com/2025/03/03/kennedy-jr-measles-outbreak-vaccine

2025-02-28 14:34:33 UTC

Why would there be an apocalypse when you’re in charge and so amazing at everything, Elon?
WHY WOULD THERE BE AN APOCALYPSE WHEN YOU’RE IN CHARGE & SO AWESOME AT EVERYTHING, ELON?
https://stockroom.wandering.shop/media_attachments/files/114/082/006/258/977/324/original/472afde0021d9426.jpeg

2025-02-20 03:43:36 UTC

Oh my god I was sharing the Four Tops with a Young Person & told her to pull up Baby I Need Your Lovin and autocorrect changed it to BABY I NEED YOUR LOGIN
I’M FUCKING DYING

2025-02-18 22:07:16 UTC

I apologize to anyone waiting on responses from me about anything, I’m going on 5 days of sick and that long you’d be getting better but I’m much worse today. High fever. No more yelling about politics. I collapse.

2025-02-16 02:50:04 UTC

How strange to think an entire generation has now grown up knowing the President only as the Main Character of America and not the stewardship of a public office: briefly held, gently relinquished.

2025-02-11 16:58:13 UTC

I'm so incredibly pleased to see that my novel Space Oddity made the Locus Recommended Reading List!
It's also eligible for the Hugo & Nebula Awards, if you wish to consider it.
Space Oddity also opens up the Space Opera books for Best Series!
https://locusmag.com/2025/02/2024-recommended-reading-list/

2024-05-05 22:37:58 UTC

It is my birthday. Made it to Level 45 without dying!

2023-09-28 13:18:18 UTC

I got my kid a rock tumbler for their 5th birthday.
I explained what is was and how it worked, what was going to happen to turn the dull rocks into shiny jewels.
Bastian stared at the rocks for a long time. Very intently.
Then quietly said:
“When they’re shiny I’m gonna trade these jewels to a raven for friendship.”

2023-08-26 15:55:23 UTC

Why is the Fulton County seal so much smaller on Trump’s mugshot than everyone else’s?
Hoping it’s less noticeable that it IS a mugshot?
The special treatment for this radioactive toad will never end.

2023-08-18 21:45:48 UTC

An aggressively drama-prone social media network with no block button (or a paid one, you know that’s what’s up) sounds like just a super fantastic idea that in no way will make everything garbage just so no one can ignore the Colicky Emerald Baby and his Nazi friends.

2023-08-16 13:43:53 UTC

I have a bad feeling Tuberville is blocking those top military spots so they’ll stay open long enough for Trump to get elected, pardon everyone, and then fill those positions with loyalists who will back the next coup.

2023-08-14 23:57:15 UTC

I just found out Christopher Lloyd was 47 when Back to the Future came out, 46 when it was filmed, and I gotta be honest I was not emotionally ready to face that I’m only three years younger than noted cryptkeeper DOC FUCKING BROWN tonight okay

2023-08-10 14:56:00 UTC

Apparently the answer to a hitherto unsolvable plot problem is to sign 1200 bookplates because it’s so inexpressibly boring to write my name 1200 times my poor brain is like FINE WHATEVER I GUESS, WE HAVE TO DO *SOMETHING* UP HERE OR WE WILL LITERALLY DIE TO ESCAPE

2023-08-05 23:24:37 UTC

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@npub1lup…jra8 Comfort Me With Apples, no contest. Maaaaybe Deathless if you like that

2023-08-05 01:22:23 UTC

An old guy bought me & my friend a shot at the bar because my friend told him I was a writer.
“How many books have you written?”
“46. #47 is out next year.”
“WOW. What? How? How many did Hemingway have, 10 in his whole life?”
“…mate, Hemigway’s rent was $10 a month in Key West. I gotta hustle a little more than my man Ernie.”

2023-08-03 21:50:39 UTC

“What do you want to be for Halloween this year, love? Any thoughts?”
4 year old: “YOU!”
“Me?!”
“Yeah, I just need a black wig, a black dress, a BIG necklace, and some books!”
“Okay…but why is that scary?”
4: “Because then *I* would make the rules!” *literal villain cackle*
“…you’re right. That’s the most terrifying costume I’ve ever heard of.”

2023-07-31 20:41:59 UTC

Goddammit I do not want that fucking X on my phone screen it looks like porn is just SUPER important to me I hate it.

2023-07-21 04:35:48 UTC

Also if you are an SFF writer or we know each other otherwise, online or IRL, say hi so I can follow you!