“The Vale,” written by Abigail Hing Wen, a New York Times Bestseller, is a novel about a 13-year-old boy named Bran Lee whose family has fallen on challenging times. Nobody has wanted their inventions and so it
is one rejection after another.

Bran enters his beloved Vale, an immersive, AI-generated, virtual reality environment in a high-stakes competition to try to win a $10 million investment to fund further development. A wizard that he did not create suddenly appears out of nowhere in the Vale. The wizard is stealing from the Vale’s inhabitants, so Bran must team up with his elf friend, Gnomly, to figure out where this wizard came from, what his agenda is, and how to stop him before both his worlds are destroyed.

Wen wrote the book 10 years ago for her creative thesis in her MFA program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. At the time she wrote the book, nobody knew what AI generation was, which is how the Lee family creates this AI world. Wen’s agent could not get behind this story so she could not support it, making her bury the book away.

Wen brought the book back out recently because now it is relevant to today’s world. Wen also launched a Roblox game called The Vale, which is inspired by the book. The link to the Roblox game version is tinyurl.com/RobloxTheVale.

Have you ever thought about becoming an author? Even though many authors experience writer’s block, Wen says, “If I am stuck on one thing, I will just take out one of my other ideas and work on that one. The more books I have now, the easier it is to push through. But also, if I get stuck, I take a book as far as I can, then I will give it to a Beta reader, and then maybe they will have ideas, too, and that helps me to get unstuck.”

A lesson that we can learn from Wen is if you feel overwhelmed during a project, try working on small parts at separate times and never give up because one day you might have your book published also.