About
Vanessa MacLaren-Wray (she/her) creates worlds where people—human or otherwise—matter. She’s the author of All That Was Asked, Shadows of Insurrection, and Flames of Attrition, plus the middle-grade space-opera novel The Smugglers. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared with Dragon Gems and in award-winning anthologies. She served as editor-in-chief of the 2025 edition of the literary anthology Fault Zone, Faultless? She guest-hosts for the podcast Small Publishing in a Big Universe and is an active member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association and the Women’s National Book Association. In her alternate life as a Ph.D. engineer, she has been an analytical consultant in the electric power industry and currently serves as a specialized technical writer, preparing white papers and academic reports for researchers in the power industry. When not arguing with her cats, she edits fellow writers’ fiction and poetry, revises her own works-in-progress, and manages her website, cometarytales.com.
Featured Work
Shadows of Insurrection
Using the framework of the career memoir of a soldier in an alternate world, Shadows of Insurrection follows one man and his friends (and enemies) as a cabal is forming to overthrow the stable, balanced, matriarchal government of a successful nation and replace its governance with an autocratic patriarchy. Tasked with tracking down the roots of the conspiracy and determining its extent, one young soldier must advance quickly in his professional career and develop critical personal skills to better understand the values he is protecting and the diverse people within his nation. Told from his own self-effacing point of view, Corren's story resonates with the experiences of people in our own world and takes us on a journey through a world that might have been ours had geology, biology, and chance played out differently.
Other Works
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Fault Zone: Faultless?
2025
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Flames of Attrition
2023
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The True Son
2023
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Cold Trap
2023
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My Mother Is Not, and Never Has Been, a Pine Cone
2023
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The Smugglers
2022
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Coke Machine
2022
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Parrish Blue
2021
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Heart's Delight
2021
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Reunion
2021
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All That Was Asked
2020
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Economic Analysis of Industrial Cogeneration in California
1984
