Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth

Val Vega figured that in her junior year of high school, all she’d have to worry about was getting a decent score on the SATs, captaining the softball team, and figuring out her unrequited crush on her cute nonbinary bestie. Then Val discovers a family secret she never expected: her tío Umberto is Earth’s ambassador to an interstellar council of planets, and his unexpected death installs Val as his successor.

Two Galactic empires are on the brink of war, and only Val can salvage interstellar peace. She has to hammer out treaties with giant jellyfish-shaped aliens that float like zeppelins, gets abducted by underground insurgents, and has to navigate the divisions of a colonized planet where telepathy puts every thought and every conflict out in the open. Her impossible task is even harder since Earth is known across the Galaxy as a violent, self-destructive backwater planet with intolerable humidity. Worse, she learns her uncle's death was no accident - he was assassinated, and the prime suspects are the three aliens Val trusted as her uncle’s allies.

Out of her depth and with the weight of two worlds on her shoulders, Val must solve her uncle’s murder and bring peace to the Galaxy—all while helping her grieving family, managing the dramas of her friends, and getting a passing grade in trig.

Ben Francisco's debut novel is a Latinx space adventure populated by diverse humans and aliens who break the binaries of Earth and the Galaxy!

Ben Francisco (they/them) is a queer Puerto Rican writer born in the Bronx and raised in New Jersey. They encountered the original Star Wars movie in the womb and remain convinced it left a permanent imprint. Ben grew up watching Star Wars and Star Trek: The Next Generation and reading space adventure novels by authors like Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein. They thrilled to the possibilities of science fiction, but rarely saw their mixed Latinx family or LGBTQ lived experience reflected in those imagined futures. Secret Ambassador of Earth is the book their younger self longed for, affirming that the wonder of the stars belongs to all of us.

Ben’s short stories have been published in Strange Horizons, PodCastle, and From Macho to Mariposa: New Gay Latino Fiction. They won the Indiana Review 2022 Fiction Prize, and their short stories have been featured in several year’s best LGBTQ fiction anthologies. Secret Ambassador of Earth is their first novel.

Outside of writing fiction, Ben has two decades of experience in nonprofits and philanthropy working for immigrant rights, LGBTQ rights, and racial justice. They’ve also worked as a church receptionist, middle school teacher, and highly unsuccessful gardener. They live with their husband, Juan, in Brooklyn.