Three great things about this week

imageSusan Palwick has begun a practice (inspired I believe by Terry Windling) of posting the three best things about her day on Facebook. I don’t think I could do this every day, especially not this week, but here are three lovely things about some random weeklike period before my cold germs set in.

One: Kelly came home with sushi last night so I wouldn’t cook, and dinner was therefore not only consumed but cleaned up by five o’clock. We immediately hopped up and hauled our butts to the Art Gallery of Ontario, even though it was closing at half past, and spent twenty glorious minutes getting acquainted with Silke Otto-Knapp, who paints eerie monochrome and low-contrast watercolor images on canvas. Haunting stuff–check it out! They booted us out when they closed;  we snuffled around the store and came home. We’d had a full day and a sublime artistic experience, and there were still had four hours of evening left to us.

When we moved to Toronto, we were in search of many things, including the shortest possible commuting time, for Kelly, from her job. This, in a nutshell, would be why.

Two: A call to boycott my publisher, Tor Books, for spurious political reasons has spawned a simultaneous buy-cott. The Twitter hashtag #TheTorYouKnow is filled with recommendations for great books by many terrific writers. If you want to support Tor or its authors and are flat broke, you can! Some of the Best from Tor.com 2014 is available in the Kindle store for free. It’s got my story The Color of Paradox in it, along with so many other great things.

As you’ve probably noticed, I fucking love it when people turn their backs on any kind of hatred, conflict or wankage and instead channel their attention, positive energy and in this case cold hard cash in a concrete and helpful direction. I’m betting and hoping that after this particular surge of activity subsides, we’ll all  expand the conversation, so we can talk about great non-Tor authors and publishers who also deserve our clicks, tweets, eyeballs, rave reviews and money. This hashtag, and this buycott, are necessarily about the thing going on today. The wider conversation… well, it encompasses more of us, and I don’t think anyone has forgotten that.

Three: I like to think I’m an optimist, but I’m perilously cautious. I didn’t believe marriage equality would happen in my lifetime… until about three minutes before it was obvious I ought to start planning a legal wedding. Every time the world gets better, in some ephemeral or quantifiable way, part of me is a little surprised. Hoping for the best while keeping expectations low is self-protective, I know. Anyway, the first episode of Sense8 surprised me. There are things about Nomi Marks and her relationship with Amanita that reflect my queer life in ways I’ve never seen on TV. I never expected to see Pride and the gay community, as I’ve experienced it on the flicker box. Blow me down, folks.

Feel free to share if anything rocked your week.

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About Alyx Dellamonica

After twenty-two years in Vancouver, B.C., I've recently moved to Toronto Ontario, where I make my living writing science fiction and fantasy; I also review books and teach writing online at UCLA. I'm a legally married lesbian, a coffee snob, and I wake up at an appallingly early hour.

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