Category Archives: Announcements

Story sales, articles, reviews, any kind of publication announcement.

Bug Wars, Wars of Bug

  By Alyx Dellamonica | May 2, 2012 - 10:27 am | Announcements, True Stories, UCLA Extension
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I seem to have finally won a long, frustrating, anguish-inducing war against the hackers who kept slipping malware onto my site and trying to infect people with same as they came in to learn about my books. I had to bring in mercenaries: specifically, the fine folks at Sucuri Sitecheck, who run a service that scans your site for you for free, and another service that keeps it uninfested for $90 bucks a year. After weeks of flailing attempts at DIY and instructions from my site host that were so simple they required a computer programming degree to comprehend, and promises from same host that now the site really was clean, honest, when it just friggin’ wasn’t, Sucuri had me squared away within twelve hours.
Now that I’m not dumping my non-existent free time into fighting the malware wars, I have taken the advice of a couple extremely savvy friends (writer Matt Youngmark and artist Racheal Ashe, if you must know) and started a newsletter. The Join button is on my site and my plan is to issue chatty notes that you’ll all enjoy reading–the sort of stuff that goes into the letters I write, all too infrequently, to all the lovely peeps I aspire to keep up with. Plus, also, whatever photo I’ve taken lately that I’m most proud of, exclusive sneak peeks at works in progress, bragging about my UCLA students who’ve sold fiction and links to the latest courses and me stuff. Try out the join button or just let me know if you’re interested.
And when I get an issue out, if you think it’s missing something, let me know that, too.

Rambling on the Internet

  By Alyx Dellamonica | May 1, 2012 - 9:51 am | Announcements, Appearances, Uncategorized
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If it’s Tuesday, Bring on the Buffy Rewatch: Became, Besaw, Beconquered!

Blue Magic Virtual Tour Stops
Last week, Edmonton’s Wayne Arthurson interviewed me for Gigcity. And Janni Simner asked me about my deep deep love for Vancouver, so I blogged about that very happily indeed.
Finally, Muppet asked a question about all the court proceedings in my fiction, so I wrote about that for the Women in SF&F Spotlight at the Fantasy Book Cafe.

Frim Fram Alyx with Ossenfay

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 26, 2012 - 9:15 am | Announcements, Appearances, My Novels, My Short Stories, Photography, Podcasts, Travel, Uncategorized
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And, yes, shafuffa on the side.
Tomorrow I’m co-hosting Geekly Pleasures with Jules Sherred, whose review of Blue Magic contains one of those paragraphs that really does make the whole writing lifestyle seem like an endless round of hearts and ponies:

I have never been more thankful for a character than I am for the character of Ev Lethewood. Without going into extreme detail, Alyx did a superb job of illustrating what it like to be a trans man. It is always a wonderful thing when the LGBTQ community is represented in literature in a matter-of-fact fashion, instead of salaciously.
From Geeky Pleasures (share this quote)

I wanted exactly this out of Ev’s storyline. To reach someone, in that way, on that level. Part of me was terrified I’d failed. Seeing this was a joy and a relief.
Things of me: I’m in a bubble of unprecedented super-busy, all tied into the release of Blue Magic. My inbox is full of interesting and exciting things, including travel stuff: I will be in Portland, reading at Powell’s, on the evening of May 7th, and I will have other events to announce soon. There was FanExpo and my own launch and I’ve joined Pinterest and started a newsletter (join button’s on my site) and you’ve all seen the guest blog links. Plus fiction-writing, teaching, tax season stuff, and all the usual… it’s been a whirlwind.

I’m very happy to say I’ve gotten over a thousand words in on the current Gale and Parrish story this week, despite having a meeting at 6:30 OMG ayem Tuesday and being quite bloody-minded about going outside for a walk every single damned day.

Spring in Vancouver is not to be missed. It’s cool and rainy out as I write this, and the double-flowering plums are spectacular right now. They are brighter and more vivid in the gray; bright sunshine is lovely, but it washes them out a bit. In another week or so they’ll start to edge past their prime, and the slightest gust of wind will fill the air with pink confetti. The tulips are in bloom everywhere. The days are longer and noticeably warmer, the trees are leafing up, and the birds are bubbling over with song in the mornings. Soon there will be ducklings and baby Canada geese to coo over. And, if I’m lucky, baby herons. Here’s about two percent of the heronry in progress:
All Imported-24

All around the town

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 24, 2012 - 10:00 am | Announcements, Appearances, Uncategorized
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If it’s Tuesday, Buffy must be in trouble. And I rewatched it, here, with this essay entitled History Lessons.

I also was a guest on the Scifitalk podcast this past week. You can listen to that interview here. And speaking of podcasting, I’ll be cohosting Geekly Pleasures with Jules Sherred this Friday. I’ve also written about five of my all-time favorite things, from getting paid to watch Quantum Leap to gay marriage, on the Geekly blog.
Finally, Library Journal likes me, they really like me–but their link leads to Viagra adds, so you’ll have to take my word for it.

Tuesday’s Girl is Full of Post

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 17, 2012 - 10:05 am | Announcements, Appearances, Articles, My Novels, Uncategorized
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Angel gets his stalk on in this week’s Buffy rewatch post, which is about “Passion.”

Contests! If you are in the U.S.A., Goodreads is giving away ten copies of Blue Magic. Contest deadline is May 4th–last I looked there are about 450 people with their hats in the ring for it. Those are better than lottery odds. And The Qwillery, meanwhile, has copies for Canadians and Americans.

I have been making appearances in other blogs in the past week. One was at The World in the Satin Bag, and it’s about why I chose Oregon as the setting for the Books of Chantment. People, especially Oregonians, ask this a lot. Another was at John Scalzi’s blog–I got to be a Big Idea author. I am a huge fan of Whatever so this was a big thrill.

Fundraising for Rape Crisis Centers

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 12, 2012 - 9:43 am | Announcements, Uncategorized
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As a tie-in with April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month (in the U.S., I assume), Jim Hines is running his annual fundraiser for crisis centers around the world. I’m in on this–one of the prizes up for grabs is an autographed copy of Blue Magic.

The eloquent why and details on how to enter the contest are at Jim’s blog.

If you want to give locally, here’s a link to Vancouver Rape Relief, where I worked in the Nineties.

Other donors include Elizabeth Bear, Stina Leict, Martha Wells, and Marie Brennan.

Blue Magic Interview and other bits of Wednesday

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 11, 2012 - 10:01 am | Announcements, Interviews, My Novels, Uncategorized
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M.K. Hobson, author of the amazing The Native Star, asks me three questions about Blue Magic.

Her questions and my answers are here.

If you liked The Native Star or its sequel, The Hidden Goddess, you may want to check out Hobson’s Kickstarter campaign, which seeks to fund the next installment of the Veneficas Americana series.

Take cover! Blue Magic escapes into the wild

  By Alyx Dellamonica | April 10, 2012 - 1:15 pm | Announcements, My Novels
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It’s out! After all those countdown posts, we may have been lulled into complacency, but my second novel, Blue Magic, is now officially available in bookstores online and in the real world.

Blue Magic picks up Astrid Lethewood’s story about six months after the initial, devastating outbreak of enchantment in Indigo Springs. As it opens, Sahara Knax is about to go on trial for treason, along with a number of her closest followers. One of those followers is Will Forest’s wife Carolyn–she’s been arrested, but their children are still missing. The US Air Force is firebombing Indigo Springs in an attempt to eliminate the magical contamination spreading outward from Oregon, and everyone in the world, from politicians to vigilantes, has an opinion about whether magic should be used, contained, or eliminated entirely from the world.

And you can get in on the fun! Buy the book, tweet the mystical outbreak, take pictures of it in bookstores, and let me know if you want to come to the launch in Vancouver on April 19th. Any sightings or mentions, positive or otherwise, would be very welcome. And watch this blog–I’ll keep you in the loop on contests, signings and chances to win the book itself (and perhaps other things too!)

But wait–there’s more! Here’s what Starmetaloak thought of the novel, in case you’re curious.