Author Archives: Alyx Dellamonica

About Alyx Dellamonica

Alyx Dellamonica lives in Toronto, Ontario, with their wife, author Kelly Robson. They write fiction, poetry, and sometimes plays, both as A.M. Dellamonica and L.X. Beckett. A long-time creative writing teacher and coach, they now work at the UofT writing science articles and other content for the Department of Chemistry. They identify as queer, nonbinary, autistic, Nerdfighter, and BTS Army.

Main Guy’s Bumpy… Must Be Tuesday

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We’re moving into more of a discussion of Spuffy with my essay on “Crush” on the Buffy rewatch now.

As with any series of columns, there’s some lead time in play here. “Crush” is the rewatch that’s on Tor right now; this past week I’ve watched “The Body” and “Forever.” I’ve been to a lot of family funerals in the period between the initial airing of these episodes and this month, and it made the experience of reviewing them more intense. I am really looking forward to getting a little distance from the tragedies of season five. I’d be looking forward to it even more if a lot of what happens in S6 and S7 wasn’t so grim. Still… musical episode soonish!

April Showers

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We have been having a gorgeous spring, filled with light and birdsong and flowers. The double-flowering plums in front of my building are about to pop, and already the minivans of Vancouver are starting to be plastered with pink confetti from the cherries and apple trees that are currently in bloom everywhere you care to look.

My own little deck garden is looking quite spectacular of late, and on this rainy Sunday, if I cared to, I could go out and take a picture identical to this one:

Rainwet flowers

But there are goldfinches partying out there with the feeder, and Rummy is gently serenading them with the “I want to chew your neck” symphony, we’ve named BBC Two, so I’ll leave them in peace and give you last year’s model of the purple tulip. Tweety here thanks you for your patience.

Goldfinch love

Anthologies

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What it says is what you get. The following multi-author volumes contain my stories and, in a few cases, non-fiction.

(I am still working on this page, in case you can’t tell, but here are Amazon links with covers to get you started!)

“The Color of Paradox,” in Imaginarium 4: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing, edited by Sandra Kasturi and Jerome Stueart

“Rate of Exchange,” in The Change: Tales of Downfall and Rebirth, edited by S.M. Stirling

“Snow Angels” in Fractured: Tales of the Canadian Post-Apocalypse, edited by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

“Time of the Snake,” in Fast Forward, Future Fiction on the Cutting Edge.

“The Town on Blighted Sea,” in The Year’s Best Science Fiction 24, edited by Gardner Dozois

“A Key to the Illuminated Heretic,” in Alternate Generals III, edited by Harry Turtledove

“The Dream Eaters,” in The Faery Reel, edited by Ellen Datlow and Terry Windling

“Origin of Species,” from THE MANY FACES OF VAN HELSING, edited by Jeanne Cavelos

“Faces of Gemini,” GIRLS WHO BITE BACK: MUTANTS, SLAYERS, WITCHES AND FREAKS, edited by Emily Pohl-Weary

“Cooking Creole,” MOJO: CONJURE STORIES, edited by Nalo Hopkinson and PASSING FOR HUMAN edited by Michael Bishop and Stephen Utley

“A Slow Day at the Gallery” in The Year’s Best SF #8, edited by David Hartwell

“The Riverboy,” Land/Space, edited by Candas Jane Dorsey and Judy McCroskey

Non-Fiction

“Who’s the LIMA Loser? The Curious friendship of Noah Puckerman and Finn Hudson,” FILLED WITH GLEE, BenBella Books

“Stripping the Bones,” SO SAY WE ALL, BenBella Books

“Digital Watches may be a pretty neat idea, but peanuts and beer are what get you through the Apocalypse”, THE ANTHOLOGY AT THE END OF THE UNIVERSE, BenBella Books

Photography, the pinboard

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Back around the same time digital photography was beginning to dawn, my grandfather sent Kelly his old SLR 35-mm camera. It was in perfect condition and took beautiful pictures, and she spent a lot of time roaming around Vancouver making very cool black and white images.

A lot of them were of me, and this was entirely to my benefit. Before Grandpa’s Camera, I was awkward before the lens and hated almost every image taken of me. While K was learning to take better pictures, I invested some time and attention both in becoming a better subject and in appreciating a wider range of me-pictures. Here’s a random portrait:

Cruise portraits

Now, as more than one of you probably knows, I’m obnoxious on this topic–I did it, and I liked the result, so in the typical way of humans I can easily be led into preaching about how everyone else should do the same.

(But really! You should! Because people take more pictures than ever of you. And they put them on the Internet without asking. And this is the age of the selfie! And other reasons as well!)

I brought home books from the library. Hundreds and hundreds of books on photography for K to read. Ansel Adams and Henri Cartier-Bresson and history of this and collections of that. And while I didn’t absorb more than a minute fraction of the content, I looked at all the pictures. Knowledge soaked in: I can tell a good photo from a bad one now, even if I can’t always articulate why. And I loooove good pictures.

That was 1997ish. Dad was alive (we obliged him to build a darkroom in our bathroom and our cat Obi clawed the living crap out of his hand by way of thanks) and I had just started writing fulltime. In 2001 I was toting a Polaroid around, because by then I’d found that, occasionally, I wanted a picture of something for writing purposes. It suited me to have the picture that very second, dammit, so I could write down why I thought it was important.

This didn’t work out so well, so in 2003, I bought my first digital. I’ve taken well over 15,000 images since then, with four different cameras. The further back you go in time on my Flickr account, the less impressive they are.

So, with that long wind-up, I offer you my photo pinboard. This is for pictures by other photographers, images I think are wonderful, interspersed with the occasional infographic on technique.

Telewitterings – Loki vs. Cranford

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cranford memeSome time ago we acquired the sequel to BBC’s Cranford, which is as chickly a televisual enterprise as you would ever want to watch. Based on fiction by Elizabeth Gaskell, it was produced and created by Sue Birtwhistle and Susie Conklin, and stars Judi Dench, Julia McKenzie, Imelda Staunton, Barbara Flynn and Julia Sawalha.

Also, it has a cow in long underwear.

I’m not saying it’s all one big convent, or even L Word, 1840 Style. (Though that might be intriguing). There are men in the town of Cranford, you see. It’s just that few of them seem to be available for traditional heterosexual romantic pursuit. They’re either attached or bound for India, or just plain dim or somehow doomed.

So this wonderful bunch of middle-aged spinsters who pretty much own the town bevvies about, not being married, not having children and instead forming a delightful alternate family. They putter about gossiping and having adventures and renovating theaters and, now and then, experiencing heartbreak as they grapple with the clash between the era they grew up in and their radically changed present, with its railroads and progress and newfangled technology.

Part one was so wonderful and that we rewatched it before diving into Return to Cranford. The original series had neatly disposed of the only two single men by its final episode. One did, despite considerable deficits in the commonsense department, get himself married. The other, who was played by a delightfully surly Philip Glenister, did not. They shuffled him off the stage nonetheless.

Even a chickly chickly costume drama’s nothing without at least one romantic entanglement, am I right? So one new male character now was required. So, to my surprise, the new available boy turned out to be the man otherwise known as Loki McWhinepants, brother of Thor–in other words, Tom Hiddleston.

Now many of my fannish friends have the idea that Tom Hiddleston and his Avengery alter ego are as yummy a bag of chips as the salt gods could ever bestow upon a screen, big or small. And I could, intellectually, rationalize his appeal. But film Loki just didn’t do it for me. If there was a test whose question was Rate the Film Avengers in order of sexy yum potential, my list would probably go something like this:

1. Joss Whedon’s Brain
2. The Assassins.
3. Tony.
4. Bruce.
4.5. Tony and Bruce, together, in that car. Or that lab.
5. Team Shield: Fury, Agent Coulson, Agent Hill and their very cool ship.
6. Captain America.
7. Unnamed but suitably grateful Waitress.
8. Team Asgard
9. Pepper

What I’m saying is that while I’ve understood and (I hope) supported my friends in their pursuit of Tony/Loki fanfic and ever cuter Hiddleston gifs, I’d also thought, you know, yawn.

What’s this got to do with our topic (Return to Cranford, remember? It’s okay. I almost forgot, too.) Well, Tom Hiddleston! In period Pants! Being earnest and put upon and in pure true love with a young woman and being put upon by his father. In the face of parental opposition to his life choices, he does something that’s spoilery spoilery never you mind but thoroughly wonderful and romantic.

And just like that, Whoo! I’m on board.

In my house, silly new telecrushes inevitably lead first to the imdb. . .

. . . and then to embarrassment, in this case because I then realized that TH was also the totally annnoying Magnus in Wallander. I love Wallander! How did I miss that?

(Answer: I was too busy laughing as little Kenny Branaugh cried his eyes out. Apparently I am a sick sick person).

. . . and then, after the Wallander discovery and subsequent facepalms had sunk in, all I could do was text the aforementioned Tony/Loki shipper to say guess what, I heart what you heart now. You are right, I am wrong, mea culpa.

So I’ve learned a valuable lesson about tolerance, or perhaps about how Mister Hiddleston is far more attractive when clothed in old timey garb, virtue, and clean hair. But what I really hope you’ll take away from this is that Cranford and sequel are all about the women. If you like costume dramas at all and someone missed this one, I recommend it bigtime. Especially as Judi Dench is so warm and lovely and thoughtful and thoroughly marvelous that you just want to reach through the fourth wall and give her a great big hug. Plus, also, tea.