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.
Comments Off on Catworld Revision Project #8 – Feliocentric Units of Measurement
Okay Canada, the feline overlords know you freaked out when you half-assed went metric back in the Seventies. However, it’s time you and the world took on standardized units of measurement.
The Cat of Ironhorse Ranch cares deeply about this:
Here are the units:
Distance is henceforth to be measured in: claws, paws, tails, short pounces, long springs, and unacceptables.
(Any distance sufficiently far as to require transport in a car = 1 unacceptable.)
Time – Yowls. As catkind lives in the present, one unit of temporal measurement should do. One yowl is the unit of time that should pass between a cat’s making its wishes known and having them executed by the nearest available ape. (All other measurements are irrelevant.)
Also on the subject of time: nap-interrupting clocks that scare the crap out of us by periodically going “BONG” are totally banned. What is wrong with you apes that you think this is okay?
The above examples are not meant to cover everything, but should give you a decent idea of what’s required here. Strike a committee, work out the other measurements, and get it done. We make the proclamations. Logistics are, naturally, your problem.
Comments Off on It’s love time on the @tordotcom #BuffyRewatch… “Fool for Love”, that is.
“Fool For Love” is one of the better season five episodes, in my opinion, and one of the less painful ones to watch (or rewatch), too. Here’s my essay.
I know I’m not alone in this, but I just love infographics. Knowledge! Packed into memorable pictures! Beautifully designed and all laid out in color! What’s not to love?
I decided when I began my infographics pinboard that if it looked good and the basic facts on any given topic weren’t deeply stupid or obvious lies, I’d pin them without further digging. The general idea is that if I ever choose to make use of the info, in a story for example, I’ll fact-check it then. So when the “psychology of color” graphic claims that blue is the most productive color for an office, I’m giving myself permission to go Mmmm, really? Says who? and still hoard the image.
This board is, in its way, cousin to photos like this one:
Not checking the info immediately is a strategy to keep me from deciding whether to exclude some lovely but silly stuff, and risk losing the potentially useful. I’ll never want to pause long enough in the pinning moment to do the truth-checking. Save now, research later is a way of ensuring I don’t end up with a brain full of “Wasn’t there a picture of this I could have used now? I wonder where on the intertubes that got to?”
It also means the range of info on this particular board is rather eclectic. There’s everything from stats on Kickstarter projects to facts about coffee and a few things that don’t exist in the world, like the Geek Tube Map.
The unifying thread, I suppose, is “This Might Be Knowledge.”
As I write this in the summer of 2021, on the verge of coming out of the enforced seclusion of Toronto’s long pandemic lockdown, it seems ever more amazing to me that I have published seven science fiction and fantasy novels. I feel very fortunate–blessed, really–and chief among those blessings are all the avid genre readers who made this possible!
My latest: Gamechanger & Dealbreaker by L.X. Beckett, are solarpunk thrillers set in the early twenty-second century. Both have have buy pages on the L.X. Beckett site, with link to lots of excerpts and reviews.
The Hidden Sea Tales
Child of a Hidden Sea
Released in 2014 to rave reviews, Child of a Hidden Sea is the story of Sophie Hansa, a 24-year-old marine videographer whose search for her birth family lands her on another world.
Read the first chapter at Tor.com!
One minute, Sophie is in a San Francisco alley trying to save the life of the aunt she has never known. The next, she finds herself flung into the warm and salty waters of an unfamiliar world. Glowing moths fall to the waves around her, and the sleek bodies of unseen fish glide against her submerged ankles.
The world is Stormwrack, a series of island nations with a variety of cultures and economies—and a language different from any Sophie has heard. She doesn’t know it yet, but she has stepped into the middle of a political firestorm, a conspiracy that could destroy a world she has just discovered…a world where everyone seems to know who she is, and where she is forbidden to stay.
But Sophie is stubborn, and smart, and refuses to be cast adrift by people who don’t know her and yet wish her gone. With the help of a sister she has never known, and a ship captain who would rather she had never arrived, she must navigate the shoals of the highly charged politics of Stormwrack, and win the right to decide for herself whether she stays in this wondrous world…or is doomed to exile, in Child of a Hidden Sea by A.M. Dellamonica.
MacMillan Books * Amazon* Kindle * iTunes * Chapters * Kobo * Barnes and Noble/Nook * Powell’s
A Daughter of No Nation
A Daughter of No Nation
As soon as Sophie Hansa returned to our world, she is anxious to once again go back to Stormwrack. Unable to discuss the wondrous sights she has seen, and unable to tell anyone what happened to her in her time away, Sophie is in a holding pattern, focused entirely on her eventual chance to return.
Read an excerpt here!
With the sudden arrival of Garland Parrish, Sophie is once again gone. She has been called back to Stormwrack in order to spend time with her birth father, a Duelist-Adjudicator, who is an unrivaled combatant and fearsome negotiator. But is he driven by his commitment to seeing justice prevail, or by something darker? Soon, she discovers something that makes her reject him, and everything he is offering.
Adrift again, she soon finds herself taking a fresh look into a long-standing case between two of the island nations. The investigation turns up new information that could get her, and her friends, pulled into something bold and daring, something that may change the way she approaches this strange new world. . . . assuming she survives.
MacMillan Books * Amazon* Kindle * iTunes * Chapters * Kobo * Barnes and Noble/Nook * Powell’sThe Books of Chantment
Indigo Springs is a sleepy town where things seem pretty normal . . . until Astrid’s father dies and she moves into his house. She discovers that for many years her father had been accessing the magic that flowed, literally, in a blue stream beneath the earth, leaking into his house. When she starts to use the liquid “vitagua” to enchant everyday items, the results seem innocent enough: a “’chanted” watch becomes a charm that means you’re always in the right place at the right time; a “’chanted” pendant enables the wearer to convince anyone of anything . . .
But as events in Indigo Springs unfold and the true potential of vitagua is revealed, Astrid and her friends unwittingly embark on a journey fraught with power, change, and a future too devastating to contemplate. Friends become enemies and enemies become friends as Astrid discovers secrets from her shrouded childhood that will lead her to a destiny stranger than she could have imagined.
MacMillan Books * Amazon * iTunes * Chapters * Kobo * Barnes and Noble/Nook * Powell’sRead the first chapter at Tor.com!Blue Magic: This powerful sequel to the A.M. Dellamonica’s Sunburst Award–winning contemporary fantasy Indigo Springs starts in the small town in Oregon where Astrid Lethewood discovered an underground river of blue liquid—Vitagua—that is pure magic. Everything it touches is changed. The secret is out—and the world will never be the same. Astrid’s best friend, Sahara, has been corrupted by the blue magic, and now leads a cult that seeks to rule the world. Astrid, on the other hand, tries to heal the world.
Conflicting ambitions, star-crossed lovers, and those who fear and hate magic combine in a terrible conflagration, pitting friend against friend, magic against magic, and the power of nations against a small band of zealots, with the fate of the world at stake.
MacMillan Books * Amazon * iTunes * Chapters * Kobo * Barnes & Noble/Nook * Powell’s
Try before you buy–read the first chapter for free!
Pick a Store, any Store
I understand consumer loyalty. If you don’t want to browse first and then click second, here’s everything I have on Amazon. Here’s just the Kindle Store and my author page. And here’s Barnes and Noble. You read iBooks? I have those too.
Don’t feel left out, Canadian shoppers! Here’s the Kobo store.
is the story of Sophie Hansa, a 24-year-old marine videographer whose search for her birth family lands her on another world.
* 
* 