My latest season four rewatch is up, and it’s “New Moon Rising.”
I loved Oz, and Seth Green as Oz, but I’m also all: Yay! Tara!
Author Archives: Alyx Dellamonica
Roasting the Muzak Chestnuts?
I write in the mornings at Cafe Calabria on Commercial Drive, where the coffee is strong and the decor is opulent. The proprietor, Frank Murdocco, has been passionate about music since he had a job, in the Sixties, at a big record store in Montreal. Here are some bizarre picks from his holiday mix to offset what you’re probably hearing, every day, in all the stores.
Why go through the portal?
Janni Simner continued the conversation about portal fantasy that’s been bubbling along online, and one of the things she touches on in the process of discussing real-world consequences for a visit to Somewhere Else (something I hadn’t really ) is the question of why a character would go through the portal at all.
My baseline assumption in life had always been: OMG, why not go through the portal?
This is perhaps silly. I’d love to imagine I was a look before you leap person, but I am a looker. I look hard. In the real world, I’d hope the portal could wait awhile so I could invite my wife, pack the medicine cabinet, load up on food, coats, undergarments, tights, more tights, a fully-charged e-reader and a solar recharging panel.
I’d arrange cat care and send a few e-mails. There would be waffling about boots and which coat. That would have to be one patient portal, friends.
It’s not that I don’t want to go. I just don’t want to go without antihistamines, if you know what I mean. I don’t want to assume I’ll be back before the kibble runs out. Nobody really wants to be Rose Tyler, do they, showing up a year later and coming face to face with their own Missing poster and a freaked out mom? (Oh, I know there are lots of good reasons to be Rose Tyler. Rowr and all that. But you see what I’m saying.)
Does that mean the protagonist of my new series goes blithely leaping into another world without sober consideration and a pile of supplies? Actually, no. The first time–and I think this happens in a lot of portal fantasies–Sophie Hansa ends up on Stormwrack without warning or any kind of plan. It’s a deeply unplanned voyage to a magical realm.
And the second time, she knows full well what to expect, and she packs accordingly.
Telewitterings: the Dearth
The new TV season hasn’t offered much we’ve wanted to watch as it airs: we’re more or less keeping up with Elementary
What we’ve mostly been watching, instead, has been S1 of Homeland
But we’re thinking we need something cheerier and maybe costume drama-y next, to wash out the grim. I know Downton Abbey
So I’m cruising “Top Costume Drama” lists on the intertubes, with an eye to identifying some cool olde fashionede thinge we somehow haven’t seen yet. Failing that, we may rewatch Daniel Deronda
To which end: what are your faves in this category?
Me things, things of me…
Uno: I sent DAUGHTER OF NO NATION (a.k.a. the second Stormwrack novel) off to my first readers and my agent on Monday, only three days late on the self-imposed deadline. I did it in the dark, by candle and gadgetlight–the power went off in our neighborhood and the cafe where I work was plunged into blackness.
This is me, last week, during the final push. Yes, I’ve grown an extra head.
Due: For the next three weeks, my fiction time will be less structured; I’ll write whatever pleases me most. I had a major plot bunny stabbing at me the whole of last week. The interior monologue went like this:
Bunny: Me, me, me. Here I am with the answer to that unresolved setting question that’s kept you from writing me!
Me: I am finishing a frickin’ book, shut up.
Bunny: Me me me! Shiny! Sexy! New!
… so that’s what’s pleasing me now.
Tre: I am spending the holidays in Reno, with my aunt, uncle, and cousins. This is the first time Kelly and I have been to Nevada in the entire quarter-century that we’ve known each other. Barb’s coming, too, and I’m very excited.