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.

All I #amreading is student novels…

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My UCLA Extension Writers’ Program course, Novel Writing II, is in full swing and I haven’t yet found a book that goes well with fourteen student novels-in-progress.

I am continuing to write about 1200-1500 words a day on my current novel, as part of my Clarion West Write-A-Thon commitment. The naming contest is still on the go for sponsors. Right now, a donation of any size will get you into the draw for a chance to name a landmark, person or animal species. It’ll take at least $35 to be the biggest donor and thereby get the right to name an island nation. Here’s a snippet about another island, Tiladene:

“Perhaps, too, since you’re an outlander . . . ”
What else had she done? “Yes?”
“Lais Dariach . . . he’s from Tiladene.”
Tiladene. That word was on one of Gale’s coins. “You said that. So?”
“They’re somewhat . . . promiscuous.”
The significant look on Dracy’s face made her want to giggle. “You mean sexually promiscuous?”
“They don’t believe in marriage–in faithfulness.”
“Okay, got it. Your other passenger–”
“Lais.”
Lais is from Friends with Benefits Island.”
Planet of the Polyamorous Sluts, she thought, lightheaded. Didn’t the Star Trek guys used to go somewhere like that for shore leave?
And then: A little shore leave wouldn’t be the worst idea I ever had. And he is cute.

New Squid Story, My Favorite Bit, and a Buffy rewatch!

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Today my story “The Sweet Spot” is live at Lightspeed Magazine. I hope you enjoy it, and the rest of the issue, too.

I am also the featured My Favorite Bit author at Mary Robinette Kowal‘s blog today. What does that mean? Basically, it means I talk a little about my love for the much-beleaguered Juanita Corazon of Blue Magic.

The Buffy rewatch this week covers “Bad Girls” and “Consequences.” It’s called: Want. Take. Have. Pay. Pay. Pay.

Point of View – the Basics

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This week’s writing essay is just a “What is,” and a “How to” on an important technical aspect of story structure–the workings of a thing we call Point of View.

Understanding point of view–POV, as we usually say–is as necessary to the process of writing as knowing the rules of the road is basic to learning to drive. If you don’t know which side of the road your car belongs on, or that you’re required to signal before turning, you are doomed to have a short career as a driver. (Or to use a medical analogy–if you can’t tell a human from a horse, your chances of becoming a doctor may be rather slim.)

Does that mean POV is dull? A dry and necessary fundamental, something to be gotten out of the way before moving on to fun and cool topics like voice and scenebuilding? Definitely not. The beauty and power of this element of writing is subtle, though, and once you have a good grip on it, it tends to work invisibly, behind the scenes. When you get into your car every morning, you don’t have to remind yourself to stop at traffic lights; it becomes so basic–so completely obvious–that the sight of an orange light will trigger the proper reaction in a driver without conscious thought.

An experienced driver rarely considers the intricacies of basic traffic law, but focus your attention on a few key details of this apparently dull phenomenon for a second:

1) Millions of people understand and agree on the basic rules and follow them.
2) Those “basics” allow these same people and their passengers to hurtle through space at hundreds of kilometers per hour and to travel significant vast distances in minutes.
3) Visualize the complex simplicity of a highway system, with its multi-lane traffic and the system of entrances and exits which allows travellers to move together and then separate as needed.
4) Last, consider the tragic crashes that sometimes result when people flout these agreed-upon rules.

Point of view is crucial in just the same way, and often just as invisible.

Continue reading →

She’s got personal (post) ity

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Bird Nerd Report! I was very excited when I saw an owl this week in Strathcona. It wasn’t wild and I didn’t have my camera, hence the lack of picture. In fact, some biologists from SFU were using a tethered owl to try to lure down a Cooper’s Hawk whose blood they wanted to take.

In other bird nerdage, I reported a local convenience store to the Humane Society because they are selling local wild birds in friggin’ cages. At least, I’m pretty sure finches and twohees don’t come in domesticated varieties.

My corner of East Vancouver had a power outage on Monday night, when we were three quarters of the way through the penultimate episode of a dour little crime drama called The Killing. So little happens in an episode of The Killing and it all happens so very grimly that we usually have to pair it with an episode of Leverage, a program which nobody, I suspect, will ever accuse of taking itself seriously.

We call this recurring Killing/Leverage TV Event at Chez Dua “The Stupid Double Feature.”

I would also like to point out that wherever you are, Anathema, it’s almost certainly your turn to make a Scrabble move. Although I’m having trouble getting our game to load, so maybe I’m wrong about that.

Wednesday’s #AmReading = Redshirts

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The immediate answer to my angsty ‘wherefore reading?’ post of last week was, as it turns out, John Scalzi.

I’d read his post about how Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas was, among other things, a fast, accessible read. Since part of my picky-reader issue is, in fact, a bit of fatigue, this news hit me very much in the “Hey, sign me up!” place. And Redshirts was, indeed, one of those books one can blow through in a few hours.

It’s witty, breezy, full of delightful fannish in-jokes and has a good dose of the voice Scalzi uses on his blog, which is one of the things I find appealing about Whatever.

Redshirts isn’t the only work of fiction to explore the tropes of shows like Star Trek and its creative brethren. There’s Galaxy Quest, and James Alan Gardner’s excellent novel Expendable. (And I’m sure there are others I’m missing, so do sing out.) I laughed a lot as I read this book–it had all the sugary crunchy goodness of caramel corn.

Ultimately what I liked most about the book was not just the piss-take, as Scalzi calls it as its meta-story, which is all about writing. Bad writing specifically, or perhaps lazy storytelling. The issue in Redshirts isn’t that people die in fiction; it’s that it’s so easy, as a writer, to throw in the meaningless death of barely-named characters as a pretense to upping the emotional stakes of a story. The novel questions the blatant emotional manipulation of audiences, in other words. It lays out a proposition that contempt for our readers or viewers is pretty much contempt for ourselves as artists. So, you know, don’t.

Finally, I am such a one as enjoys clever metafiction in almost any reading situation. But I love seeing it deployed in SF, in a book that isn’t pretending to be anything but SF. If the poking of fun at the Trek tropes makes this popcorn, the play with reality and the writer/reader/viewer wall in this novel makes it the surprise appetizer popcorn you get in a gourmet restaurant, drizzled with truffle oil and maybe a bit of boutique buckwheat honey.