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.

Weekend reading

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I was out of the home office a lot this week–my building windows are being replaced, and between noise and actually having workmen in my home, I was working elsewhere. It’s not done, so there will be more of this. As a result, I didn’t spend any time just surfing around for interesting bits and pieces. However, Doug Lain did reread one of my favorite time travel novels, David Gerrold’s The Man Who Folded Himself. Check out Doug’s thoughts here.

My Creating Universes, Building Worlds class at UCLA Extension Writers’ Program has been in workshop for the past few weeks, which means I’ve had the opportunity to read a dozen stories from promising new writers, and also that there has been the usual storm of interesting critique and follow-up discussion on same. The current group contains a number of very gifted readers–it has been really fun and illuminating.

The workshop is the beginning of the end of CUBW, which wraps up with revision plans and some general discussion of marketing. On April 14th, Novel I begins. The class is currently full; if you’re keen, you can go here to join the waiting list.

Win both of the Books of Chantment!

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My publisher, Tor, is giving away five copies of Indigo Springs along with advance reading copies of Blue Magic. Details are here: you have until March 23rd. And do spread the word!

(I’d meant for this to be a low-key, personal post, but of course with the book out in twenty days, the excitement is building… there’s lots to post about.)

Kelly and I have been living in the current apartment for almost eleven years, which is about three years longer than I’ve lived anywhere in my entire life. I had something of a bounce-around childhood, and university was university–moving’s what you do. Then there were three places after the move to Vancouver: Chez Michel, Chez Frank, and the current Chez Dua.
So a couple years ago, around the time that we passed that longest-time-ever threshold, a bit of an itch developed. Some reflexive ‘isn’t it time to move?’ instinct scratches at the back of my consciousness. K’s got it too.
But moving’s not necessarily the right choice, so we’ve been trying to put a little effort into the house. Like Badger, I’ve been decluttering. I’ve sunk some cash into swoopy new gadgets that’ll do things like get us Netflix and let me use the TV in the living room as another computer monitor, if I please. We bought the footstool that is a (small, narrow) guest mattress, and allowed it to develop a healthy coat of cat hair. There’s a faint shadow of hope that the bathroom reno, which got stopped midway (I blame exhaustion brought on by the Parade of Death) might get wrapped up this year.
And windows! Yesterday, the stompy-boot guys who are putting new glass in all the suites in our building got started on installing new, non-moldy and allegedly noise-reducing windows in our place. To that there is only one thing you can say, and it is basically “Frabjous Day!”

Soon there will be pictures. In the meantime, an old reno photo.
Bathroom Reno 09

The Age of Miracles is gonna get you!

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Before I get onto my reading, I want to mention that you can read an excerpt from Blue Magic at Tor.com, here:

The gate had been stalking Will Forest ever since he arrested his wife. It grew into bare patches of wall in his various hotel rooms and his quarters at Wendover Air Force Base; it had taken over a discreet corner of the kitchen of the Oregon home he so rarely returned to. It turned up in his peripheral vision in restaurants, TV stations, and shops. An archway of brambles, seven feet high, it pushed through drywall and hardwood with apparent ease. Its slats were a blue-tinged wood; its handle was a carved ram’s horn.

While you’re doing that, what am I reading?

I like to mix up fiction and no-fiction, so I’ve gone to a book Snuffy gave me awhile ago… To Each Their Darkness, by Gary A. Braunbeck. I had started this and then hit one of those technofails that happen with e-readers, and got derailed.

So, a book on writing. And then hopefully the new Donn Cortez, Remote, which is in the same peculiar e-hell, and which made me think of it in the first place.

To Each Their Darkness

Previously read in 2012
BOOKS
1. The Swerve: How the World Became Modern by Stephen Greenblatt
2. Among Others, by Jo Walton
3. Atlantic: Great Sea Battles, Heroic Discoveries, Titanic Storms, and a Vast Ocean of a Million Stories, by Simon Winchester
4. Kat, Incorrigible by Stephanie Burgis
5. Stone Spring, by Stephen Baxter

Here, there, everywhere!

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Save the date, local peeps! There are now three short weeks to April 10th and the release of Blue Magic in trade paperback and electronic editions. If you’re here in Vancouver, there will be a launch on April 19th at the UBC Bookstore downtown, 800 Robson Street, 7:30 p.m. I’ll read, there will be at least one prize draw, and I’m working on getting in a special guest artist. Come one, come all!

In other news–if it’s Tuesday, Buffy must be in retrograde. I mean danger. Or is that Dawn? My rewatch of “Ted” and “Bad Eggs” is up at Tor.com.

Speaking of Buffy, my fellow BtVS fans and good friends Lizben gave me this fabulous Buffy TeeFury t-shirt on the weekend, by way of a belated birthday present. Isn’t it awesome?

All Imported-45