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.

Story Sale, Blue Magic Review, More Buffy

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I am happy to announce that my story “The Sweet Spot” will appear online at Lightspeed Magazine in the not too distant. This is the fourth of my Proxy War series (the squid stories, in other words) to see print, and the second featuring the character of Ruthless from “The Town on Blighted Sea.”

In the meantime, if you’d rather talk Buffyverse, Love is a Path Marked by Bloody Footprints is up at Tordotcom.

And Mrissa’s short review of Blue Magic on LJ points out, quite rightly, that it’s a better read if you’ve read Indigo Springs. My favorite bit:

I was pleased with the fact that the characters in this modern fantasy acted like modern people: they read detective novels and tried to figure out the atomic weight of magical substance and generally were not interchangeable with the 13th century.

Every Single Book You Could Ever Write, and then Some

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Readers don’t ask me where I get my ideas that often, in the grand scheme. In my more self-aggrandizing moments, I like to imagine they look at my ideas and run screaming. What’s more likely is that the people I talk shop with tend to have already tried writing. As a result, they’ve had a chance to figure out that having ideas is far easier than crafting them into stories. Perhaps they already know that the real bind is having ten great concepts and knowing you won’t get to them all, certainly not before you’ve had a thousand more.

Ideas can, in fact, be very easy, especially once you’ve had some practice.

Don’t believe me? Try this. It’s not a new exercise, certainly not unique to me, but a few times now, I’ve decided on a new project by making a list of every single thing I could think of to write next. These were long lists, numbering twenty-five, even fifty items. The lists included simple and perhaps questionable ideas (“Macbeth in Spaaaace!”) and complicated, unworkable ones. They had pure romances and hard SF concepts based on articles I’d read in anthologies like The Best American Science and Nature Writing and lots of offshoots of the things I love to write most: other world fantasies, historical fiction, time travel, alternate history, magic-mystery fusions. They also had stuff I write less often, like YA and horror. Though I write prose fiction, they’ve included concepts that screamed screenplay; there’s even been a musical theater idea or two.

Even if you are pretty sure you know what you’re going to work on next, there’s value in embarking on this type of quick sift through the idea basket.

Why? First, it plugs you directly into the fun of writing. There are few things more gratifying than the pure untrammeled glee of creation, of playing with your subconscious, your muse, your writerbrain… whatever you care to call it. Thinking about what you might write is like the part of your birthday where you get to open your gifts and count up the loot, but haven’t yet moved on to discovering that one of the sweaters doesn’t fit, or that some of the boxes say Some Assembly Required or Protagonist Not Included.

A wide-ranging and uncritical exploration of possible writing projects creates a collage of the inside of your mind. It gives you a good picture of where you’re at artistically and emotionally, what you are interested in exploring, the psychological and thematic terrain you may want to cover. These insights can, in turn, inform the idea you eventually choose, whether they initially seem like the heart of the matter or not. When you generate dozens of possible ideas for novels, some of them are sure to overlap. If there are three stories in your long list that center on lost kids, or unrequited love, or people grappling with their parents’ health issues (or any common element) it may be a hint that you’re ready to dig into that material.

A long list of everything you might write might just as easily contain a couple variations on stories you’ve done before, giving you an opportunity to evaluate that impulse to cover old ground… to decide if you’re taking on something that might be comparatively unchallenging. The list should have a few things that are so ambitious they feel well beyond your current reach. One hopes, finally, that there will be a couple oddball concepts in the mix, glimmers of silliness or lunacy, peculiar possible experiments.

Finally, once you go through them, the long list of everything you might write should turn up a few things you are desperate to work on. Ideas so compelling that the thought of shelving all but one of them is painful. Bright, challenging, cool and above all exciting… that’s the one you’re looking for.

(And what if you can’t narrow it down? What if there isn’t one obvious contender… what do you consider when choosing between a small group of obvious winners? That’s a subject for another essay… so stay tuned.)

Every time you commit to a writing project, you’re simultaneously deciding to not write ten or twenty or a hundred other things. Having a look at the opportunity cost, before you start, can help ensure that you are making the highest and best use of your precious writing time.

A taste of BLUE MAGIC… the first review

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Here’s a bit from Kirkus, trimmed for spoilers and length:

In the unreal, magic (a blue substance called vitagua) is frozen into glaciers and as it melts it trickles back into our world. The process can be gradual or explosive. Astrid Lethewood, a “chanter” (she crafts magical objects using vitagua), fears chaos and violence and seeks a gradual course. There are dreadful complications, however… Astrid’s old friend Sahara Knax, now brimming with vitagua, has made herself the center of a cult, the Alchemites, who worship Sahara as a goddess. Problem is, though the Alchemites think they’re saving the environment, Sahara’s only interested in power and will sacrifice anybody to keep it…

… Previously charming and intimate, the narrative’s now become a seething fireball of ideas, actions and plots, complicated by GBLT and environmental agendas and a cast of thousands. Undeniably, something changed when the story jumped from local to global, and readers must judge for themselves which approach they prefer.

69 days until the book is out. Eeee!

Italy Adventures: Case of the Kooky Corkscrew

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Before I tell you all about Christmas in Modica, I want to let you know I’ve got another Buffy Rewatch up on Tor.com, this one about the Early Scoobies.

Kelly and I spent the morning of December 25th scampering up and down the town of Modica, which is built in a serious ravine. Our opulent and gorgeous bed and breakfast was on a long street at the bottom of the incline, just downhill from the biggest of the churches, Saint George.
See? Steep!
All Imported-797
We climbed up to the church and I shot pictures of a few songbirds; there’s a sort of garden around the Duomo, and a little lemon grove. Then we went higher, looking for the clock tower but never quite finding it.
We had a reservation at a restaurant for a big holiday brunch and turned up for that after our hike, along with a number of big Italian families. The food started with a big plate of appetizers and then piled on course after course: three pastas, two meats, two desserts, sweet wine.
All Imported-54
The plan had been to feast like queens for lunch, roll home and then just picnic for supper. We were prepared, because we’d spent much of the 24th acquiring fruit, bread, meat (a lot of meat, because the vendor was extra-cute and charming), more fruit, cheese, cookies and wine. We were trying out as much real Sicilian wine as we could, naturally, so Kelly could learn about it. But horrors! As we were headed back to the room, laden with grocery goodness, we realized we hadn’t managed to get our hands on a corkscrew.
If we hadn’t been carry-on only girls, we might have brought one from Canada, but it seemed a good prospect to get confiscated at the airport.
There was a random scattering of open stores, even though we’d picked a bad time, night before Christmas and all. Though, actually, we always found it rather hard to figure out what types of shops and services would be open in Italy at various times of day. We started going into one place after another, asking for a corkscrew. There was a gadget place that seemed especially promising, but the owner only sold batteries, shaving implements, lottery tickets, first and second-hand smoke… and not so much housewares. Finally we went into a wine bar and the owner told us we could hit up the store down the street (also owned by her) for one.
And they did have one for sale, but it was part of a set of expensive and useless wine accessories. We might have sucked it up, though. Because wine! At Christmas! In Modica! But the folks on duty there decided to lend us theirs. Bring it back on Boxing Day, they said, and so that’s exactly what we did.
(We found the Sicilians supernice in this way everywhere we went, whether or not we could communicate with them.)
It was a good picnic, and that afternoon was practically the only window of time that we spent loafing, rather than walking out to see some marvelous sight. Or walking half a block to make sure nobody had towed, ticketed, rammed or made off with our rental car. After the massive Christmas lunch, we couldn’t possibly have moved! We didn’t break into the stash o’ food for about six hours.
Here’s Saint George’s:
All Imported-8

Why you should be absolutely panting to read Range of Ghosts

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Okay, how to say this without spoilers?

Range of Ghosts is epic fantasy. The Internet may need more kittens, always more kittens, and in a similar vein fantasy readers always need more great sweeping adventures that pit Good Guys, some of them female, versus legitimately scary Evil Guys. Tales that explore the nature of life, death, politics, parenting, charting the right course for yourself, loyalty, and little posers like what love really means.

And before you say “Yeah, Alyx, but you loooove epic fantasy, you would say that!” Actually, the truth is that while I like the stuff, epic fantasy isn’t so much my bag, baby. Of all the stripes of speculative fiction, it’s probably the one I read least. Which brings me to point two…

Elizabeth Bear wrote it. Guys, come on. Elizabeth Bear! If this woman called me up and said, “I’ve written a novel in eight point font about a guy who almost meets a woman, and then spends 500 pages thinking about how he should do something about that, with flowery metaphors and the occasional dip into watching paint dry, wanna read it?” I’d give it a whirl. Because her writing is that great.

Did I mention that it’s not European Medieval Epic Fantasy? There’s nothing wrong with Euromedieval fantasy, don’t get me wrong, but the historical terrain of Range of Ghosts is drawn from Asia, from the cultures that spawned Ghengis Khan. Its politics are merciless and bloody and deeply intriguing. (And if this argument makes your bum hum, consider getting Saladin Ahmed’s Throne of the Crescent Moon, too!)

Bansh: NO, not my sister’s one-time cat, Bansh the Slasher, though I understand why this might be confused.

Elizabeth Bear’s Bansh is the horse who travels with the main guy, Temur. This awesome, heroic, wonderful mare whose name translates to Dumpling–how can you not love that?–very nearly steals the show. Bear’s horse details are wonderful and very true to every riding experience I’ve ever had. Bansh is at once thoroughly Horse and more than she seems.

I love her her with the tru tru luuuuv of a horse-crazy twelve-year-old. I want a Bansh stuffie and a glamor shot with glitter for my bedroom wall. You will too.

The horse culture of the plains folk in this book is enormously rich. Bansh is a star, but the world of Temur and his people is all about the horse, which is only fair. So, having said that, look! Horse cover!

RangeGhosts_comp-front

Kitteh! It says something that I got to the horse before the cat, but there’s nothing I can say, nothing at all, about the cat content in this novel without telling you too damned much. There is serious Kitteh. The Kitteh is awesome. That is all.

What I said about the cat also goes for certain romantic storylines, which are smokin’ hot.

The magic in this book… okay, I am running out of ways to say So Effing Cool. It has exactly the thing that I like in a magic system, which is a strong connection to real-world physics, something that makes enchantment logical and a useful tool, complete with checks and balances, benefits and costs. It runs the gamut from handy and helpful to scary deadly.

And while I’m at it, the Wizard Samarkar, and the price she pays to become a mage? Whoa. Samarkar’s the steely silk thread that binds this whole sprawling epic together. She’s so worthy. Also, her backstory’s fantastic.

Weird outlying reason: Some of you may know that Elizabeth Bear is a passionate Criminal Minds fan, and until recently was doing a write-up on every episode as it aired. (I think she’s taking time off that right now so she can write more superfantastic Eternal Sky books.) I watch Crimmies in part because I really enjoy the write-ups–unabashed fannish squeeing can be so delightful–and one of the things Bear consistently writes about is the show’s tendency to have abduction victims really fight for their lives. I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that in this book, someone gets grabbed, and that if you also follow the geeks with guns thread in Bear’s blog, you may be interested in seeing how she imbues her kidnappee with agency.

(Sweet) Misery loves company. Now that I have been obliged to wait for the next book in the Eternal Sky series, with bated breath and pangs of longing, so too should you.