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.

Dipping a toe into e-books

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kelly-yoyoKelly bought herself a Kindle not long ago, and one of the first things I learned as a result is that a Kindle account comes with the assumption that you may have more than one e-reader in the house. If one or two of those happen to be, say, an iTouch, there are unexpected benefits. For example, once I’d downloaded the Kindle ap, either of us could buy a book and then we could both read it at the same time.

I’d have thought reading on the iTouch screen wouldn’t be all that appealing, but I gave it a try, and absolutely ripped through the latest Connie Willis book. Was it the novelty, or do I really like reading this way? I’ve bought a history book, Bloody Crimes, to put it to the test. So far, I’m halfway through.

It is also nifty knowing that, what with the Kindle version of Indigo Springs being out, I can essentially carry a copy of my book with me everywhere I go.

On a completely different and more toobalicious note, my Quantum Leap rewatch of “Catch a Falling Star” went up on Tor.com last week.

Feathered fruit of the voyage

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We went to Airdrie last weekend to spend Halloween with family. It was a lovely trip, and very relaxing. We put in a few hours of wandering in malls, searching for hard-to-find garments, rewatched Iron Man II, and talked, talked, talked some more. I spent a lot of time reading All Clear, by Connie Willis, on my iTouch. My in-laws are good cooks, trick or treating with the Niecelet was great fun and even the weather was terrific.

The part of the city I was visiting is easy to dismiss as a featureless suburban wasteland, full of cookie-cutter houses, but it’s under construction, which means it still has vast fields of prairie here and there, waiting to be dug up, and the development itself has some relatively big green spaces. So I made it out once with the camera, hoping to catch a jackrabbit and a magpie.

Magpie

The rabbit did not pan out, as it happens, but in addition to this moody blur of a ubiquitous Alberta bird, I did see an astounding number of grasshoppers sunning themselves on a black tarp on the way to the grocery. I imagine the black fabric was just a tad warmer than the grass itself.

Fall, interrupted

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I have been trying to make an illusion like this one for at least three years, ever since the first time I found a fallen leaf dangling from a near invisible cobweb, arrested in mid-air.

DSCN5672

I’ve stopped for web-tangled leaves only to have them disappear into the visual noise of whatever is behind them, had them hang too limp and still to convey the pull of gravity, had them swing too wildly in the wind to allow me to focus.

A few have been too tattered and scabrous to satisfy my sense of pretty. But now, with this, I’m pleased. I will keep chasing tethered autumn leaves, but this gives me a worthwhile image to improve upon.

Indigo Springs paperback copies have arrived!

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I’m getting all my contributor’s copies (can you still call them that when you’re the sole contrib?) this week… the pretty pretty new version of my book arrived on Wednesday, and after I’d unpacked them in a fit of excitement, I put them all back and declared them ready for their close-up:

Indigo Springs MM paperbacks

Eee!