About Alyx Dellamonica

After twenty-two years in Vancouver, B.C., I've recently moved to Toronto Ontario, where I make my living writing science fiction and fantasy; I also review books and teach writing online at UCLA. I'm a legally married lesbian, a coffee snob, and I wake up at an appallingly early hour.

Word Counts and Weather

I’ve typed in the pages from Tuesday’s THE RAIN GARDEN scribble session and got 780 words; Wednesday, meanwhile, got me to 1634. I hadn’t been sure how many words fit on the current notebook page, but it looks to be somewhere between 150-175. So six handwritten pages a day will get me my 900 words, it looks like.

I have a ripping busy work week ahead–my ten Novel II students have all turned in their finished fifty-page submissions. They’ve been very dedicated and I’d make them get up and applaud each other, if my classroom wasn’t virtual. Before I’d got to know this group, I couldn’t be sure how many of them I could expect to make it to this particular finish line. It is very gratifying to see how committed they are to becoming writers.

So–pile of grading, novel underway. Spinning hard and fast. Don’t be surprised if this space is a bit quiet this week. You know where to find me if you need me.

Spiderwebs

One book, two book, new book, blue book…

First, an exciting contest announcement: Favorite Thing Ever is giving away a copy of Indigo Springs. Entering is easy: surf here, leave a comment, and you’ll be in the running to win. No skill testing questions are involved.

Speaking of skill-testing, I am embarking on a new novel this morning.

I had been thinking to write a couple more squid stories, to go with the three already published and the two that are about to hit the market. However, after a couple of weeks of thrashing around the Battle of Las Vegas, I’ve conclusively determined that my head’s not currently in the Proxy War. So, as an experiment, I switched over to detailed planning on THE RAIN GARDEN, my next mystery project. Things clicked immediately. Presto, plotto, kazam!–I have an outline.

My plan as of two weeks ago had been to blast through a very rough draft of this book in November, as a Nanowrimo thing. Barring fire, flood and the common cold, I find that two thousand words a day for thirty days (less a couple days off) is a pretty sustainable pace for me. But since I’m ready now I’m darnwell gonna start now, keeping the end-of-November finish date but moving at more of a 900-word daily target. That will leave time for days off, a visit to Alberta, and Orycon.

I like the sustained push-push-focus of Nanowrimo, but it does tend to leave me bug-eyed and gibbering well into December. And there’s no reason to hold off if I’m ready to write the book now.

So, hey! What are all of you working on this autumn?

Favorite thing notebook

Happy long weekend, everyone!

If it’s Monday, I must be blogging over at Favorite Thing Ever, and this week I’m talking about one of my favorite green companies, the makers of Ecojot notebooks. Do you write longhand, or love to journal? Would you prefer to feel like you’re not cutting down forests to do it? Wanna trickle-down some of your stationery budget to schoolkids in need? Surf on over there and have a look at the eco-journal treasure.

And for those of you who may be putting in a few hours today, despite the statutory holiday, here’s a worker bee:
Vancouver flowers

Ribbit

Nature photography is very much about showing up and taking what you get. Even so, I’ve been hitting Trout Lake and the Central Valley Parkway with American Goldfinches on my mind. They hang out there, barely on the edge of my 24x zoom. They’re deliciously, improbably yellow–the first time I saw one, I was sure it must be someone’s escaped canary–and I’ve never gotten a decent shot of one.

Instead, a recent trip yielded something just as precious–a bullfrog climbing out onto a lily pad.
Frog
I suspect there are a couple places in Alberta where I might have seen exactly this as a kid, but I never encountered one. Frogs on lilies are very much a fairytale sight, for me, and they haven’t got old yet.

Frog

Urban ramble…

Barb and I took a hike through Chinatown to downtown Vancouver last weekend, ambling past Canada Place to the Marine Building and then catching Skytrain, at Burrard, to make it back to East Van.

The pretty part of the walk is along Union Street, where there are lovely old houses with beautifully tended gardens, graceful well-aged trees, and the Union Street Market, a little mom & pop where you can grab a cup of coffee, a Portuguese custard tart, or a cod cake–whatever suits your fancy, and more besides.

Our only real photo op of the day came just as we were venturing out into the back alley behind B’s apartment: I saw a hawk doing the post-catch wobble in mid-air, with something small and gray in its talons. It paused in a tree: we gleefully gave chase. It hopped to the next, and we followed. In time it holed up in a big evergreen in a park that I’ve dubbed Iguana Park (because I saw a guy sunning a massive iguana there, twice, a couple of years ago). There was not even a glimpse of it to be had amid the dense piney greenery, and we would have questioned whether it might have eluded us, but for one thing: a little spiral of falling sparrow feathers, tuft after tuft after tuft, drifting out of the tree’s heart like a single line of snowflakes on a windless winter’s day.

Here’s the shot I got before it lost us. It reminds me a little of Dr. Horrible’s portrait of Penny.

Hawk