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.

My WordPress Pro Tip of the… um, weekend?

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got the feverSo here’s a thing. WordPress issues updates from time to time… they just released version 4.4, named “Clifford” after yet another jazz musician I’m unfamiliar with. And generally speaking, each release has some cool thing!

If you watch the video after you do the update, you will instantly learn about the new features. You may not want them; you may never use them. In fact, this may be the case this time ’round, for me. I’m faintly interested in playing with Clifford’s post embedding thing, but it’s no dealbreaker.

But once or twice a year you’ll think (or possibly bellow) YOU FIXED THAT? I HATED THAT!! And the two minutes you spent will have been so very worthwhile.

 

Team Parrish for the Win in the latest #Stormwrack review

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photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

I love it when people love Garland, and happily for me Jenn at Lost in a Great Book says…

Speaking of Parrish … talk about some unresolved issues! There were various points throughout the book where I yelled at Sophie to just kiss him already. The tension between the two of them is fantastic and irritating in equal measure, simply because you know they are awesome together. I loved how Sophie owned her sexuality and didn’t apologize for having previous partners, and how she could now admit to herself that she really, really wanted to be with Parrish. (Confession: So do I.)

This is the last stop on my interview tour of Canadian book blogs, and she turned The Heroine Question round on me. I probably should have expected this, and it was fun to tell her all about the early history books I read as a six and seven year old.

Sleeping Hedgehog, meanwhile, has a new review of Child of a Hidden Sea.

Buncha Blog Posts

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Alyx-self-portrait2I have been gadding around the Internet rather a lot lately. Speculating Canada asked me to talk about the books I read this year, so I have written up ten of them, a Good-Bad-Ugly List of sorts. Not all of the books are new, or even novels, but I did read them and they are noteworthy.

I will, of course, post my annual books read list on December 31st… I’m hoping to knock off two more titles between now and then.

This is the Story of My Reading Life featured me in an interview and review on Wednesday. I was at The Book Wars on Tuesday, and Cherry Blossoms and Maple Syrup on Monday.

Meanwhile, some of my fellow writers on Facebook enriched my pool of frequently asked writer questions with the following entries:

How long have you been writing?
How long does it take you to write a story/novel?
Is there a good instruction book one can learn to write novels from?
Do your characters come from real life, and since I totally believe they did, who did you base them on?
Do you ever regret putting _______ together with ______, romantically? Wouldn’t they have been better off with _________?

Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill, by @kellyoyo, makes a Year’s Best!

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Kelly Robson and the miracle of mirrors.

Kelly Robson and the miracle of mirrors.

A few entries back I mentioned that Kelly’s novella “Waters of Versailles” was on SFWA’s suggested reading list for the Nebulas. I didn’t mention, at that point, that “The Three Resurrections of Jessica Churchill” was on the list too, in the short story category, mostly because I wanted to spread out the joy.

Folks, this is a remarkable story. Blood-chilling, heartbreaking and immaculate in its every turn of phrase. If you’d rather hear it than read it, the podcast version is here. And yes, of course I’m subjective, but now no less a curator than Gardner Dozois has put his official seal of approval on it. He has announced today that Kelly’s story will be in the Thirty-Third Year’s Best SF, along with stories by Ann Leckie, Geoff Ryman, Ian MacDonald, Madeline Ashby and Carrie Vaughn (for starters!)

This story deserves every scrap of praise it gets. If you haven’t had a chance to experience it yet, do yourself that favor today… and then spread the word. And Kelly? Congratulations!!

The beginning of a #WriterFAQ

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photo by Kelly Robson

photo by Kelly Robson

Something I’m trying to do right now is work up a list of all the questions I–and other authors–get asked on a regular basis. These are questions my students ask me, or that come up in conversations at readings or launch parties or what have you. I want to gather up piles of them: twenty questions, thirty, even fifty. I want to tidily sort them into piles by their general intent: are they craft questions? Genre questions? Process stuff? Are they about selling, marketing, and the publishing biz?

Here’s the quick and dirty list I’m using to get started, in no particular order. It’s essentially a rundown of the things I’ve been asked in the last month or so, at places like SFContario and in the classroom.

1. Where do you get your ideas?
2. Why should/shouldn’t I self-publish my book?
3. Should I be writing short stories or novels if I want to build a career?
4. How come I hear people saying my new novel should never have a prologue?
5. Is it automatically YA novel if the main character is between ages 10 and 16?
6. So you write a book (or so) a year… are you really disciplined then?
7. Should I do NanoWrimo?
8. “Is said really an invisible word?” she grumbled petulantly.
9. What made you decide to write genre fiction?
10. Isn’t whether or not you sell a book mostly dependent on who you know, or your Twitter following?
I welcome any and all additions to this list.