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.

Friday Friday Three Bags Full

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full_wildthingsIt has been a full week. There was an extra run to the allergist, and I got a tooth filled before it could crack. Yoga, as usual, happened Monday and Wednesday and will happen again this evening. I also got to go on a cafe-writing date with Gemma Files. I love writer dates; I refer to them sometimes as parallel play and I find they inspire me to get a lot of writing done.

I am waiting on some notes from my editor on Daughter of No Nation, the sequel to Child of a Hidden Sea, and in the meantime have been chasing a short story. It’s a piece that’s been fighting me. I think it’ll be somewhat different from my usual sort of thing, if I can be said to have a usual sort of thing, and maybe even a leap forward in some ways. But right now the POV is slapping me around. Oddly, this fills me with hope, because “Wild Things” was a pretty tough ride, too. In the end I was quite delighted with it. So we’ll see if it catches fire or fizzles.

I read Joe Hill’s Horns, did some teaching, and, as mentioned in other posts, did some more guest-blogging. I walked a lot, voted in our recent provincial election–first time as an Ontario voter!–and didn’t answer quite enough e-mails or post enough pictures of the cats.

So here they are napping by the pool:

There were dark edges here and there: Jay’s death was on my mind at times, and Grandma’s birthday came and went. But things were and are generally good. The weather is fine, the new neighborhood is lovely, the cats continue to grow like extremely fun weeds, we have friends coming to visit on the weekend from Vancouver, and I’m excited about my upcoming book birthday on June 24th.

Curiously Bookish loved Child of a Hidden Sea

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imageThe lack of recent kitten pictures was probably all you needed to guess that I am having an insanely busy week. Today will be better… if you’re waiting on something from me, it’ll almost certainly happen by Thursday.

In the meantime, this lovely review has made my morning.

Child of a Hidden Sea has all the fun of a light and fluffy book, but it can surprise you at times with the amount of depth Dellamonica was able to pack into the world and it’s inhabitants. I enjoyed this book a lot, as you can probably tell, and I really loved the main character, Sophie. It’s tough in adult fantasy to find an engaging, intelligent, and flawed female lead– and this book definitely had that.

Hack Slash Burn – Video Revision Exercise

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I’m playing around here with prose editing techniques, with help from a writer who graciously agreed to let me invade her draft:

A few things I forgot to say in the video:

  • There’s nothing inherently wrong with that three-stuck paragraph. I am a big proponent of just writing the messy first draft and fine-tuning forever.
  • My edit introduced a repetition of its own–there are now two incidences of “reach.”
  • Say whatever you like about the edits I’ve made, but remember to be respectful of person who created the original paragraph. I don’t generally police comments in this blog, and I’d like to continue not having to.

Would you watch more of these? Even if they don’t include kittens? Let me know.

Anticipation! For Child of a Hidden Sea!

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imageI am on a couple “Most Anticipated” lists this week. One is at Audiobookaneers, and the other is io9’s Most Astounding Must-Read Science Fiction And Fantasy Books In June.

Most astounding. You just can’t read that, as an author, and not feel awfully big-headed.

The book is out in 15 days, which means this blog may be taken over by it, to some extent… although I expect kitten-related entries to make it into the mix, too. I’ll be guest-blogging some more at Magical Words, and in some other venues, and doing a lot of jumping up and down going “Eeeee, looka meee!!!” If there’s anything you want to know or talk about as that’s all happening, let me know. I am still pondering some of your What should I Blog About requests but I haven’t reached publishable conclusions yet; in the meantime, I’m always welcome to suggestions.