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.

Chi Chi Chitastic

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Kelly and I went to our first SF community event Wednesday night, a ChiSeries reading featuring Guy Gavriel Kay, E.L. Chen, Jim Munroe and Leon Rooke. The monthly readings are held at The Augusta House, a pub conveniently near our place, and we met a few people I’ve known for years in a cyberspace way (I tend to forget that some of these friends of mine are people I’ve never actually looked in the face.)

One of the night’s unexpected delights was hearing the music of Kari Maaren. She is an amazing filk lyricist (Badger and Fearless, I suspect you will heart her bigtime, if you don’t already). Her The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy song, “43,” made me howl with laughter. And there’s this:

We slipped out at about nine-thirty, so very late by our ridiculous up-at-dawn standards, and walked home. It felt as though it might have been the first time–in almost a month!–that we’ve been out after dark. The pubs were just getting lively, filling up with crowds of people keen to watch hockey and socialize.

It was a warm and humid night, full of sights and cheer, an altogether magical walk.

I #amreading (though slowly) – Eighty Days

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I have probably mentioned this before, but when I was a tween, the Scholastic Book Order club was pretty much the highlight of my school existence. Every month they’d send out a two page book catalog, printed on newsprint, and I would pore over it, trying to figure out which two or three books I would order.

The next phase involved the wheedling of cash from my mother. I can remember very specifically the feeling of walking to school with the actual form clutched in my hand. It about the size of a postcard and printed on newsprint, and I would wrap it around the quarters and dimes with which I was going to pay for the treasure.

Until the recent move-related cull, I still had a few of those books: Ann Rivkin’s Mystery of Disaster Island, and The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key, to name two.

One of the Scholastic books I didn’t retain into adulthood was a biography of Nellie Bly, and it was absolutely one of my favorites. Nellie was an intrepid girl reporter who worked for Joseph Pulitzer, and the book told about how she went undercover at an insane asylum for women–writing an expose on its cruelties–before capping off her career with a ’round the world race to prove that Jules Verne’s Around the World in 80 Days trip was a possible thing.

Another magazine sent a competing reporter, so halfway around the journey she found out she was in a race with Elizabeth Bisland.

So. Not long ago my good friend Keph posted about Eighty Days: Nellie Bly and Elizabeth Bisland’s History-Making Race Around the World on Facebook and I immediately grabbed it up. It is as gratifying and intriguing as I expected. Nellie and Elizabeth were remarkably different women whose lives had intriguing similarities: they bumped up against the same feminist issues in very different ways.

On a barely-relevant note – I am now living within blocks of the Scholastic building. This is, for me, rather like living on the front lawn of the Taj Mahal or the Vatican.

“The Sweet Spot” reprint and a shot of Grandma

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My short story “The Sweet Spot,” which appeared in Lightspeed Magazine last year, Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing

Though I have only just started to recover from the blast out to Edmonton, I am headed with Kelly to Montreal this weekend. The last trip wasn’t a pleasure cruise, obviously, but this is–we’re going to see friends. I haven’t been to Montreal since, I think, the 2001 World Fantasy Con. I am looking forward to being there again, with savvy local guides no less!

And, in the spirit of three things make a post – a lot of pictures of Grandma Joan are coming my way and then getting uploaded to the Pham album on my Flickr account. Here’s one by Paul McNie that I think is especially nice.
Joan Ryks-Huffman

Mermaids, #BuffyRewatch, and a vintage pun

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My latest Buffy rewatch ends Season Five with “The Gift.” I call it “Beware of God.”

If you’d prefer a pre-taste of my upcoming book CHILD OF A HIDDEN SEA, which is set in the same world as “Among the Silvering Herd” or my next related Tor.com story “The Ugly Woman of Castello di Putti,” here’s a post on mermaids I did for
My World… in Words and Pages.

Toronto continues to be a completely fun place to explore: here’s a store called Da Vintage Code. I love a good pun.
DaVintage Code Vintage store, in Kensington Market. #yyz #toronto

Catching Up Slowly

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I am just home from Grandma Joan’s funeral and am quite behind on everything, especially e-mail. I’ll be back on track by Monday at the latest; if you wrote me, I’ll get to you, and in the meantime I apologize for the delay.

In the meantime, thank you all very much for the notes, tweets and other kind thoughts. It was very lovely of you, and meant a lot to me.