My Novels – Page 26 – A.M. Dellamonica

Now appearing at a conference near you!

By Alyx Dellamonica | October 18, 2011 - 9:30 am |October 17, 2011 Appearances, My Novels, Workshops

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I am pleased to announce that I will be presenting two workshops at the Surrey International Writers’ Conference this weekend. One will be a worldbuilding workshop based on my ten-week “Creating Universes, Building Worlds” course. The other is called “Taking Baby to the Story Doctor.” Essentially, it’s a trouble-shooting overview–a starting point for for critiquing your own novels and short stories.

I have been hoping to have the opportunity to be a part of this particular conference for some time. It has such a terrific reputation, and the guests this year are amazing (they are always amazing).

When I’m not actually in a workshop I will, of course, be mingling. Let me know if you’re going to be around and would like to connect.

Fine sifting and fall plans

By Alyx Dellamonica | September 28, 2011 - 9:52 am |September 27, 2011 Appearances, Books, My Novels, My Short Stories, Process

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I am reading through the Blue Magic page proofs this week (196 days until it’s released!) which means I am going through printed pages that are laid out as the book will be, looking for any small errors. I’ve already gone through the copy-edited manuscript, where all the big errors and inconsistencies have been found and vanquished.

After that, my current plan is to have a hard look at a short story that’s all but done. It’s provisionally titled “Losing Heart among the Tall.” As titles go, I’m not convinced that’s perfect. This polish is half about actually finishing the story, and partly to reacquaint myself with the details of the setting, a place called Stormwrack, which also appears in a number of other things I’ve been working on this year. This includes a story called “Among the Silvering Herd” that I’ve sold to Tor.com. (I’ll let you know when it’s gonna be up, as soon as I know myself!)

This weekend, I’ll be hopping off to VCon to rub elbows with fabulous people like the latest denizen of the Twitterverse, DD Barant, Mary Choo, and Julie McGalliardon. On Saturday evening, at our 9:00 p.m. group reading, I’ll read from my story “Wild Things,” which takes place in the Indigo Springs universe, between the events of the two novels.

Once “Losing Heart among the Tall”‘s events and details are fresh in my mind, I’ll dig into the other stuff set in Stormwrack, for all of October.

Finally, if that goes well and I can wrap up by Halloween, I’m thinking of joining a number of my Nanowrimo buddies-in-crime in November by setting myself a goal of 50,000 words of new short fiction. Since I mostly write novelettes in the 7500-8500 word range, that’d make for six stories. I thought another squid story about Ruthless, perhaps, to go with “The Town on Blighted Sea,” another Stormwrack story for sure, and I have a few other ideas. But I don’t as yet have six ideas, and I thought I might throw the floor open for prompts, requests, challenges, a contest… somesuch thing.

Have any of you done this, either opened the floor to challenges in this way or contributed to a call for prompts? How did it work? Was there a prize? Were you happy with the result?

Barely visible goalpoasts, or lapcounters, or somesuch…

By Alyx Dellamonica | September 21, 2011 - 2:37 pm |September 21, 2011 My Novels, Photography, Works in Progress

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Happy Autumn, everyone… welcome to my favorite time of year. Here’s what late September looks like today, in Vancouver, at some spiffy pricey homes near Granville Island:

In August, I made an arbitrary decision to finish drafting the current novel in progress. By mid-month, though, it was obvious I needed a little more time. I mentioned this to a fellow writer at Kelly’s office picnic and she pointed out that September 21st was the official first day of fall, so I reset the deadline accordingly.

And it is done! It’s Frankensteined and far from beautiful, but I’ve done this enough times now to know that beauty will come. (And, actually, it’s more polished than my usual finished drafts.)

Next up: a short story revision, looking over Blue Magic page proofs, possibly a new short story draft, then polishing, polishing, polishing. I also need to decide if I’m gonna do something akin to NanoWrimo—Spike is, I believe, and I’m tempted to join her. Who else might be in for some November word-crunching?

Fall in love with our Opening Acts

By Alyx Dellamonica | July 27, 2011 - 9:09 am |July 26, 2011 Appearances, Books, My Novels

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SF Novelists has this week published our first book of sample chapters for e-book readers: it’s called Opening Acts, 25 Science Fiction and Fantasy First Chapters.

So what’s the deal? Here’s our cover copy:

Every reader knows that the trouble is not finding something to read, but finding something you want to read. Sometimes, it’s something familiar, something known. Sometimes it’s something new, something unexpected.

SF Novelists proudly offers you twenty-five teasers, twenty-give first chapters across the spectrum of SF and fantasy. Twenty-five tastes, to tempt your appetite for adventure… to lure you into unknown worlds…

And give you something new to read.

In other words, the book is intended as a free taste of novels you can get online (and of course in bookstores too). The first chapter of my novel Indigo Springs is in it, as are works by Janni Lee Simner, Louise Marley, T.A. Pratt, Stephen Gould, and so many more! It’s a zero-risk ‘try before you buy’ proposition, and a chance to fall in love with some new SF and fantasy novels.

The book is available for free download right now courtesy authors Simon Haynes, here, and Steven Gould, here. It will also be up on B&N, Smashwords and other fine distributors very soon.

Counting up the words

By Alyx Dellamonica | July 6, 2011 - 9:30 am |July 5, 2011 Appearances, My Novels

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I’m up to about 10,000 words on my Clarion West Write-A-Thon commitment. Here are a few of them:

The babble in her head continued on, but the words got increasingly hard to make out, as if her own voice was moving away from her, something about froglets with tails, and then she was dreaming about one, about chasing it, extending her hand to catch the froglets and finding ducklings under a leaf, ordinary ducklings from home, reaching out, trying to catch it as it scrabbled and fled, and somebody sliced her wrist, cut off her hand and no, that was her, she was holding a severed hand… Gale’s severed hand? There was so much blood and all the choking noises.