Novels:
Indigo Springs
Blue Magic
Short Stories: Lots, listed
here.
Website: alyxdellamonica.com
> What is Indigo
Springs about?
Indigo Springs is about three
friends who discover a wellspring of magic in their home. By the time
they figure out what it is, how it works, and that it's actually
quite dangerous, they've set off a chain of events that leads to a
Chernobyl-scale mystical disaster. They turn a huge portion of Oregon
into an enchanted forest and barely escape with their lives and
sanity.
> You call Indigo Springs
an ecofantasy. What do you mean by that and is there a message
you want readers to take away from your books?
Indigo Springs and Blue Magic
are books in which a limited magical resource, vitagua, has been
transformed into an environmental pollutant. People are struggling to
understand, control, and possibly use up the resource, even as it
radically alters the landscape of Oregon. It makes trees grow
incredibly tall and turns animals into monsters, and it turns out to
be much easier to spill it into the ecosystem than it does to return
life to normal. I suspect the metaphor's pretty obvious.
And this is what ecofantasy is: it's
set in the here and now of our world, and there's magic, but there's
also an awareness of the environment and the affect we humans are
having on it.
> How did it feel, winning the
Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic for Indigo
Springs and where have you put your medallion?
I was floored when I won. The short
list was packed with incredible authors that year, and I had already
brought myself around to thinking about how fantastic it was to be
nominated. When I got the e-mail my first thought was "Ah well,
it was nice while it lasted." The sound I made when I read the
e-mail and saw I'd won was a strangled surprise-noise. It sounded
terrible! My partner thought something was grievously wrong!
The medallion lives in an antique
cabinet that is full of our most special possessions: things like a
string of my grandmother's pearls and our most beloved books (Michael
Bishop's Brittle Innings is in there, as is the Jane Austen
collection and a lot of Connie Willis and James Tiptree Jr.). I take
it to conventions to show people and there are some photos of me
cavorting with it when it first arrived.
> What made you want to be a
writer?
I have felt compelled to write from the
moment Ernie and Bert and all their buddies at the Children's
Television Workshop started teaching me to read. I was attempting Dr.
Seuss-inspired poetry before I entered grade school. Writing has
always been a central part of my identity. I cannot tell you why.
The first time I ever attempted a novel
was when I was in grade four and I read Gordon Korman's This Can't
be Happening at MacDonald Hall. The fact that another kid was
publishing novels made me assume that I could write and sell one,
too. That turned out to be not quite true, but I was sending short
work to markets like Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine by the
time I was fifteen.
> You've written a number of
short stories in different genres (mystery, science fiction, fantasy
and alternate history). Which is your favourite genre to write
and why?
In terms of sheer wordage, I think I've
written the most fantasy. It's a genre that works well for me because
I feel very connected, somehow, to the idea of the impossible or the
miraculous. When I think about achieving something magically,
amazing, bizarre and sometimes beautiful ways to do it seem to pour
out of my backbrain. It's also easier for me as someone whose
training is in theater and dramatic arts. The rules of magic are more
fluid and the author sets them. I can write science fiction, but I
always have to check my research with people who've taken advanced
physics, chemistry, and biology courses.
The first chapter books I read as a kid
were a series of my mother's childhood books; they were biographies
of famous U.S. women like Jane Adams, Harriet Beecher Stowe,
Sacagawea and Louisa May Alcott. (I'm sure the writers in the mix
made good role models--I read those books to tatters.) I've always
been pulled to history and one of my favorite pieces of mine is an
alternate history of Joan of Arc that combines that fondness for the
miraculous with Joan, who has always intrigued me.
Finally, to be honest, I sneak mystery
plots into almost everything I write.
> Beyond the matter of length, do
you find it easier writing short stories or novels?
I find very short stories quite hard: I
can't seem to write my name without spilling 7,500 words. Aside from
being longwinded, though, I love both forms and would be heartbroken
if I had to give up one or the other.
I do find mystery and romance
storylines easier to pace in the novel format--there's just more time
to let things develop. Short stories are compressed and it takes more
work to make them seem like they can span a big shift in a
character's circumstances.
> If you could, would you change
places with any of your characters?
Oh, the lot of the folks in
Indigo
Springs and
Blue Magic isn't enviable... I'm not sure
there's many of them I'd want to be. But I'm writing a bunch of
pieces now set on a world called Stormwrack--the first is called
"
Among the Silvering Herd",
and there's a lot of adventure to be had there. I'd happily take a
ride on the sailing vessel *Nightjar*, either as Garland Parrish or
Gale Feliachild.
> When and where do you write?
I try to be someone who can write in
almost any place, at any time... I've seen people who get so caught
up in their rituals that they can only work in one space, and if
conditions are perfect. That said, I get up every morning and go, at
six a.m., to Cafe Calabria on Commercial Drive. There's no internet
and few distractions, and I write fiction there seven days a week.
And I'm not alone--quite a few writers end up there over the course
of their very long day.
> What’s the best/worst thing
about writing?
It's the same thing: you do it alone.
It's the best thing because you have total control over your work,
your worlds, your characters and what happens to them. You can craft
everything down to the hatpins. It's the worst thing because you can
never *ever* delude yourself that you don't own what's on the page.
If there's a typo, a bad sentence, a plotting misstep, what have you,
you're the one that put it there.
> Do you have any advice for
hopeful authors?
But in terms of some quick advice a
person can use right now? Make the time to write regularly. Find
critics or coaches you trust. Take their advice most of the time but
know, too, that the important decisions are always absolutely yours.
> How do you discipline yourself
to write?
The upside of being compelled to write
is that you have to discipline yourself to stop. If I go a week
without writing, I get cranky. If I go two weeks, I become very
unhappy indeed. But, when I am confronted with some task I don't
particularly wish to get down to, what I will often do is set an
electronic timer for an hour. I'll make a cup of tea, start the
timer, and promise myself that as long as I give it a sixty-minute
try, I'm off the hook for the day.
I love writing, and even when it's
hard--when I'm struggling to pull off a particular story--I'm almost
always having fun doing it. In this, I know, I am blessed. I'm
grateful for that combination of personality traits that makes
buckling down to writing easy for me. All I can do is enjoy it while
it lasts, hope it doesn't change, and promise myself that if it does
I'll seek the strength and the support I need to deal.
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