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My life is finally calming down enough that I can catch up on a few things. Like this interview with A.M. Dellamonica, an author with Tor Books who has a new book called Blue Magic on the shelf right now. I asked her a few questions about writing and the book and here's how she answered. Take a moment to check it out, and then go order the book!
Bio: A.M. Dellamonica lives in Vancouver, B.C., where she's been writing fantasy and SF for over twenty years. She teaches creative writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and in workshops at conventions and conferences like Norwescon, Orycon, and the Surrey International Writers' Conference. When she's not writing, reading, teaching or thinking about books, she takes photographs and sometimes sings in a choir.
Alyx blogs for Tor.com, and is currently writing a series of highly popular 'rewatch' reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which will celebrate its fifteenth birthday this March.
Her newest book, Blue Magic is the sequel to the Sunburst Award-winning Indigo Spring.
Interview:
1. First off, why don't you introduce yourself and your new book. Tell us
what makes this book special!
BLUE MAGIC completes the story of the magical spill begun by Astrid Lethewood in INDIGO SPRINGS. Astrid is the last known chanter on earth, which means she alone can take the dangerous magical source material, vitagua, and transfer it into objects which express various magical abilities that people can safely use.
In its raw state, vitagua is essentially a contaminant, and in the first book gallons upon gallons of it escape into the Oregon woods not far from Portland. As a result, the forest itself has overgrown to the point where it's an impassable thicket, destroying Astrid's hometown and driving magically mutated wildlife into the Western U.S. and the Pacific Ocean. Now the U.S. government is trying to contain the disaster as it continues to unfold... and Astrid is seeking a safe way to bring the world's magical ecosystems into some kind of balance before matters get even worse.
2. Where did that idea come from? Do you have a "genesis story" for the
novel?
I wrote a number of stories about the mystical objects, chantments, before embarking on INDIGO SPRINGS. The best-known of these was probably "Nevada," which Ellen Datlow bought for the old Scifi.com site. It was set at my grandparents' old ranch house in Yerington, Nevada, and a good proportion of the magical objects there were things from the toybox my grandmother kept for any kids who came to visit.
In "Nevada", I focused on the corrupting effects of magical power on people, and there was a glancing mention of the chantments having been made by one of the two mad sisters in the story. Some time after that, I was playing around with a separate idea, this almost-toxic magical fluid, of a magical/chemical spill worsened by another power-mad individual, in this case Sahara Knax. It occurred to me that the two elements, the chantments and the vitagua, could be married to each other quite nicely.
3. What did you find was the most challenging aspect of writing in the fantasy genre?
Fantasy is home for me. I write SF and mysteries and literary fiction and alternate history, but the fluidity of magic, and the ability to set aside the rules of the real world--I'm always really comfortable there. But I do tend to fall back on trying to make a bit of science fiction-type sense of my magical systems, so with the Books of Chantment, there was a bit of a challenge in harmonizing the stuff from "Nevada" with the vitagua itself. But like most writers I have a community of other writers to fall back on, so I got advice and perspective from a number of readers. Ultimately I just had to wrestle with it until it made sense.
4. Magic is typically integral to fantasy. What makes your magic unique?
The magic in this series has a long backstory. It always had a physical component--it began as a type of cell, actually, neither animal nor vegetable but with qualities of both. In the Middle Ages an organization allied with the Roman Catholic church tried to establish a monopoly over enchantment, and instead ended up driving the cells into a sort of remission. Time, lack of space and a prolonged struggle for control over magic ended up altering its nature, so that the resulting fluid, vitagua, was both off-the-scale powerful and extremely dangerous. This is why it has the effect of mutating any living tissue it happens to contact.
Chantments, meanwhile, are more like the little magical objects that populate a million fantasy stories: they can make you pretty, extend your life, mesmerize other people... they're safer to use, but some of them are quite powerful too.
5. If you had to do the "Hollywood Mashup" for you book, what would it be? (Like, "This novel is like Harry Potter combined with Silence of the Lambs with a little Hangover thrown in on the side!")
Think Chernobyl disaster in Narnia and you're getting pretty close.
6. How would you classify your novel? Dark fantasy? Epic fantasy? Urban fantasy? Or do you just let the readers decide for themselves?
The classification you'll see among bookstore professionals, reviewers, and librarians would be urban fantasy--it has magic set in the here and now. The other term I've heard, which I like a lot, is ecofantasy. A lot of people think True Blood when they think of urban fantasy, but this is 100% vampire-free. It has monsters, but they're products of an eco-magical disaster.
7. Where can we find out more information about you and your books?
I am all over the web. My official site is http://alyxdellamonica.com and I can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, and Google Plus, usually as AlyxDellamonica. I do a lot of blogging and writing for Tor.com - in fact, there's going to be an Indigo Springs tie-in story up there soon. It's called "Wild Things", and it takes place between the events of the two books. In the meantime, I have two other stories there, "The Cage" (which is traditional urban fantasy, my tag line for it being 'Baby Werewolf has Two Mommies') and an other-world fantasy called "Among the Silvering Herd."
The Links
My Site: http://alyxdellamonica.com
LJ: http://planetalyx.livejournal.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AlyxDellamonica
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/AlyxDellamonica
G+: https://plus.google.com/106086459950640246872/posts
Tumbler (mostly Instagram Photos): http://alyxdellamonica.tumblr.com/
The UCLA Extension Writers' Program: https://www.uclaextension.edu/
All my TOR articles: http://www.tor.com/Alyx%20Dellamonica#filter
TOR Stories: "The Cage" - http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/07/the-cage
"Among the Silvering Herd" - http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/02/among-the-silvering-herd
Bio: A.M. Dellamonica lives in Vancouver, B.C., where she's been writing fantasy and SF for over twenty years. She teaches creative writing through the UCLA Extension Writers' Program, and in workshops at conventions and conferences like Norwescon, Orycon, and the Surrey International Writers' Conference. When she's not writing, reading, teaching or thinking about books, she takes photographs and sometimes sings in a choir.
Alyx blogs for Tor.com, and is currently writing a series of highly popular 'rewatch' reviews of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which will celebrate its fifteenth birthday this March.
Her newest book, Blue Magic is the sequel to the Sunburst Award-winning Indigo Spring.
Interview:
1. First off, why don't you introduce yourself and your new book. Tell us
what makes this book special!
BLUE MAGIC completes the story of the magical spill begun by Astrid Lethewood in INDIGO SPRINGS. Astrid is the last known chanter on earth, which means she alone can take the dangerous magical source material, vitagua, and transfer it into objects which express various magical abilities that people can safely use.
In its raw state, vitagua is essentially a contaminant, and in the first book gallons upon gallons of it escape into the Oregon woods not far from Portland. As a result, the forest itself has overgrown to the point where it's an impassable thicket, destroying Astrid's hometown and driving magically mutated wildlife into the Western U.S. and the Pacific Ocean. Now the U.S. government is trying to contain the disaster as it continues to unfold... and Astrid is seeking a safe way to bring the world's magical ecosystems into some kind of balance before matters get even worse.
2. Where did that idea come from? Do you have a "genesis story" for the
novel?
I wrote a number of stories about the mystical objects, chantments, before embarking on INDIGO SPRINGS. The best-known of these was probably "Nevada," which Ellen Datlow bought for the old Scifi.com site. It was set at my grandparents' old ranch house in Yerington, Nevada, and a good proportion of the magical objects there were things from the toybox my grandmother kept for any kids who came to visit.
In "Nevada", I focused on the corrupting effects of magical power on people, and there was a glancing mention of the chantments having been made by one of the two mad sisters in the story. Some time after that, I was playing around with a separate idea, this almost-toxic magical fluid, of a magical/chemical spill worsened by another power-mad individual, in this case Sahara Knax. It occurred to me that the two elements, the chantments and the vitagua, could be married to each other quite nicely.
3. What did you find was the most challenging aspect of writing in the fantasy genre?
Fantasy is home for me. I write SF and mysteries and literary fiction and alternate history, but the fluidity of magic, and the ability to set aside the rules of the real world--I'm always really comfortable there. But I do tend to fall back on trying to make a bit of science fiction-type sense of my magical systems, so with the Books of Chantment, there was a bit of a challenge in harmonizing the stuff from "Nevada" with the vitagua itself. But like most writers I have a community of other writers to fall back on, so I got advice and perspective from a number of readers. Ultimately I just had to wrestle with it until it made sense.
4. Magic is typically integral to fantasy. What makes your magic unique?
The magic in this series has a long backstory. It always had a physical component--it began as a type of cell, actually, neither animal nor vegetable but with qualities of both. In the Middle Ages an organization allied with the Roman Catholic church tried to establish a monopoly over enchantment, and instead ended up driving the cells into a sort of remission. Time, lack of space and a prolonged struggle for control over magic ended up altering its nature, so that the resulting fluid, vitagua, was both off-the-scale powerful and extremely dangerous. This is why it has the effect of mutating any living tissue it happens to contact.
Chantments, meanwhile, are more like the little magical objects that populate a million fantasy stories: they can make you pretty, extend your life, mesmerize other people... they're safer to use, but some of them are quite powerful too.
5. If you had to do the "Hollywood Mashup" for you book, what would it be? (Like, "This novel is like Harry Potter combined with Silence of the Lambs with a little Hangover thrown in on the side!")
Think Chernobyl disaster in Narnia and you're getting pretty close.
6. How would you classify your novel? Dark fantasy? Epic fantasy? Urban fantasy? Or do you just let the readers decide for themselves?
The classification you'll see among bookstore professionals, reviewers, and librarians would be urban fantasy--it has magic set in the here and now. The other term I've heard, which I like a lot, is ecofantasy. A lot of people think True Blood when they think of urban fantasy, but this is 100% vampire-free. It has monsters, but they're products of an eco-magical disaster.
7. Where can we find out more information about you and your books?
I am all over the web. My official site is http://alyxdellamonica.com and I can be found on Twitter, Facebook, Tumbler, and Google Plus, usually as AlyxDellamonica. I do a lot of blogging and writing for Tor.com - in fact, there's going to be an Indigo Springs tie-in story up there soon. It's called "Wild Things", and it takes place between the events of the two books. In the meantime, I have two other stories there, "The Cage" (which is traditional urban fantasy, my tag line for it being 'Baby Werewolf has Two Mommies') and an other-world fantasy called "Among the Silvering Herd."
The Links
My Site: http://alyxdellamonica.com
LJ: http://planetalyx.livejournal.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AlyxDellamonica
Twitter: https://twitter.com/#!/AlyxDellamonica
G+: https://plus.google.com/106086459950640246872/posts
Tumbler (mostly Instagram Photos): http://alyxdellamonica.tumblr.com/
The UCLA Extension Writers' Program: https://www.uclaextension.edu/
All my TOR articles: http://www.tor.com/Alyx%20Dellamonica#filter
TOR Stories: "The Cage" - http://www.tor.com/stories/2010/07/the-cage
"Among the Silvering Herd" - http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/02/among-the-silvering-herd
