Click on book covers for reviews, previews and purchase options.
RealmShift
A race against time and the Devil
"RealmShift is phenomenal. If it’s not already on your bookshelf it should be."
MageSign
Believe in the blood 
"a gritty tale of blood rituals, mystery, and mysticism… grabs hold of the reader and doesn’t let go"
The Darkest Shade Of Grey
You can tell the story.
"...stunning supernatural noir..."
Ghost Of The Black
"Everything about it is bang on"
Write The Fight Right
“The best way for a writer to learn what’s really involved in brawling, short of going down the pub and starting something.”
You’d think that some things are just common sense and don’t require legislating. But, of course, there are a lot of people out there that seem to have had their common sense surgically removed. It must have been removed, because even a fly seems to be born with more common sense than some of...
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Reported in the Sydney Morning Herald today, the new edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is doing away with hyphens. The dictionary claims that “People are not confident about using hyphens any more”. As if that’s a reason to do away with them. It’s all a bit 1984 double plus bad if you...
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We often consider net speak and associated abbreviations found in text messaging and the like to be relatively recent phenomena. But it is worth remembering that computers have been used to communicate since long before Al Gore invented the internet in 1995. Or was it Dan Quayle in 1943? I forget. Anyway, emoticons are...
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People do have a habit of personifying things. Since the old days of the Navy, we’ve always referred to our vehicles by name and gender. Ships were always female and to this day a lot of cars and bikes are similarly considered female. A lot of motorcyclists will refer to their bike as a...
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Yes, folks. It’s true. Fred Haley says so. Every once in a while you come across something truly bizarre that simply stops you in your tracks. With the internet a regular part of daily life, these track-stopping discoveries are more common than ever before. It happened today. I was minding my own business, searching...
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I went along to this seminar yesterday, all about sustainable investing. It’s a long, boring story that explains how I got there, but suffice to say that my wife and I were invited along and we didn’t have to pay for it. If we did have to pay, we wouldn’t have gone; these things...
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By BRUCE SMITH, Associated Press Writer Mon Sep 17 CHARLESTON, S.C. – Author Robert Jordan, whose “Wheel of Time” series of fantasy novels sold millions of copies, died Sunday of a rare blood disease. He was 58. Jordan, whose real name was James Oliver Rigney Jr., was born and lived in this southern city...
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I’ve added a little widget to the right hand sidebar. It’s a random Quote of the Day generator from The Free Dictionary website. I can’t quite configure the size exactly at the moment, but I’ll fix that sometime soon. I have no idea what sort of quotes it will spit out, but decided that...
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If you remember a few days ago I made a post about writers submitting their work to fiction publications in the form of short stories to help to get themselves noticed. This is the original post I’m talking about. Well, what do you know. One of those fine publications has just accepted one of...
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In the same way that words fascinate me, language itself is a constant wonder to me. I love the fact that people around the world communicate in such a variety of ways. I think learning another language is something that everyone should do to help them understand language in general and to give them...
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The Anglican Archbishop of Sydney, Peter Jensen, is on a new evangelical attack. He wants to give every family in Sydney a free Bible in an attempt to halt the decline of Bible ownership and study, especially among the young. Of course, he’s only planning to give out the New Testament, or Christianity-Lite as...
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I’m a bit late on this one, but the 2007 Hugo Awards have been announced. Best novel this year was Rainbows End by Vernor Vinge, published by Tor. Check out the list of nominees and winners by clicking here. 2007 Hugo Award Trophy (designed by Kaiyodo) .
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A lot of writers, the large majority in fact, have a very hard time getting their writing noticed. Publisher slush piles stand taller than an extra large McDonald’s coke on every editor’s desk and the months of hard work poured into those manuscripts rarely gets looked at. Finding an agent is almost a necessity...
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So, Bush and the other APEC member world leaders have all gone home. It’ll still take a couple of days for all the concrete security fencing to be dismantled and for all the snipers on the skyscrapers to be winched down. I wonder if any of them are just a little bit disappointed that...
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Things will be a bit quiet around here for a few days as we’re going away to escape the Orwellian circus that is the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum here in Sydney. According to their tag line, APEC “Promotes liberal trade and economic policies along the Pacific Rim.” If you live in Sydney it just...
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Welcome to the website of author Alan Baxter.
I write dark fantasy, sci fi and horror, ride a motorcycle and love my dog. I also teach Kung Fu, hence the Warrior Scribe tag above. A friend once referred to me that way and I liked it, so it stuck. Learn all about me and my work by clicking About Alan just below the header.
Our world is built on language and storytelling. Without stories, we are nothing.
The Word is a place to learn more about me, my stories and the words of others. Click the links along the top for all kinds of stuff, search the sidebars for loads of other stuff, click on book covers for reviews and previews, enjoy the blog and don't be shy to share your words, in comments or send me an email:
alan [at]alanbaxteronline[dot]com
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