Stepping down as President of the AHWA
It is with some mixed feelings that today at the AGM I stepped down as President of the Australasian Horror Writers Association.
I’ve greatly enjoyed my time in the role and feel like I’ve achieved a lot. However, after three years as President (and a year or two before that as VP) it’s time to move on. The AHWA is a wonderful beast and does so much for the horror community in the Australasian region and around the world. It’s been a privilege to be a part of it and to help it grow, and I have no doubt it will continue on from strength to strength. But this volunteer position takes a lot of time and mental energy and I have a finite amount of both to spare. I need to focus on my writing and other aspects of my life, so it’s time to let go of the AHWA as President. I will always be a proud AHWA member and will always do all I can to help the Association and promote the good work it does. Massive thanks to the awesome committee for their hard work and support during my tenure. Here’s to us all breaching new dark horizons into the future!
And thank you for this privilege.
SERVED COLD published in Taiwan
This is very exciting news! Served Cold is being translated and published in Taiwan! It comes out there next month (November 2023) with this sweet cover. Huge thanks to Alex Adsett for scoring this deal, along with Greyhawk Agency 光磊國際版權公司 and Global Group Publishers. Now I can add Taiwanese to French, Spanish, German, and Japanese for translations of my stuff.
Also, big thanks to Edward Lipsett for this: “That’s an outstanding translation of the title. It uses the meaning of cold that includes an emotionless coldness, rather than just cold temperature, and it incorporates the meaning of revenge, which isn’t in the actual words of your title at all, but clearly contained in the peripheral meaning. To translate it back, maybe something like stone-cold revenge might be close.” I think that’s truly awesome. Maybe one day I’ll get to visit Taiwan and see the book on shelves there.
Supanova Adelaide and Brisbane in November
It’s officially announced – in December I’ll be in Adelaide for the first time since 2016 and Brisbane for the first time since 2018! I love the Supanova tour and it’s real thrill and a privilege to be involved again. I’ll have heaps of stuff with me, so come and say hi if you’re around either city. All the details at: https://www.supanova.com.au/
The Death of Twitter and Why I’m No Longer There
This just went out via my Substack newsletter.
Back in the dark ages of 2009 I joined the new-ish social media site called Twitter. “Ha!” I scoffed. “Microblogging is such a stupid concept. It’ll never take over actual blogging. And tweet is such a stupid word, no one will ever use that.”
Well, I was wrong. I quickly came to find that Twitter was a great site with genuinely powerful engagement and a real sense of community. It quickly became the go-to site, particularly for writers and readers. Through simple and enjoyable engagement with other users I slowly built a significant following there. It became a true engine for awareness of my work and drove book sales. For a non-famous writer like me, that kind of reach makes a massive difference. Plus, there was the simple fun of sharing time with other tweeps. I made real friends on Twitter, people I’ve come to see as close and important to my life. Some of them I’ve never met in real life yet, but still hold them dear.
I’ve always maintained a website, as I still think the most important thing for any creative professional is to have your own online base where people can find you and your work, that’s not subject to vagaries of rich man-children. But beyond that, even though I have accounts on Facebook and Instagram and other places, Twitter was always the main focus of my attention. When people asked what the most important social media for writers was, or for me personally, I would always, without hesitation, name Twitter.
Beyond the benefit promotionally for me and the friendships I made there, it became my go to source of cross-referencing news. It became the default emergency channel whenever any major global event was going down. So many people there were just fucking funny. It was instrumental and of enormous benefit in so many ways, in so many people’s lives.
Then Musk.
Elon fucking Musk, the right wing, parasitic shitstain emerald heir came along and fucked it all up. Musk is a person who thinks he’s way smarter than he is. Allegedly, he buys his way into things and claims to be the brains behind them while the real brains behind those things quickly set up departments to manage him and keep him away from the real running of the place. Space-X, Tesla, they all managed Musk and let him crow about his smarts while they got on with the job.
But when the utter fuckwit bought Twitter, there was no one to rein him in and his absolutely braindead ideas have crashed that site more quickly than anyone thought possible. He gave back access to people who had been banned for literal fascism and Nazism. He destroyed the verification process that made the site so valuable in so many ways. He turned a powerful engine of social good into a cesspit of fuckwits and fascists and laughed about it all the way.
Sure, Twitter had its problems before he took over. There were ongoing issues that people continuously tried to address. Everywhere in life has problems, but the good on Twitter far outweighed the bad. Musk reversed that in less than a year. (He initiated the acquisition on April 14, 2022, panicked and tried to back out soon after, but couldn’t and the acquisition concluded on October 27, 2022. We’re only in September 2023 now and the place is a bin fire.)
But that’s not why I’m no longer there.
Despite all the above, people like me stuck it out. We’d been there a long time. I wasn’t about to give ground to fascists, although it did become harder and harder to justify staying somewhere that enabled the literal worst of society. I struggled with the ethics of it but always hoped it might somehow rise from the ashes. I hoped Musk would throw in the towel, find a way to take his losses and fuck off, and perhaps the Twitter of old might rise again. I’d spent nearly 15 years building a following of over 17,000 people there. It was my home. Fuck this guy for coming in and shitting all over it.
And then I said a bad thing about another rich dude.
I mean, it’s not like I haven’t said stuff just like it a hundred times over the years, but apparently this time I broke the camel’s back. Multi-millionaire Tim Gurner went on record, on video, saying that employees had become too arrogant and he wanted to see unemployment rise by 30 to 40% to put pain into the economy and remind workers of their place. I mean, what an utter cunt. This guy who’s made millions off the backs of poorly paid workers. So I quote tweeted that video and said, “This fucking scumbag. We really need the guillotines.”
And I stand by that. As Van Badham says in her excellent piece on this in The Guardian, “workers in Australia have never been more productive while capitalists have never swallowed up so much of that gain for themselves, taking more in profit than they give back in wages”. You can read the whole thing here, and that will also give you the video in question: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/14/tim-gurner-ceo-comments-more-unemployment-millionaire-property-developer-workers-neoliberals
Record-breaking profits should mean record-breaking wages for everyone from the ground up, not just these parasitic fucks sitting on top, suggesting the people they need for those profits are somehow arrogant. We have never needed the threat of revolution more. Something has to change. Capitalism is killing everything, from the worker to the planet itself, and people like Gurner and Musk are sitting on piles of cash like dragons sitting on hoards of gold, and they’re fucking laughing at us.
So I stand by it. Except someone reported that tweet and Musk and his minions subsequently suspended my Twitter account indefinitely. Someone suggested Musk has set bots to crawl Twitter looking for any tweets with the word “guillotine” and they’re suspending those accounts en masse. I don’t know if it’s true, but it’s the sort of fragile knee-jerk response we’ve come to expect. From the guy who bought Twitter because he wanted a return of free speech. Sorry, just rolled my eyes so hard I saw my heels. When Musk claims he’s returning free speech to the people he means all the hateful shit people like him say while shutting down any dissenting voice. Speech is only free for the arseholes.
I appealed the decision and was told (within an hour so almost certainly by a bot), “Our support team has determined that a violation did take place, and therefore we will not overturn our decision. Your account has been suspended and will not be restored due to violations of the X [because they call Twitter X now, but I never will] Rules, specifically our rules around: Violating our rules against violent speech.”
People need to unionise. People need to support strikes like the current WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike. It’s awesome to see the auto industry in the US finally saying enough is enough and striking too. It feels like a general strike is on the way. We need to empower workers again because people like Musk and Gurner will just use us up as grist in their money-making mills. They’re not even pretending any more, like Gurner saying publicly and clearly that he needs to actually hurt people to smash them back into line. To teach them their place. Fuck. That. Guy.
The cost of living crisis isn’t due to rising prices. It’s due to rising profits. That’s got to change.
Meanwhile, perhaps the Twitter team did me a favour, as now I don’t have to agonise any more about the ethics of staying there. They made the decision for me. Fuck ‘em. I hope they drown in their own cesspool.
I’m furious with Musk for destroying something as good and powerful as Twitter used to be. Who knows what the next thing might be, but there’s no replacement. There won’t be another Twitter any more than there was another MySpace. It’ll be something different. At this point in time, it seems most people are moving over to bluesky, and you can find me there – https://bsky.app/profile/alanbaxter.bsky.social
And I’ll always have my website at www.alanbaxter.com.au
Meanwhile, let’s hope the unions and strikes start to take some power back, into the hands of the workers, because if they don’t it can’t long until guillotines really do become a reality.
Anyway, in the meantime, my new novella launched through Absinthe Books, an imprint of PS Publishing, this weekend and I’d love it if you checked it out. And if you’re still on Twitter, I’d appreciate you letting people know that I got bounced and maybe still spread the word over there about my books? And perhaps this newsletter too.
Huge thanks, fiends, and I’ll see you… around!
Al
The strange condition of being a writer – latest newsletter
My latest newsletter just went out via Substack, reposted here.
Being a writer is bloody weird. In some ways, it’s entirely natural to me because I’ve never really known anything different. I’ve always loved telling stories. But the longer I do this as a job and the more often I’m interviewed about it and asked about it, the more I have to interrogate what it actually means to be a writer.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you’ll know how I feel about writing rules. Spoiler: I fucking hate the prescriptive bullshit. All this “you must write every day” and “only write what you know” stuff makes my teeth curl. Who the hell knows dragons? Or demons? Or even the reality of a crime scene? Eh, don’t get me started. The one and only “rule” of writing is that you must write. How often, how much, when, what about, whether you’re published or not – all that is variable and irrelevant. If you write, you’re a writer. That’s it.
But despite all those variables, I think writers exist as writers all the time, however much or little they actually write. The strange condition of being a writer means always living in a certain, subconscious way.
For one, we notice things. We see the inconsistencies in existence, the little snagged edges where life gets caught. And while lots of other folks may or may not notice those things too, we as writers remember them. They get filed away in the weird writer cupboard in our brain and there they fester and germinate and eventually burst forth anew as stories.
But do we notice and remember these things because we write or do we write because we notice and remember these things? Are those even separate considerations? This is something I ruminate on occasionally in the dark quietude of the night. I have no answers, of course. I just find it interesting.
You know what else is interesting? (Pro segue there, Al – you see, I’m a writer!) I’ve got a new agent. I recently signed with Becky LeJeune of the Bond Literary Agency and I’m super excited for the future with her support. I knew it would be a good relationship when she wore a Camp Crystal Lake t-shirt on our first Zoom meeting. I am enormously indebted to Alex Adsett, who has been my agent until now and will still represent my interests in several ongoing areas. I’m hopeful that Becky will be able to get my work out to bigger audiences and this new arrangement will be of massive benefit to us all. We’re starting off with a brand new novel, so watch out for news on that sometime in the future. Cross your everythings for me.
A couple of other things are current.
PS Publishing (who own Absinthe Books) have announced The Leaves Forget in their newsletter. There will be a hardcover and a signed and numbered limited edition hardcover (only 100 copies!) both with that sweet Ben Baldwin art you see at the top of this post as a full wraparound cover, and there’ll be an ebook, of course. If you’re keen for one of the physical copies, you can order now. I haven’t actually had the signing sheets yet for the limited edition but I’m told it’s selling fast in pre-orders, so if you’re keen for one of those, best to jump in quick. You can order directly from PS Publishing here: https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-leaves-forget-hardcover-by-alan-baxter-6107-p.asp
Here’s the blurb for the book:
Olivia has been missing for months. Her family have tried to accept that perhaps she’ll never be found, and they’ll never know what happened.
So when her brother Craig unexpectedly receives a stack of letters from Liv, all written not long after her disappearance, he’s both excited and frightened. Reading through her correspondence, Craig begins to get a sense of where she was, but he still doesn’t know where she is now, or if she’s even still alive.
Using what clues he can from the old letters, Craig sets off with his partner and his father to find Olivia, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.
I hope you’ll give this one a go.
And that brings me to the Ditmar Awards. I’m absolutely thrilled to be shortlisted four times this year. Four! I’ve been nominated for Sallow Bend in Best Novel; “Gulpepper Curios” from The Fall in Best Novella or Novelette, The Fall itself in Best Collected Work AND Damnation Games (which I edited and have a story in) also in Best Collected Work. Wild. I’ve never won a Ditmar before, so fingers crossed.
Voting is now open, and all Conflux 2023 members (full or supporting) and members of the last 5 Natcons (Continuum 2017, Swancon 2018, Continuum 2019, Swancon 2020 and Conflux 2022) are eligible to vote. All votes must be in by 22/9/23 and you can vote online here: http://ditmars.sf.org.au/voting/ If you’re eligible to vote, please do! The more votes that go in, the better the awards reflect the views of the reading public.
What I’ve Been Enjoying
I’ve been flat out lately and haven’t had much reading or watching time, but I have finished bingeing Better Call Saul, the sequel series to Breaking Bad. It was really good and I enjoyed it all, but I think Breaking Bad is better. I was left a little sour with the final few episodes of Better Call Saul. On the one hand, I get it. On the other hand, I would have done it differently. I can’t say more without spoilers, but hit me up if you want a chat about it.
I’ve been to the movies twice recently. I saw Dracula: Voyage of the Demeter which is a great horror movie. Monster on a boat: it does exactly what it says on the tin. And I saw Talk To Me which is simply one of the best horror movies I’ve ever seen. An Australian film, no less. It’s truly brilliant and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Try to know as little as possible going in, if you can.
Reading-wise I’ve just started the third volume of C S Humble’s horror western trilogy, so I’ll report back about that soon. So far, it’s excellent. I also read the new Chuck Tingle horror novel, Camp Damascus. It’s an original and clever take on some old horror tropes and while I felt like it skipped parts and made some strange leaps in narrative, I enjoyed it a lot.
Okay, I think that’s all from me for now. If you’re anywhere near Sydney, I’ll be a guest at Oz Comic-Con on September 23rd and 24th. It would be awesome to see you there. I’ll have lots of books to sign, stickers, badges and general bonhomie. All you need to know is here: https://ozcomiccon.com/
Big love from me, feel free to get in touch and I’ll see you next time.
Al
The Leaves Forget is here
Hi fiends! PS Publishing (who own Absinthe Books) have announced The Leaves Forget in their newsletter. There will be a hardcover and a signed and numbered limited edition hardcover (only 100 copies!) both with that sweet Ben Baldwin art as a full wraparound cover, and an ebook of course. If you’re keen for one of the physical copies, you can order now. I haven’t actually had the signing sheets yet, so the limited edition books won’t ship any time soon, but you can order them.
The page is live here on the PS Publishing website:
https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/the-leaves-forget-hardcover-by-alan-baxter-6107-p.asp
Here’s the blurb:
Olivia has been missing for months. Her family have tried to accept that perhaps she’ll never be found, and they’ll never know what happened.
So when her brother Craig unexpectedly receives a stack of letters from Liv, all written not long after her disappearance, he’s both excited and frightened. Reading through her correspondence, Craig begins to get a sense of where she was, but he still doesn’t know where she is now, or if she’s even still alive.
Using what clues he can from the old letters, Craig sets off with his partner and his father to find Olivia, hoping for the best, fearing the worst.
Also, the book has a Goodreads page here and I would love it if you could add it to your shelves if you do Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/197859712-the-leaves-forget
Huge thanks to editor Marie O’Regan for picking this one up and the awesome folks at PS/Absinthe. I really hope you’ll give it a go.
Four Ditmar Award nominations!
The preliminary ballot for the 2023 Ditmar Awards has just been released and I’m blown away to be on it four times. Four! What the actual hell?
I’ve been nominated for Sallow Bend in Best Novel; “Gulpepper Curios” from The Fall in Best Novella or Novelette, The Fall itself in Best Collected Work AND Damnation Games (which I edited and have a story in) also in Best Collected Work.
I mean, holy shit! Holy. Shit. Huge congrats to all the nominees! The full ballot is here:
Beware the Blood Covenant
Hello fiends
How the fuck are ya? I thought it was time to drop you a line again and let you know what’s up. First of all, that image above shows some stellar news.
I’ve really enjoyed working with Cemetery Dance on Sallow Bend and it’s so cool to be published by an outfit with such a great history of producing amazing horror. So I was excited when they were keen to read my next novel and even more excited when they agreed to publish it. As you can see from the Deal Report above, it’ll be out in May next year.
This book was hard going. You might remember some time ago I was posting about it. (September 2019, in fact!) Here’s the blog post where I admitted the problem: https://www.alanbaxter.com.au/when-you-realise-your-book-is-broken/ .
So it turns out that I wrote (and had published!) Sallow Bend in the time between starting and finishing Blood Covenant. This is a really fucking weird business. I shelved the book and then came back to it twice and in the long run that was the right thing to do. I’m super proud of how this one finally came out and can’t wait for people to read it. It’s loosely pitched as HEAT meets THE SHINING, and I think it also has vibes of Paul Tremblay’s “The Cabin at the End of the World” and Adam Nevil’s “The Ritual”, all set in a remote Australian mountain wilderness. I hope that sounds appealing. Let me know what you think. I’ll post more about it as news comes along.
Meanwhile, there is a new book coming out this year, I think around September. It’s a novella and I can’t say anything more about it right now, but watch this space for more news on that one.
So what else is going on?
The Ditmar Awards are open for nominations and if you’re an Aussie fan you’re eligible to nominate. So please do nominate all the good stuff you enjoyed in 2022. If you think anything of mine is worthy of a nomination, thank you! All the details you need, including an online form for nominations, can be found here: https://conflux.org.au/blog/ and everything of mine that’s eligible is listed in this blog post. I’m especially keen to see Sallow Bend get some more attention, so if you thought that was worthy of a nomination in the Novel category, bless your black and pulsing heart.
I’m sure any of you who follow me on any social media will have seen the latest member of the BaxCave. Maximo came to live with us recently and he’s absolutely wonderful. Like any baby, he’s hard work right now but he’s a sweet, lovable, smart little guy and settling in really well. The old dog, Rufus, is having a harder time adjusting, but he’s getting there. The cats… not so much. That might take a little longer!
My social media is just full of Maximo at the moment, so apologies or you’re welcome, depending on which side of that you fall. Normal service will resume shortly.
I was asked by the Horror Writers Association to help with a new series they’re running, interviewing international (i.e. not American) horror writers, and that’s been great fun. I’ve enjoyed working with Meghan Arcuri, Sumiko Saulson, Shawna Hampton, Rosemary Thorne, John Lawson and Naching Kassa on this and you can read my introduction to the series here: https://horror.org/world-of-horror-introduction-to-international-horror-month-2023-by-alan-baxter/
What I’ve Been Enjoying
I’ve been reading more Charlie Parker thrillers by John Connolly. There’s 20 (I think) and I just read number 10, The Burning Soul. Honestly, it wasn’t nearly as good as the previous one and there was one plot device that really didn’t work for me, but these are great books nonetheless. I also got to read an early copy of Michael David Wilson’s new novel, House of Bad Memories, which was thoroughly wild. He asked if I’d give him a blurb for it (hence the early reading) and this is what I sent over:
“If Ira Levin and Guy Ritchie had a drug-fuelled weekend binge with the Kray twins in a Kidderminster council flat, they wouldn’t come close to House of Bad Memories. Darkly funny, brutally violent and strangely touching, Michael David Wilson has created something truly bonkers and I’m here for it.”
With TV, I mentioned before that I was binging Breaking Bad. I finished all of that and it was genuinely outstanding television. Just so good. And then I went directly on to Better Call Saul (at Brian Keene’s urging). Better Call Saul is a prequel/sequel series surrounding Breaking Bad and it’s equally good. I’m loving it and up to Season 4 of 6 so far. I’m hoping to get to the movies with my 9yo to see Barbie soon too, that looks like so much fun.
Meanwhile, this weekend I’ll be a guest at Oz Comic-Con in Canberra (and in Sydney next month) so if you can get anywhere near the nation’s capital, it would be awesome to see you there. All you need to know is here: https://ozcomiccon.com/
Okay, I think that’s all from me for now. Big love to you all, keep in touch and I’ll see you next time.
Al
South Coast Writers Festival, August 19th and 20th
I’m excited to be part of the South Coast Writers Festival on August 19th and 20th. I’ll be in conversation with the great John Birmingham on Saturday and chatting speculative fiction on Sunday.
Author John Birmingham’s novels run the gamut from history to science fiction, from military thrillers to time-hop adventures, but they are all peppered with a rollicking humour and an interest in the politic of resistance and survival. In conversation with award-winning horror author, Alan Baxter, John Birmingham discusses the third book in his Cruel Stars space opera trilogy and guides us on how to tackle fascists in space.
From haunted familiar worlds to unrecognisable futures, speculative fiction summons us to enter the uncanny. Mykela Saunders, editor of This All Come Back Now, the Aurealis Award-winning, world-first collection of blackfella speculative fiction, and Alan Baxter, multi-award-winning author of horror, supernatural thrillers, and dark fantasy, talk speculative writing with the University of Wollongong’s Chrissy Howe.
All the details here: https://southcoastwriters.org/festival2023
Ditmar Awards open for nominations!
The Ditmar Awards are open for nominations and if you’re an Aussie fan you’re eligible to nominate. So please do nominate all the good stuff you enjoyed in 2022. If you think anything of mine is worthy of a nomination, thank you! All the details you need, including an online form for nominations, can be found here: https://conflux.org.au/blog/
Here’s my eligible stuff:
SALLOW BEND – Eligible in Novel
THE FALL: Tales From The Gulp 2 – Eligible in Collected Work
All five stories in The Fall are original too, so they each qualify in Novelette/Novella:
“Gulpepper Curios” (19,340 words)
“Cathedral Stack” (13,160 words)
“That Damn Woman” (18,230 words)
“Excursion Troop” (16,500 words)
“The Fall” (19,850 words)
DAMNATION GAMES – Eligible in Collected Work, edited by me.
Short fiction:
“Counting Tunnels To Berry” – The Hideous Book of Hidden Horrors anthology, ed. Doug Murano (Bad Hand Books)
“The Fiends of Turner’s Creek” – SNAFU: Dead or Alive, ed. A J Spedding (Cohesion Press)
“The Question” – Damnation Games, ed. Alan Baxter (Clan Destine Press)
“The Novak Roadhouse Massacre” – Found, ed. Andrew Cull and Gabino Iglesias