The Australian speculative fiction blog carnival is off to a galloping start for 2010. You can find the January collected posts at Egoboo WA.

There’s loads of stuff there, including a few bits by yours truly. Things about Continuum, Natcon, feminism in spec fic and the furore surrounding it, reviews, fiction, interviews, publishing news, giveaways. By Odin’s Mighty Bollocks, it’ll take you till next month just to get through it all.

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You may or may not know about SeizureOnline. According to the website:

Seizure is

* a new avenue for authors to get published
* a collection of serialised novels
* a website with RSS feeds, sub-divided by each story with its own feed
* available worldwide
* released monthly in collected book format.

It’s a pretty cool and very slick little venture. Primarily Seizure is interested in serialising longer works over several editions. However, they also want to publish occasional one-off short stories in various editions and they were kind enough to accept my sea monster horror story Deep Sea Fishing for publication in issue 4. The story is available online and in a collected print edition through Amazon.

They were also nice enough to conduct a quick interview with me, which is also up on their website. Other than the question about the story itself, all the other questions and answers are rather silly. So, go and support a quality market for writers and find some great fiction as well. Love to hear what you think of my sea monster story.

Here are all the relevant links:

The interview with me on the Seizure blog.

My story, Deep Sea Fishing, at SeizureOnline.

Amazon page for the print edition featuring my story.

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I’ve been meaning to get around to this for a while and I’ve finally got it done. Another thing I can tick off the ever-growing To Do list.

I’ve had a links page here for a while now with interesting online places for you all to visit. I’ve now expanded that and added a new page of links specifically for writers. This page lists markets both in print and online that are open to submissions of short stories, flash fiction or novels. The majority of them are specualtive fiction markets, given that that’s what I write. But not all of them are, and I’ve included a few digest sites to help you find other markets that I might not have listed. The list includes some places that have published my stuff, some places that I’m still trying to crack and some sites that I think publish great stuff even though I haven’t tried them with my work yet.

Have a look and see if you can find anything useful here. Good luck getting your stuff published – you have to keep plugging away!

The new Markets For Writers page – click here.

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I’m very tired today. It’s been an excellent weekend, but tiring. This is because I flew down to Melbourne (boy, are my arms tired… boom-tish) for the Continuum convention, Galaxies By Gaslight. There was a general steampunk theme to this fifth Continuum and it was a lot of fun to be involved in. I’ll write a bit about it below and be sure to click on any linked names you see and you’ll learn about some great SF writers.

The general mood of the con was quite quiet and calm. It wasn’t ever really packed and many of the panel audiences were small, but everyone was in good spirits, there was a great sense of friendliness in the air and lots of socialising going on.

I was on a panel with fellow AHWA members Robert Hood, Talie Helene, Rocky Wood and Garry Fay (sorry Garry, couldn’t find a website for you!) We had a small audience but a very interesting discussion on what really scares us in this modern age. There was much talk of the rise of “torture porn” movies (a term I had never heard before, but now love) such as the Hostel and Saw films. We talked about how the visceral nature of schlock horror and torture porn was becoming popular in our sanitised society while the real horror, the implied terror, the monster under the bed or the ghost right behind you, is still the really scary thing. There was even a suggestion that there’s no such genre as horror and, controversial though that may be, I’m glad that I’m not the only one that thinks that way.

A lot of bookshops will stock “horror” titles in the Crime & Thriller section now. I always refer to my own stuff as dark fantasy or dark fiction, because horror is too narrow and oft-misinterpreted a term anyway. Any genre can contain elements of horror. I was glad that the general consensus of the panel and audience this weekend was that the torture porn is popular but a largely irrelevant glitch in the zeitgeist and that real horror and terror, the stuff contained in good dark fiction, is alive and well and will continue on, much like a determined zombie.

I sat in the audience this weekend on a few other very interesting panels. One on time travel in fiction was good fun, with the general consensus being that any time travel tends to really fuck up a good story 99% of the time, with a very few outstanding exceptions. Of course, it’s worth it for those exceptions, but anyone writing yarns with time travel in them needs to be very careful. That panel also pointed out to me that I’m about the last human left on earth still watching Lost. Apparently everyone else has given up on it.

I also caught up with and attended a few readings from great writers like Rachel Holkner, Gillian Polack, Lucy Sussex, Sean Williams, Deb Biancotti, Cat Sparks and Sean McMullen.

Good fun was had by all as far as I can tell. One of the strangest things that happened to me was in the dealer’s room on the Saturday afternoon. I stopped by one table to look at some comic collections by a guy called Jenner. They’re medical based comics, with animals as the stars. Jenner is also a doctor and writes and draws these comics from his experiences with patients and staff. It started as a small habit for medical publications, grew into a web comic and now he sells them in books too. Why was this strange for me? Well, while I was browsing he kindly offered to draw a caricature of me for free while I checked out his books. Who can turn down an offer like that?

So here it is:

I think it’s very good. And not entirely unlike the author photo I usually use (the one in the banner at the top of this site). You can find Jenner’s cartoons here.

The next con on the agenda is Conflux 6 in October. See you there.

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@mlvalentine on Twitter pointed me in the direction of this very cool site – DriveThruStuff.com.

It’s an online store where you can buy and download all kinds of… well, stuff. There’s RPG (Role Playing Game) stuff, comics, wargaming and so on. But of course, my real interest lies in the fiction sections: DriveThruFantasy, DriveThruHorror and DriveThruSciFi. These pages are packed with all kinds of great fiction, mainstream titles and indies, all at a wide variety of prices.

I’ve now got my books available there and as a special promotion you can buy them both for US$5. Usually the ebook editions of RealmShift and MageSign are US$3.50 each (both on Smashwords and DriveThru) but you can buy them both as a bundle from DriveThru for US$5 total. I’m also glad to report that Smashwords will soon be offering a similar option to bundle books and I’ll be making the same offer available over there. The Kindle editions of my books are a bit more expensive at US$3.99 on Amazon. You can find my stuff on DriveThru by clicking here.

So head on over and have a look around. I think it’s a great site with loads of stuff on offer. Leave a comment and let me know what you think of it.

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No, I won’t be at over two thousand conventions. I wanted to let you all know about a few convention appearances that are coming up in the remaining months of this year. It’s wonderful when people treat me like a real writer and invite me to be a part of these things.

The first one is coming up in a couple of weeks. It’s the fifth Continuum, in Melbourne, from the 14th to the 16th of August, 2009. I’ll be there on the 15th and 16th (Saturday and Sunday) and I’ll be taking part in a panel at 2pm on the Saturday called Untapped Fears – What is left to scare us in the age of terror? I’ll be joining the eminent Rocky Wood, Robert Hood, Talie Helene and Garry Fay on this panel – all very fine members of the Australian Horror Writers’ Association (as am I). The panel should be quite interesting with the five of us discussing what really does scare people these days. If you’re in Melbourne, come along and check out the con at ether, located at lower level, 285 Little Bourke Street, Melbourne. Stop by the panel to throw tricky questions at us and feel free to flag me down at any time through the weekend for a chat.

After Melbourne I’ll be going to Canberra in October. This is a big one – Conflux 6. I’m very honoured to have been asked to do a whole bunch of stuff at this one. It runs from Friday October 2nd to Monday October 5th, 2009 at The Marque, Canberra. On the Friday I’ll be presenting a 2 hour workshop on writing and the martial arts. It’s all about how to write a convincing and realistic fight scene. There’ll be some hands on self-defence and fighting training as part of the workshop, so it should be a lot of fun. Seriously, when I get to combine kung fu and writing in the same event thousands of angels suddenly sprout extra wings. Also during the Conflux weekend I’ll be sitting on a few panels on a variety of subjects, I’ll be doing an author in residence spot and I’ll be having the official launch of MageSign, which is both extremely exciting and rather nerve-wracking. There’s a draft program up at the Conflux site now, so have a look and plan your weekend. If you’re in Canberra or feel inclined to travel there, you won’t be sorry. This should be a great weekend. I believe it’s Australia’s biggest spec fic convention. As ever, if you see me flag me down for a chat. I’m usually a pretty friendly soul.

Lastly, there’s Freecon from November 27th to 29th at Bankstown Library, Sydney. As the name suggests, this one is free to enter. It’s a small but very cool con – I was there last year and had a ball. It’s still in the planning stages at the moment, but I should be there for the Saturday and Sunday (28th and 29th). I’ll let you know more about that as more information becomes available.

So get out there and visit some conventions. Whether you’re a writer or a reader it’s a great way to meet like-mindeed people, listen to interesting stuff, hear about new things you might not have heard about otherwise and generally have a good time. Feel free to run any questions by me, in comments or email.

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I recently discovered Horror Bound Magazine. It’s a great little online zine for all things horror, with book reviews, featured authors, interviews, art, photography, poetry and short fiction. The editors over there were kind enough to accept a short story from me for publication and it’s just been released with Issue 7.

According to the site: Horror Bound Magazine is a literary magazine primarily for horror fiction, however, we also feature dark fantasy, noir, thriller and speculative fiction.

You can find my short story Cemetery here. Have a read and let me know what you think. While you’re there, follow the links around and see what else they have on offer. The Submission Guidelines are easy to find if you’re inclined to send in something of your own for consideration.

Incidentally, with regard to the design and format of the Horror Bound website, there’s a printer icon at the bottom of the story. If you’re not too comfortable reading the story as it appears on the site, scroll straight down and click that icon. It will switch the page to a nice black text on white background with no sidebars or anything else – much more comfortable to read that way. You don’t need to actually print it of course. The majority of online zines tend to have this option, so always worth looking for.

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I’m sure most of you have heard enough of me crapping on about writing, books, publishing and so on, especially following the recent blog tour. However, the wonderful Lorna Suzuki is a person not unlike myself – a martial artist and writer. She has a blog over at Author’s Den and you can read an interview I did for her there. Part one is up at the moment, with part 2 due to go up on Thursday. If you’re interested to read more about my writing and books, then head on over and check out the interview here.

Even if you’re over me talking about myself and my work, have a look at Lorna’s achievements. You can follow her on Twitter (@LornaSuzuki) and have a look at her series of fantasy novels on her Imago website here. All well worth a look.

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So after all this planning, let’s hope this thing works out as it’s supposed to. Day One of my virtual book tour has arrived and the first stop is the blog of Joanna Penn. Joanna’s site is called The Creative Penn and is full of stuff all about writing, self-publishing, print-on-demand, internet sales and marketing for books. Her site is a wealth of useful information and she also produces the Author 2.0 program, which is a fantasic resource to help authors build an online platform from which to promote themselves and their books.

As something a bit different for her readers, my stop there today is a guest post where I’m discussing Dark Fantasy – What is it exactly? My books are best classified as dark fantasy novels, so this seemed like a good place to start, looking into what makes something dark fantasy, how it differs from regular fantasy and horror and so on. Hopefully it will be an interesting read for everyone. Be sure to get involved in the comments over there too and maybe we can further refine the details in discussion.

Alan’s Blog Book Tour Day One at The Creative Penn – Click here!

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The virtual book tour that I’ve been arranging starts on Monday. I blogged the itinerary here a couple of weeks ago. I’m very pleased to say that the whole thing has started early with an interview with Smashwords founder Mark Coker. In the interview I talk about what a blog book tour is and how to set one up. You’ll also find there the secret codes to buy both RealmShift and MageSign ebooks from Smashwords for just US$1 each, which is a promotion that will only run for the duration of the tour.

Smashwords is by far one of my favourite places on the net. It’s a truly brilliant site. Fundamentally it’s an ebook publishing site that lets indie authors and publishers upload their books for sale. The real beauty is in the functionality they offer. You can upload your book and have it on “sale” for free, like my novella Ghost Of The Black: A ‘Verse Full Of Scum. So you don’t have to set a price so that Smashwords can get their cut. If you do set a price it can be any amount you like and Smashwords will only take 15% of that. You also have full control of the pricing so you can change the price of your books as often as you like by generating coupon codes that people use at the point of sale. That’s what I’ve done to make RealmShift and MageSign available for just US$1 each during the tour. Otherwise the usual price of US$3.50 each still applies. And Smashwords only take 15% of whatever price is paid, whether that’s 15% of $3.50 or 15% of $1.

On top of that, Smashwords offers all kinds of search options for people to find your books and, when they do, they can buy them in a wide variety of formats, all DRM free. That means that Kindle owners can get .mobi editions, Sony Reader owners can get LRF editions and so on. Whatever you like. That kind of versatility and control is invaluable to indie authors and publishers.

So head on over to the Smashwords blog and have a read of the interview. If you have any questions leave a comment there and I’ll be sure to check in and answer any queries raised.

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