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.”
I’m very pleased to present here an interview with Jodi Cleghorn and Adam Byatt. Jodi and Adam are embarking on a very interesting literary experiment. Post Marked: Piper’s Reach is “an ambitious organic narrative collaborative project”, with Jodi and Adam “traversing an odd path between old and new forms of communication, differing modalities of...
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This is such a great story. You’ll know I have a bit a of a predilection for Real Life Superhero stories if you’ve been reading this blog for long. One of the greatest posts ever ended up with actual Real Life Super Heroes (RLSH) arguing in the comments, which subsequently had to be closed....
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I woke up this morning (Sunday) to a few congratulatory messages from friends and discovered that my story, Punishment Of The Sun, from the Dead Red Heart anthology published by Ticonderoga Publications, was included in Ellen Datlow’s Honorable Mention list in The Best Horror of the Year #4. I’m so pleased with this news....
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Here’s one for the Aussies near (or not so near) Sydney. Master’s Master, Robert Hood, is running a workshop on writing speculative fiction. It’ll be held at the New South Wales Writers’ Centre in Rozelle, in Sydney’s inner-west. It’ll be well worth travelling to, because I know Rob and he’s not only a fantastic...
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I found this via Neil Gaiman’s Twitter feed (@neilhimself). He said: People kept sending me this YouTube stop motion bookstore video, and finally I watched it. Now in love. And I have to agree with him. It’s just beautiful and it must have taken an incredible amount of time. If you watch the section...
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This is just brilliant. It’s a fantastic bit of faux trailer-making in its own right, but it’s also a brilliant concept. I so wish this was actually the case. It really is the only thing that would make any sense in an ideal world. Sadly, what really happened is that George Lucas disappeared up...
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This is going to be one of those posts where I ramble on without any real direction and hope I discover a point along the way. “How is that different to any of your other posts?” you ask. Well, screw you. You’re the one reading. In truth it’s because I have a lot of...
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I love my publisher, Gryphonwood Press. Why? I’ll damn well tell you why. Firstly, they’ve had new wraparound artwork commissioned for my dark fantasy thriller duology, RealmShift and MageSign. The books are contemporary dark fantasy thrillers, verging on horror, and there’s a distinct vibe to that kind of book developing. If you look at...
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I mentioned here before about the wonderful generosity of Bob Kuhn, reading a selection of work from Australian and New Zealand authors at Worldcon in Reno. Well, it’s this weekend. There are now a few more people on the bill and it looks like being two really cool reading sessions. I’m so pleased to...
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This is some very exciting news. Worldcon this year is in Reno, Nevada. I’m rather disappointed that I can’t be there, as I love cons and would go to them all if I could afford it. But, even though I can’t be there, my work can. Bob Kuhn, aka Tolkien’s Dragon, will be reading...
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I really love Twitter and find it one of the most useful social networks I use. But I regularly get people saying to me things like, “What’s the point of Twitter? I think it’s stupid. I don’t get it.” And therein lie two different things. Asking what it is and saying you don’t understand...
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There’s this thing Google have put together which is really addictive. It’s called Ngrams. Essentially, when you enter phrases into the Google Books Ngram Viewer, it displays a graph showing how those phrases have occurred in a corpus of books. You can set various parametres of time, which types/language of books are searched and...
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It’s been a while since I did one of these posts and they’re fun, so I thought it time for another. Using Google Analytics, I keep track of the various hits to my website here. I can track what are the popular posts, how long people stick around, where they come from and so...
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My brother-in-law sent me this one from the New York Times (thanks Ade!) and it blew me away. I’m guessing that people already know about the controversial project by Google to digitise every book in the world. If you don’t, it’s easy to find out a bit about it. Just Google it. *sigh* Now,...
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Driving up to Sydney today I found myself behind this car. I had a moment of nerd envy.
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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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