Cool

Music in Post Marked: Piper’s Reach

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7
April 6, 2012
Music in Post Marked: Piper’s Reach

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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Batman pulled over by cops, turns out to be a real hero

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4
March 30, 2012
Batman pulled over by cops, turns out to be a real hero

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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Great news to wake up to

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4
March 18, 2012

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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Making the Impossible Real: Writing Speculative Fiction with Robert Hood

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0
February 6, 2012

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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Beautiful book shop stop-motion animation

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0
January 11, 2012

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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George Lucas Strikes Back

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2
September 18, 2011

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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Crowdfunding or panhandling? The new arts funding.

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September 17, 2011
Crowdfunding or panhandling? The new arts funding.

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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New covers now and audiobooks for Christmas

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September 9, 2011
New covers now and audiobooks for Christmas

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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A bit of Australia and New Zealand at Worldcon

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0
August 17, 2011

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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A reading in Reno

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2
July 14, 2011
A reading in Reno

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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So you don’t understand Twitter?

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June 22, 2011

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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Fun with Google Ngrams

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5
January 21, 2011
Fun with Google Ngrams

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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Keywords and phrases so far this year

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5
January 21, 2011
Keywords and phrases so far this year

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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Culturomics – 500 billion words start a trend

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0
December 18, 2010

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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Nerdy index

By
4
December 10, 2010
Nerdy index

Driving up to Sydney today I found myself behind this car. I had a moment of nerd envy.
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The Word

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.

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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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TOP POSTS OF OLD

An archive page of some of the most popular blog posts from The Word can be found by clicking here. Enjoy.

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Listen to my podcast: ThrillerCast Myself and fellow Gryphonwood Press author, David Wood, talk about reading, writing and publishing in the thriller, action-adventure and speculative fiction genres.

Thirteen O'Clock Australian Dark Fiction News & Reviews: Thirteen O'Clock I'm a contributing editor to this site. Go there for all your dark fiction needs - news, reviews, submission calls, op-ed and more.

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