Alan Baxter's Blog

You may remember a while ago that Editor Unleashed and Smashwords ran a flash fiction contest. The top 40 entries were collected in an ebook anthology and each earned their author $25, with the winning entry getting $500. My story, Parklife, was one of the top 40.

Well, they're at it again. Editor Unleashed and Smashwords are now running an essay contest. They want essays from writers on why they write, in 750 words or less. The winner receives $500 and all the top entries will be collected...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

Time

Pink Floyd (Mason, Waters, Wright, Gilmour)

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town

Waiting for someone or something to show you the way.

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain.

You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today.

And then one day you find ten years have got behind you.

No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun.

S...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

I've updated a couple of things here at The Word today. Firstly, my flash fiction piece The Book, which was published in issue 136 of Antipodean SF, has now been archived so I've added the story to the Dark Shorts page here. You can also still see it in the Antipodean SF archives here.

Plus I've added a few more links to the Writers, Publishing & Spec Fic sites list on the Links Page. Now you'll also find there the blogs of Gillian Polack, Pat Bertram and Felicity Dowker. All well worth a...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

I've just added a couple of new links to the Markets For Writers page: 52 Stitches and Seizure. These are both very cool markets for spec fic and they're also well worth a look if you're not a writer. There's some great stuff to be read there.

52 Stitches is a dark flash fiction blog that posts a new dark spec fic story every week, 52 weeks a year, then collects those stories into an anthology at the end of the year. I've recently submitted something to them, so fingers crossed. Pop over and h...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

When I gave the "Write The Fight Right" workshop at Conflux 6 back at the start of October, one of the people attending was Phillip Berrie. He asked me if I'd answer a few questions on the subject for the A Writer Goes On A Journey website. I was more than happy to do so and you can see the interview now. If you're interested in a little bit about writing covincing fight scenes, check out the interview here.

.

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

Karen Lee Field, over at Karen's Desk, is running a little contest. The winner will get a AU$25 Amazon voucher and an ebook version of the short spec fic anthology "Speculative Realms: Where there's a will, there's a way". When you vote on the contest, you are also in with a chance to win the ebook. The contest involved people writing a flash fiction piece (no more than 500 words) and they had to include at least three of the following words:

murder
mystery
fire
gates
cat
warlord
gold
dwarf
planet

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

I have to thank Michael over at aNadder for this one. I'm a big fan of collective nouns. There are the old favourites like a murder of crows or a parliament of owls. But what about collective nouns for supernatural creatures? We've all heard of a host of angels. Well, thanks to Michael pointing this out to me over at Wondermark, here's a full list of all the collective nouns for supernatural critters you could want. I have no idea how accurate or made up this is, but I like it nonetheless...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

There are a few bits and pieces that cropped up over the last couple of days that have been entertaining me greatly.

Firstly, remember this daft post from a week or so ago? Just a dumb sign in a shop that said, "WE STOCK LADIES SIZE 4 – 24″. I'm easily enough amused that I posted a photo of the sign under the title, "Looking for a wife or girlfriend?"

I got a comment on that post. It has no web link attached, nothing apparently being spammed or pushed in any way. Just a name and the following:

...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

All right then. Seeing as I'm a writer of all things macabre and occult (among other things) I thought I'd celebrate Halloween. Along with the fantastic joint promotion with Gryphonwood Press, where we're giving away loads of ebooks for free, I thought I'd post on what Halloween is really all about. Of course, I can only scratch the surface in the limited arena of a blog post, but I'll give it a go. So many people think that Halloween is basically a dress up party where kids forget all about ...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »

My independent press, in conjunction with Gryphonwood Press in the US, is running a Halloween special where we're offering all our books in ebook format for nothing, just for Halloween.

Here's the announcement from the Blade Red Press website:

Here at Blade Red Press we're very pleased to announce a special offer in conjunction with our good friends, Gryphonwood Press. On October 31st, to celebrate Halloween, both Blade Red and Gryphonwood will be offering their entire catalogues for free in...

View full post on Alan Baxter's website »