Alan Baxter's Blog

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...

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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:

...

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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 ...

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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...

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A while ago when I did my blog book tour for RealmShift and MageSign one of the people kind enough to host me was Pat Bertram. She hosted the interview with Isiah, the protagonist from the books. I'm very pleased now to return the favour and host a guest post from Pat as she travels on her own blog book tour, promoting Daughter Am I. Here Pat gives good advice about a writer's tools of the trade.

Like other construction workers, we creators of word worlds own toolboxes filled with necessary...

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My independent publisher, Blade Red Press, has announced the editor for our first anthology. Many of the regular readers here will be familiar with the AHWA's own Brenton Tomlinson, and it's very exciting to have Brenton on board for Dark Pages, Volume 1.

Read the full announcement here on the Blade Red website.

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I've been away for the last week, enjoying the peace and quiet of the Bega Valley with Halinka and Penry the Spacklehound. We did all kinds of sight seeing, visited cool little towns and gardens, went horse rising with friends and generally had a ball. It was very relaxing. However, the highlight of the trip for me was finding some treasure.

You know how you look at the bookshelves in antique stores, desperately hoping to stumble across that elusive and rare first edition… Wait, is it just me ...

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You so need to come to this store in Bega. They have such a great range.

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And by wild, I mean me. I'm going to be off around Brogo and Bega for the next week, with pretty poor and infrequent internet connection. So, don't be surprised if things go a bit quiet around here and Twitter and Facebook over the next week or so.

Of course, I can't handle being away from the net for too long, so I'll take my laptop with me. And I'll have my iPhone, naturally. In truth, there's every chance that no one would even notice my absence, depending on mobile reception where we'll...

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I quite enjoy the little writing exercises that people come up with sometimes. You get these at a lot of creative writing courses and workshops. They're basically little triggers designed to get you writing. The truth is that when it comes to being a writer, there are six really, REALLY important things that you have to do:

Read, read, read, write, write, write.

All the other skills you learn, getting help with your grammar, getting stories critiqued and all that is very important. But first...

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