Alan Baxter's Blog

Not much going on at the moment, just catching up with stuff. You know, life as usual. However, I do have some new books to help me cope. One of the blessings and curses of the whole convention situation is the dealer's room. It's a big room, full of people selling stuff you really want. A deadly thing. It's also a great place to hang out and chat with people and generally soak up the vibe of a con. As a result of this room of delight, as with every con, I now have a newly enlarged reading...

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Amazon seem to have finally started catching up with their backlog of emails and I'm happy to say that the Kindle editions of RealmShift and MageSign are available again. The price now matches the Smashwords and DriveThru price of US$2.89 each. That's less than a cup of coffee! It also looks like they've kicked in this bloody stupid region coding plan, so if you're looking from Australia, for example, you won't see pricing information and there's a nice green box telling you that you can't...

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I read this today and had to laugh. According to Language Log the Marist Institute of Public Opinion has released poll results that reveal the words and phrases that Americans find most annoying. The results were:

whatever – 47%

you know – 25%

it is what it is – 11%

anyway – 7%

at the end of the day – 2%

What the Marist Institute didn't reveal very clearly was that the above phrases were the only options respondents were given to choose from. Ridiculous.

As one of the commenters over at...

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This is something I've been meaning to get around to looking at for ages and I've finally followed up on it. The Australian Horror Writers Association has put together a very interesting challenge that involves horror, loads of great writers, a competition and a bit of philanthropy, plus a great prize. You can't argue with that.

Basically, numerous great Australian speculative fiction writers have each added a section to a single story, started by Felicity Dowker. The penultimate part was...

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I've just been catching up on this situation, so I'm a bit behind on time, but I wanted to add my voice to the outrage. It seems we have a plagiarist in our midst. Now, I can't even begin to imagine the point of plagiarism. Are some people so insecure that they want to see their name in print but can't risk using their own words? Are they just so keen to see their name as a published credit that they'll use any means necessary? Well, yes, it would seem so. But what kind of pleasure or sense o...

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I seem to be on elastic between 11 and 9. What am I on about? The Copywrite Top 50 Australian Blogs for Writers list has been updated again. The first time it came out I was in at number 9, the next one I'd dropped to 11, third time around I was back up to 9. Now it's been updated once more and I've returned to position 11 on the list. The weird thing is that the blogs in all the places around me change all over the place. Maybe I'll just try to claim positions 9, 10 and 11 as permanent...

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I guess this will be my last Conflux 6 related post. It has a rhyming title, it's the 6th post for Conflux 6, everyone is bored shitless of me going on about Conflux already, and so on. However, people wanted pictures – let it not be said that I never give the people what they want. So here's a quick pictorial rundown of the con.

This is the tremendous Karen Herkes – she organises cons like Batman beats up thugs:

(Pic: Cat Sparks)

This next pic is one of my favourites from the whole weekend...

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I'm home from Conflux 6, exhausted but exhilirated. What a great con it was.

Today I was on a panel all about Twitter, blogging and all things internet promotion. It was an interesting and lively panel that consisted of myself and Nicole Murphy (who has just sold a fantasy trilogy to Harper Collins – yay Nicole!) While there were only two of us on one side of the desk, the audience was very much informed and involved and we had a really interesting chat.

Before that I went and listened in on a ...

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I was up at an ungodly hour this morning. Well, I wasn't actually, it just felt like it. Then right off the bat at 10am I sat on a panel all about publishing options in this brave new world. I've rattled on enough on this blog about those things so I'm sure you can all imagine some of the things I was talking about. It was a really interesting panel and slightly bizarre when I found myself sitting next to Jim Minz, Senior Editor of Baen Books. Also on the panel were Chris Barnes, Felicity...

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I'm so tired and the clocks go forward tonight so I'm losing an hour. And I have to be making some kind of sense at 10am (9am!) tomorrow on a panel about publishing options. So sorry, not much of an update today.

I had the early kaffeeklatch thing this morning which was basically sitting around drinking coffee with a bunch of nice people that were kind enough to come and join me. Thanks guys, if you're reading.

At lunchtime I was on a panel with Jack Dann, Richard Harland, Sean McMullen and...

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