Alan Baxter's Blog, page 110

My books now available from Gryphonwood Press

I'm very happy to announce that the Gryphonwood Press editions of my books are now available. The newly edited RealmShift and MageSign can be bought direct from Gryphonwood or, more easily, get them through Amazon.

At Amazon you can find RealmShift here and MageSign here, both just $9.99 each. There are also Kindle editions of both and Smashwords editions of both for those ebook lovers among you. You can also use any of the links here as I've updated them all now. Click on a book cover for...

NSW Society Of Editors talk with Bill Congreve

I'm very honoured to have been invited by the NSW Society Of Editors to talk at their monthly meeting next week. I'll be sharing the honour with Bill Congreve, writer and owner of MirrorDanse Books, and we'll be talking all about speculative fiction in general, with an emphasis on the nature of the spec fic publishing world.

If you're interested in coming along you don't have to be a society member. Non-members can attend for $20 ($10 concessions). The meeting is described thus:

Speculative...

In honour of the Tenth Doctor

Once again, S F Signal comes up with the good stuff. This is a fan video showcasing David Tennant's run as the tenth Doctor with a variety of backing music. It's a brilliant piece of editing and a fitting tribute to a great Doctor. I'm not entirely sure what the relevance of the Christopher Eccleston (ninth Doctor) is, as he crops up periodically watching along with us, but there you go.

Enjoy.

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A little interview at A Writer Goes On A Journey

You may remember that I recently hosted the Australian Spec Fic blog carnival. Following that, the lovely Nyssa from A Writer Goes On A Journey ran a few quick interview questions by me. You can read the interview here if you're interested.

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Short film – The Raven

This is an excellent sci-fi short film making good use of special effects. It's by Ricardo de Montreuil and is described thusly:

Chris Black possesses a power that could lead to the destruction of the current regime, and they will stop at nothing to destroy him. The chase is on as Chris runs for his life in this sci-fi thriller set in an alternate and futuristic Los Angeles.

Hat tip S F Signal.

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What's in a name?

Check this out from Lamebook.com:

420, pronounced four-twenty, is an American counter culture holiday. It's the day you're supposed to get stoned. According to lore (wikipedia), the term was coined from a group of teenagers at San Rafael High School in San Rafael, California in 1971. The teens would meet after school at 4:20 pm to smoke marijuana.

I guess there's nothing like getting baked before going home to do homework and watch Blue Peter. Anyway, the date 4/20, which is April 20th in...

Good show, sir

My brother-in-law put me onto this great site (thanks Adrian!) It's called Good Show Sir and it's all about showcasing the worst book covers in sci-fi and fantasy. Their explanation is this:

Because sometimes, a book cover is so bad that all you can do is step back in wonder and say "Good show, sir, good show".

The truth is that these days there's been a considerable improvement in book cover design. Some covers of recent spec-fic releases are truly outstanding. But there was a time when any...

Spam comment of the week

I get a lot of spam comments here. It's inevitable, I suppose. Once you've been blogging for a while a certain amount of robots and fuckwits are naturally drawn to the comments section where they shit their rubbish all over the place, telling me what a great blog this is or what an interesting post I wrote while desperately trying to get their link to Viagra or cheaper home loans approved.

The thing that pisses me off is that there are enough absolute idiots out there clikcing on these spam...

Doctor Who the 11th

I admit that I was cautious in my excitement about the new series of Doctor Who. When the series rebooted with Christopher Eccleston back in 2005 I was very excited and the series took off with just the right blend of old school cheesiness and modern technology (in the form of CGI and so on) that my love for Dr Who was both nostalgic and reinvigorated. When Eccelston took an early bow after so little time in the role I wondered if that would be the end of it. Was it a moment of magic and Dr W...

Facebook at last

I've been on Facebook for a long while, but I've always tried to keep it on a semi-personal level. Basically, I only accept friend requests on Facebook from people I actually know. I may not have ever met them, but in this internet age there are some people that I know really well even though we've never met "IRL".

With that in mind my Facebook friends are people that I know personally or have had some interaction with on some level, be it physically or virtually. Given that my books are due o...