Alan Baxter's Blog, page 113

Wheel of fail

Sometimes words just like to mess with your head.

Great Australian Booklist

Colour me seriously impressed. Sometimes the evil internet is used for good, even when it's used by the Access Of Evil. I know, I'm making no sense.

Chuck McKenzie threw out an idea to the interwebz about getting US and UK books into Australia which are otherwise unavailable due to parallel importation restrictions, or getting Australian small press books into bookstores that don't have great distribution channels. Chuck runs a book store, so things like this are very real for him. And as...

Independent grocer branches out into prostitution

I went up to the local IGA independent grocer this morning to get some milk and bread. I was quite surprised when I saw this van parked outside delivering. I thought, 'Well, that's some thinking outside the box right there.':

(Yes, of course it was actually "Mitchell's Wholesale Provedores.)

.

Suspended animation is not sci-fi any more

I found this TED Talk via m1k3y over at grinding and it blew me away. Basically, suspended animation (the reduction of metabolic rate to near death for extended periods of time) is not just science fiction any more. It's real, and they're busy with human trials.

As the guy says at the start of the talk, they're not designing things to send people on long space flights or anything like that right now; they're developing technology to put someone into a suspended state to buy them time to...

Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing #1

I got a nice little gift in the mail this morning. My contributor's copy of Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing #1.

There's my name on the cover, fourth one down. Of course, that's alphabetical, not in order of importance or anything like that. I do love to see my name on the cover of books though, I'm kinda vain like that. This is an anthology of blog writing, put together by Miscellaneous Press. As they describe it:

Inside Miscellaneous Voices: Australian Blog Writing you will find...

Australian Spec Fic blog carnival, March 2010

It's my turn to host the Australian Spec Fic blog carnival for this month, so following is a round up of all kinds of interesting spec fic related interwebby goodness. If I've missed anything, add a link in the comments or email me and I'll update the post.

First off, Eneit Press interviews Gillian Polack as part of Women In Horror Month.

That segues nicely to Gillian Polak's own LiveJournal entries which include some thoughts on characters and Good books and equal opportunity neglect. A...

Oh, the crushing irony

Outlandish Voices podcasts moved to Podbean

Some of you may remember a while ago that I recorded one of my short stories for the Outlandish Voices podcast. The story in question was Crossfire, originally published in The Oddville Press.

Anyway, Outlandish Voices has moved to a new home. You can now find it at Podbean. Outlandish Voices has podcasts of spec fic stories by emerging and established authors, usually read by the author themselves. Now, in its new home, each story is posted seperately and you can rate and comment on each...

2009 Shadows Awards finalists

The Australian Shadows Awards finalists are in. These are an annual award presented by the Australian Horror Writers Association and judged on the overall effect – the skill, delivery, and lasting resonance – of a work of horror fiction written or edited by an Australian and published either in Australia or overseas.

The finalist for 2009 are (in alphabetical order):

Long Fiction

* A Book of Endings by Deborah Biancotti (Twelfth Planet Press)
* Red Queen by H. M. Brown (Penguin...

Bitten By Books reviews of RealmShift & MageSign

I love it when my books get reviewed. I really love it when they get positive reviews. It makes me do little happy dances around my study when they land 5 star reviews. Or, in this case, 5 out of 5 headstones. For both of them! Bitten By Books is a site that provides book reviews for all types of paranormal fiction, urban fantasy and horror. They've recently posted reviews of both my novels.

For RealmShift, the reviewer said things like:

"The novel is an action-adventure, an exploration of...