Alan Baxter's Blog, page 114

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...

The Road by Cormac McCarthy – review

Fuck me.

I went down to the Continuum 6 convention in Melbourne recently and, bizarrely, didn't buy any books while I was there. I had every intention of picking up a couple in the dealer's room, but just didn't get the chance. At the airport to head home again I needed something to read, especially as we had an hour delay due to bad weather in Sydney. In the newsagent I spotted The Road by Cormac McCarthy and grabbed that, based on the general hype about it. I really didn't know much about...

Read An Ebook Week 2010

From March 7th to 13th it's Read An Ebook Week. The movement has a website here. Ebooks are becoming more mainstream by the month and the launch of the iPad has certainly helped that along. Even though the iPad is far from what it claims to be and little more than an iPhone that you can't get in your pocket.

Regardless, the ebook is on the up and up. Let me state again, as I have here many times before, I'm a bibliophile. I love books. I love the papery weight of them, the feel of them, the...

My podcast interview at The Creative Penn

I was interviewed recently by Joanna Penn, of The Creative Penn website, for a podcast. Joanna blogs, podcasts and video blogs on all aspects writing, publishing and promotion. In this podcast she asks me about all kinds of things, from the nature of writing with religious mythology and the trouble it can cause, to the nature of blasphemy and offence, to writing fight scenes, indie authorship and more. It's surprising how much stuff we cover in the podcast, which is only a bit over half an...

Star Trek – How It Should Have Ended

I'll thank S F Signal for this one – how the Star Trek movie should have ended. This is originally from HowItShouldHaveEnded.com, which comes out with some pure gold. Their Lord Of The Rings one is a blinder. This one is also. Stay for the end!

Call out for Aust Spec Fic blog carnival

I'll be hosting the Australian Spec Fic blog carnival in March, posting up a loads of stuff on March 15th. If you have any posts you think are relevant, please let me have the links. It can be anything spec fic related, about writing, books, movies, TV or anything you can find even a vague relevance for.

You can leave links in the comments section here or you can use this fancy Google document form thing that collates everything into a neat spreadsheet for us. Spread the word and hit me up...

New RealmShift review at Horror Bound

I was very pleased to read a new review of RealmShift over at Horror Bound today. Among other things, the reviewer said stuff like:

"You'll be hooked. And then, you're in for a fast-paced, white knuckle ride."

"Alan Baxter excels at writing action."

"All in all, Realm Shift is a worthwhile read. At the very least, you'll have explained to you, in depth, an interesting theory for why the gods exist. At best, you open this book, and you've punched your one-way ticket aboard a runaway hell train...

Continuum 6 – The report

It's Monday, I'm feeling sleep deprived and have a sore throat from talking too much. I was clearly at a con this weekend. Continuum 6: Future Tense, in fact. And what a great con it was.

I caught up with many friends and finally met for real some people I know quite well online. It's always good to put a real human fleshy face to the avatar. On Friday afternoon I caught up with Paul Haines and we headed in to the Con to be interviewed for the Radio National "Book Shelf" program. It was a...