Alan Baxter's Blog, page 114

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...

Continuum 6: Future Tense

It's convention time again. This weekend I'll be at Continuum 6: Future Tense. Continuum is a Melbourne con that has a cool, intimate vibe. There's always good people and interesting things going on.

For my part, other than hanging out with friends and hopefully making some new friends, I'll be on a couple of panels and doing a reading.

Friday arvo I'll be interviewed with Paul Haines by Radio National for their Book Show program. I must admit, that's a very exciting turn of events! I'm not...

All 90 Australian SpecFic Snapshots 2010

You may remember this post about the Snapshot of me done as part of the 2010 Australian SpecFic Snapshots. It's basically 5 questions answered by as many of us as the people behind it could find. Mad fools that they are, they managed to find 90 people to interview this year. A truly sterling effort.

You can find all 90 Snapshots linked here, including many far more interesting people than I. Visit Tansy's site for the links, but below is a list of who you'll find there:

The Australian SpecFic...

Rules for writing fiction from various authors

Thanks to Adrian for this one. A couple of articles in the Guardian (UK) about writing fiction. Various authors give their rules for writing well and there's a lot to be learned from the places several authors cross over in their advice. The article is in two parts:

Part the first.

Part the second.

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