Alan Baxter's Blog, page 121

No Clean Feed – stop the ISP filter in Australia

I normally try to avoid political issues on my blog here. Obviously, I'll rip into politicians, religious leaders and so on as the mood takes me, but they bring that on themselves. But I usually try to avoid getting involved in campaigns or anything like that. This blog is all about words and stories, after all.

However, this is something that I think is really important and it does carry the possibility of affecting the words and stories available to us.

Basically, the Australian government...

Friday Flash – Trapped

For Friday Flash this week I thought I'd draw your attention to a piece I've just had published in the House Of Horror ezine in the UK. Each issue there is divided up into different rooms, with different things available in each part of the house – you can find my piece in The Basement, where it belongs.

It's called "Trapped" and it's a little yarn about the way a couple cares for each other. I hope you like it.

Click here to go directly to the story.

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Goodies in my post box

I love to receive interesting things in the mail. I love to get new books. I love to be in books. So imagine my joy today when I received four books in the mail – three contributor copies of Seizure Issue 4, featuring my story Deep Sea Fishing and my copy of Horn by Peter M Ball from Twelfth Planet Press.

I'm loving the stuff coming out of Twelfth Planet Press at the moment. And so are other people – in the recent Aurealis Award finalists announcement books, anthologies and stories from...

Crossfire podcast read by yours truly

You might remember a little while ago that I posted about recording one of my stories, Crossfire, for the Outlandish Voices podcast. Here's the post in question.

Well, the podcast has been posted at the Outlandish Voices website now. I have to say, it doesn't sound nearly as bad as I thought it might. I was dreading hearing myself read a story, but it actually seems to come across quite well. Halinka says it's very well read, but she's biased. Crossfire is a light hearted, possibly even a...

This week's top searches

I am so often entertained by the search results that apparently lead people to my website here. I'm a bit of a nerd for stats and searches and things like that, so it's always a bit of fun for me to check. The top search results leading people here over the last week are:

halloween

grease

robot

robots

dirty dancing

Some of those are no surprise, others a little less obvious at first glance. It's a bit like the things that might be called out during improv night at a comedy club. Then again...

On awards and prizes

Further to my previous post here and a quick chat about the Aurealis Awards that it triggered on Farcebook, the ever sage Angela Slatter drew people's attention back to a post she made on her blog in October. As a teaser for her post, I present this:

Gore Vidal famously said "Whenever a friend succeeds, a little something in me dies" – Gore was, of course, a sad old git, and should be a role model for no one.

Damn straight. Go and have a read of Angela's post (nay, grump) on people and their...

Aurealis Award finalists announced

Sadly, I didn't get a nomination, even though I had a couple of bits entered this year. I wouldn't ever expect to win against the kind of competition there, but a nomination would be nice. I would say, "Ah well, next year", but there may not be a next year for the Aurealis Awards. I hope there is, so fingers crossed.

In the meantime, here's the list of nominations for this year from the Aurealis Awards website. I'm pleased to see Paul Haines's "Wives" is in there. I would have had to kick...

Friday Flash – A Little Killing

I recently entered a writing contest over at Scribe's Writing Desk. The direction was to write a piece of flash fiction (under 500 words) using three of the following words:

murder, mystery, fire, gates, cat, warlord, gold, dwarf, planet, ship

Just to be a smartarse I entered a whacky little yarn using all ten words. It took out 2nd place and I won an ebook. So it seems only fitting to share it here as this week's Friday Flash. May I present:

A Little Killing

It was a murder mystery that had the ...

Life Through Cellophane by Gillian Polack

Anyone that's read more than a few posts here knows that I'm a big fan of small press. You'd probably also know that I'm a big fan of Gillian Polack. Gillian has been a good friend to me and officiated at the launch of MageSign at Conflux 6 a couple of months ago.

Well, also at Conflux, Gillian had a book launch of her own. Her novel, Life Through Cellophane, was published by Eneit Press, with copies arriving along with the publisher on the actual day of the launch. Phew! So I've been slowly g...

Well, that's good to know I suppose

Created by Oatmeal

(Thanks to Jason Fischer for this one.)

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