Alan Baxter's Blog, page 124

52 Stitches and Seizure

I've just added a couple of new links to the Markets For Writers page: 52 Stitches and Seizure. These are both very cool markets for spec fic and they're also well worth a look if you're not a writer. There's some great stuff to be read there.

52 Stitches is a dark flash fiction blog that posts a new dark spec fic story every week, 52 weeks a year, then collects those stories into an anthology at the end of the year. I've recently submitted something to them, so fingers crossed. Pop over and h...

Interview about writing fight scenes

When I gave the "Write The Fight Right" workshop at Conflux 6 back at the start of October, one of the people attending was Phillip Berrie. He asked me if I'd answer a few questions on the subject for the A Writer Goes On A Journey website. I was more than happy to do so and you can see the interview now. If you're interested in a little bit about writing covincing fight scenes, check out the interview here.

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Read a few flash fictions and vote for mine

Karen Lee Field, over at Karen's Desk, is running a little contest. The winner will get a AU$25 Amazon voucher and an ebook version of the short spec fic anthology "Speculative Realms: Where there's a will, there's a way". When you vote on the contest, you are also in with a chance to win the ebook. The contest involved people writing a flash fiction piece (no more than 500 words) and they had to include at least three of the following words:

murder
mystery
fire
gates
cat
warlord
gold
dwarf
planet

The Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns

I have to thank Michael over at aNadder for this one. I'm a big fan of collective nouns. There are the old favourites like a murder of crows or a parliament of owls. But what about collective nouns for supernatural creatures? We've all heard of a host of angels. Well, thanks to Michael pointing this out to me over at Wondermark, here's a full list of all the collective nouns for supernatural critters you could want. I have no idea how accurate or made up this is, but I like it nonetheless...

Misunderstandings, misrepresentations and quote of the week

There are a few bits and pieces that cropped up over the last couple of days that have been entertaining me greatly.

Firstly, remember this daft post from a week or so ago? Just a dumb sign in a shop that said, "WE STOCK LADIES SIZE 4 – 24″. I'm easily enough amused that I posted a photo of the sign under the title, "Looking for a wife or girlfriend?"

I got a comment on that post. It has no web link attached, nothing apparently being spammed or pushed in any way. Just a name and the following:

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Halloween, what is it really?

All right then. Seeing as I'm a writer of all things macabre and occult (among other things) I thought I'd celebrate Halloween. Along with the fantastic joint promotion with Gryphonwood Press, where we're giving away loads of ebooks for free, I thought I'd post on what Halloween is really all about. Of course, I can only scratch the surface in the limited arena of a blog post, but I'll give it a go. So many people think that Halloween is basically a dress up party where kids forget all about ...

Free ebooks for Halloween

My independent press, in conjunction with Gryphonwood Press in the US, is running a Halloween special where we're offering all our books in ebook format for nothing, just for Halloween.

Here's the announcement from the Blade Red Press website:

Here at Blade Red Press we're very pleased to announce a special offer in conjunction with our good friends, Gryphonwood Press. On October 31st, to celebrate Halloween, both Blade Red and Gryphonwood will be offering their entire catalogues for free in...

Guest post – Write Lofty and Carry a Big Chisel by Pat Bertram

A while ago when I did my blog book tour for RealmShift and MageSign one of the people kind enough to host me was Pat Bertram. She hosted the interview with Isiah, the protagonist from the books. I'm very pleased now to return the favour and host a guest post from Pat as she travels on her own blog book tour, promoting Daughter Am I. Here Pat gives good advice about a writer's tools of the trade.

Like other construction workers, we creators of word worlds own toolboxes filled with necessary...

Blade Red announces anthology editor

My independent publisher, Blade Red Press, has announced the editor for our first anthology. Many of the regular readers here will be familiar with the AHWA's own Brenton Tomlinson, and it's very exciting to have Brenton on board for Dark Pages, Volume 1.

Read the full announcement here on the Blade Red website.

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Great holidays and bookish treasure

I've been away for the last week, enjoying the peace and quiet of the Bega Valley with Halinka and Penry the Spacklehound. We did all kinds of sight seeing, visited cool little towns and gardens, went horse rising with friends and generally had a ball. It was very relaxing. However, the highlight of the trip for me was finding some treasure.

You know how you look at the bookshelves in antique stores, desperately hoping to stumble across that elusive and rare first edition… Wait, is it just me ...