Alan Baxter's Blog, page 130

Continuum 5 Galaxies By Gaslight – the report

I'm very tired today. It's been an excellent weekend, but tiring. This is because I flew down to Melbourne (boy, are my arms tired… boom-tish) for the Continuum convention, Galaxies By Gaslight. There was a general steampunk theme to this fifth Continuum and it was a lot of fun to be involved in. I'll write a bit about it below and be sure to click on any linked names you see and you'll learn about some great SF writers.

The general mood of the con was quite quiet and calm. It wasn't ever really

Continuum this weekend

Things might be a bit quiet around here for the next few days as I'm off to the Continuum convention in Melbourne.

I'll be on a panel at 2pm on Saturday with four other fine members of the Australian Horror Writers' Association, talking about what still scares us in this modern age. There's loads of other stuff going on all weekend too, so check program on the website and come along to join in the fun. Wave me down for a chat if you like, I'm a friendly guy most of the time.

I won't have much acce

Drive Thru Stuff

@mlvalentine on Twitter pointed me in the direction of this very cool site – DriveThruStuff.com.

It's an online store where you can buy and download all kinds of… well, stuff. There's RPG (Role Playing Game) stuff, comics, wargaming and so on. But of course, my real interest lies in the fiction sections: DriveThruFantasy, DriveThruHorror and DriveThruSciFi. These pages are packed with all kinds of great fiction, mainstream titles and indies, all at a wide variety of prices.

I've now got my books a

Coraline the movie – review

I'm a massive Neil Gaiman fan but I should start here by saying that I haven't read the book of Coraline yet. I'd read and reread the Sandman comics as a kid (I bought them as they were published) and have since collected the trade paperbacks as well to read them again. I just love the Sandman stories by Gaiman. I hadn't read any of his novels until people started drawing comparisons between my first book, RealmShift, and Gaiman's American Gods. So I read that novel and I could see why people we

The missing day from the blog book tour

Ruthie over at Ruthie's Book Reviews has got her internet connection back and posted the review of MageSign that was supposed to be part of the blog book tour. You can read the review here. There's also a chance to get a free ebook copy of MageSign by leaving a comment on the review page.

Thanks Ruth!

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2009 Australian conventions I'll be attending

No, I won't be at over two thousand conventions. I wanted to let you all know about a few convention appearances that are coming up in the remaining months of this year. It's wonderful when people treat me like a real writer and invite me to be a part of these things.

The first one is coming up in a couple of weeks. It's the fifth Continuum, in Melbourne, from the 14th to the 16th of August, 2009. I'll be there on the 15th and 16th (Saturday and Sunday) and I'll be taking part in a panel at 2pm o

My short story "Cemetery" published at Horror Bound Magazine

I recently discovered Horror Bound Magazine. It's a great little online zine for all things horror, with book reviews, featured authors, interviews, art, photography, poetry and short fiction. The editors over there were kind enough to accept a short story from me for publication and it's just been released with Issue 7.

According to the site: Horror Bound Magazine is a literary magazine primarily for horror fiction, however, we also feature dark fantasy, noir, thriller and speculative fiction.

Y

Part 2 of my Author's Den interview up now

The second part of my interview with Lorna Suzuki over at Author's Den is up now if you're interested in having a read. This part talks more about the process of my writing and my rituals and habits.

You can find the interview here.

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The Esperanto Twitter storm

My friends on Twitter @keikomushi and @IronMan1176 were having a conversation and languages came up. IronMan said he was studying a bit of Spanish before bed. Keiko said: "I tried to learn Esperanto a few times, but I have always had trouble with languages."

I opened my virtual mouth and caused a bit of upset. (Yeah, it happens quite often.)

You see, I've always been mildly amused by Esperanto. Essentially it's a language invented as an attempt at a global standard. Here's some of the Wikipedia en

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