Alan Baxter's Blog, page 136

New review for MageSign

A new reader review has appeared on the Amazon page for MageSign which is very nice to read. It’s not only a good review (which is always welcome) but also gets a good grip on the concept behind the book. I like reviews like this one - short and sweet, that really nail the ideas. I also like anything says I articulate uncompromising violence. This is the review:

In a clever yet bloody tradition, Alan Baxter has delivered a gripping sequel to his debut title ‘RealmShift’. Founding a refreshing app

David Eddings dies at 77

I picked this news up on Twitter yesterday and I’m still having trouble learning all the details, but it has been confirmed. It’s very sad news indeed that David Eddings, fantasy storyteller extraordinaire has died. Eddings was the author of many books, but most significantly for me were The Belgariad and The Mallorean.

Pawn Of Prophecy, Book 1 of The Belgariad

I remember being a teenager of about thirteen when I first discovered The Belgariad and it got to the point where I was desperately awaiti

Win a signed copy of RealmShift - one week left

I’m in the middle of running a contest for someone to win a signed copy of my novel RealmShift. All the details were in this post last week. There’s only one week left before the draw, so get onto it if you want to be in with a chance to win. There’s been a lot of entries so far and I’ve tried to respond to every entry personally, but apologies if I missed anyone. Rest assured that all correct answers have gone into the draw. There’s only been one wrong answer so far, which is funny given who it

2009 Australian Shadows Awards open

As reported at Horrorscope on Friday, Australia’s top honour for horror fiction, the Australian Horror Writers Association’s Australian Shadows Award, is now open for 2009.

In previous years, short stories competed with novels and anthologies, but from 2009 onwards, awards will be issued for the best works in Short Fiction (short stories), Long Fiction (novellas, novels, and single-author collections), and Edited Publication (for editors of anthologies and horror fiction magazines).

The Australian

Author 2.0 Program launched today

My good friend and fellow indie author Joanna Penn, from The Creative Penn, has been hard at work putting together a new online training program for indie and self publishing authors. It’s called the Author 2.0 Program and it’s all about using Web 2.0 to produce, promote and sell your books.

There are 12 modules to the program:

Module 1: Writing 2.0
Module 2: Self publishing and Print-on-Demand
Module 3: Ebooks
Module 4: Websites
Module 5: Author Entrepreneur
Module 6: Blogging
Module 7: Marketing 2.0
Mo

#fictionfriday at Twitter

J M Strother over at Mad Utopia came up with this idea for authors to build up their platform using Twitter. The hashtag symbol is used for Twitter searches and is a powerful tool for following trends or news items. Strother has suggested using a hashtag of #fictionfriday to post regular pieces of short fiction on your website or blog, then tweet the link on Twitter every Friday, accompanied with #fictionfriday. He’s modeled the concept on the popular #followfriday hashtag, which is a great way

A little more publishing success

This is what makes it all worthwhile.

I would write whether people wanted to read my stuff or not, let’s get that clear from the outset. I’m a writer. I have stories to tell. I love it when other people read my stories and enjoy them, especially when they tell me what moved them and why. I was ecstatic when I heard that two customers at Infinitas Books in Parramatta had pre-ordered MageSign after reading RealmShift, before I’d even finished writing it. Things like that make a writer glow inside.

Win a signed copy of RealmShift

I thought it was about time I ran a competition here through my website and gave away a book. I guess I’m just feeling very generous today. It’s also a transparent attempt to get more people reading my work - I’ll be honest about that from the outset in the interests of full disclosure. Of course, reading my books is reward in itself, but there’s never any harm in offering something for free.

Here’s the deal. On my website here are downloadable PDF files containing the entire first three chapters

What’s the one millionth word, Noob?

According to the Global Language Monitor, an association of academics that tracks the use of new words, the English language will celebrate its one millionth word next month. Just what that word might be is obviously the subject of much speculation. With the rapid growth of language recently, it could be something very weird. The massive influx of various social media and other online activities has given rise to numerous new words. In the running for the coveted one millionth spot are “defriend

Terminal Illness now added to the Dark Shorts page

I do my best to keep this site updated with as much new stuff as possible. In that regard, I’ve just added my flash fiction story Terminal Illness to the Dark Shorts page.

This story was originally published in the March 2009 edition of Antipodean SF. I was really pleased to get something accepted by Antipodean SF as it’s a web magazine that I really like, and I love their idea. They regularly publish good quality flash fiction. Flash fiction is the term used for any really short stories, usually