Alan Baxter's Blog, page 138

Bloggers Unite For Hunger And Hope

Today is Unite For Hunger And Hope day. It’s a simple concept that bloggers everywhere post about global hunger to raise awareness of the situation. From the Unite website, here are a few facts and figures:

• Right now, more than 500 million people are living in “absolute poverty” and more than 15 million children die of hunger every year.

• World Health Organization estimates that one-third of the population is underfed and another third is starving.

• Even in the United States, 46 percent of Afri

The power of words and perception

I’m a big fan of using words in powerful ways. I suppose that’s a given, seeing that I’m a writer. But regardless, when people are clever with words and language and create something more than it first appears to be I always applaud the effort. This is a great example, originally created for the AARP U@50 video contest. It won placed second place.

.

Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics

I picked this little gem up from S F Signal, one of my all time favourite blogs. If you’re a sci-fi fan you should definitely add them to your RSS feed. This particular piece is something that has always fascinated me, for its brevity and completeness. Very few things are truly brief and complete, but Asimov nailed robot laws with this one. Here’s a young Asimov explaining his laws:

Edit: If you can’t see the vid below, you can see it here on S F Signal or here at YouTube.

The Three Laws of Roboti

Friday Guest Blog - Five Months Hard Writing by Avery K Tingle

Today we have a gust blog from my friend Avery K Tingle. I met Avery through the ever expanding virtual world of writer related social networks and was impressed by the broad scope of his work. He’s also a top bloke. Here he talks about what it is to be a freelance writer, especially in this current unstable climate.

Last fall was a high point for me. I had successfully ‘competed’ in my first NaNoWriMo, and parlayed the success into my first two freelancing gigs. I wasn’t taking it very seriously

fReado - another book marketing portal

There are so many online places for book marketing and book networking these days. Places like Goodreads and LibraryThing have been around a while now, Amazon tries to be way more than just a book shop and so on. I’ve recently stumbled across another one called fReado.

Rather than trying to be a place that is first and foremost about readers and their favourite books, fReado is set up as an unashamedly targeted marketing site. Authors put their books up there along with a small profile page and t

Rejection, the burden of all writers

Rejection is an inevitable part of the writing life. If you’re not good with rejection, you should never even entertain the idea of being a writer. It never ceases to amaze me just how belligerent some people get about rejections. And often, the most vocal are usually the worst writers, refusing to learn from critiques and improve their craft.

No matter how good you think you might be as a writer, you can always improve. My many years learning and teaching martial arts has taught me that there’s

Back in the saddle

G’day everyone. I know that things have been a bit quiet around here lately, and for that I apologise. I recently celebrated ten years of marriage with my wife and we had a huge party, a big Renewal of Vows ceremony and associated revelry. I had visitors from interstate and, at one point, ten friends and family members visiting from the UK. It’s been a bit hectic. It’s also been absolutely brilliant and now that everyone has gone back things seem a bit empty. Everything’s a bit too quiet, like t

The Life Counted In Pages Meme

I picked this up over at the Literary Escapism blog. As things have been so quiet here at The Word lately, I thought it might be an interesting interlude until I get my life back. (For those that don’t know, my wife and I recently celebrated ten years of marriage with a big party that was essentially the wedding we never had ten years ago. There are lots of overseas and interstate visitors and the party looks like continuing for another week or so yet!)

So this is The Life Counted In Pages Meme,

Friday Guest Blog - Marketing yourself by David B Coe

For today’s guest blog I’m very happy to present my good friend David B Coe. David is a trad published author (through Tor) and shares here his thoughts about marketing a novel, however it’s published.

Hi. I’m David B. Coe, an American fantasy author. I’ve published ten novels, including the LonTobyn Chronicle (a trilogy), Winds of the Forelands (five books), and Blood of the Southlands (another planned trilogy — the first two are out). My most recent book, which came out in January, is called

MageSign reviewed at Horrorscope

Check out the latest review for MageSign posted at Horrorscope - The Australian Dark Fiction Web Log. If you remember, they reviewed RealmShift a couple of weeks ago.

It’s a good review, very thorough and honest. The best thing is that the reviewer decided that MageSign was an improvement on RealmShift and gave it 4 out of 5, which is always satisfying. If I can improve my craft with every book I write, I’ll be very happy.

.