Alan Baxter's Blog, page 37

Sci-fi six pack for only 99c, including me

So this is exciting: The publisher of my Balance novels, Gryphonwood Press, has put together a book bundle featuring six great sci-fi stories from six top-notch authors, for only 99 cents.

Humans fight off an alien invasion. A race of super-soldiers turn on their creators. A specialist undergoes a dangerous procedure in order to access a secret locked in his mind. Futuristic submarine warfare on alien worlds! A telepath and spice dealer battle gangs and madmen. A futuristic bounty hunter pursues a madman across the galaxy.

A dirty half-dozen science fiction thrills, three novels, two novellas, and a short story, by William Meikle, Justin Macumber, Terry W Ervin II, Terry Mixon, Ryan A Span and that one about the futuristic bounty hunter? That’s my novella, Ghost of the Black: A ‘Verse Full of Scum. So much sci-fi for under a dollar.

This box set will only be available for a short while. Get it now!

BUY YOUR COPY OF SCI-FI SIX-PACK

Kindle | Kindle UK | Kindle AU | Kindle CA | Nook | Kobo | Smashwords

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My son has a message for all you writers!

So off you go then.

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Go one-on-one with me

Those wonderful people at HarperVoyager, publishers of the Alex Caine series, have organised this pretty sweet arrangement. It’s a chance to win a meet-up with me where we can talk about writing, kung fu, dark fantasy and horror or anything you like. Except eggplant. I don’t like eggplant. Click on the image to the left for some details or read on below.

Here’s the official blurb for the comp:

#WIN a one-on-one session with author Alan Baxter! Learn about his writing, the kung fu that inspired Alex Caine and take away a copy of the new book, Abduction (http://bit.ly/1r82daV).

To enter, tell us who you would save from abduction and why!

Sorry Australian residents only.

Leave your entry as a comment on the Voyager Facebook page here.

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Podcast interview with Scenes & Sequels

Dave Kearney of Scenes & Sequels – The podcast for readers and writers of genre fiction – was good enough to interview me about the Alex Caine trilogy and all things writing. I did a reading from Bound and we talked about determination, influences and all that good stuff.

All the details and a download link can be found here.

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Book Expo Australia this weekend in Sydney

This weekend, all weekend, is Book Expo Australia in Sydney. Click on the link there for all the time and location details and a full (very full!) program. All kinds of bookish stuff going on all weekend with loads of cool authors, publishers, booksellers and more.

I’ll be there all day Sunday, on a panel and doing a reading and signing. Get yourselves along to this utterly book-focussed event and come and say hi. Bring books to be signed or buy them on the day. Hope to see you there.

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Alex Caine trilogy all out now and still only $12 total for all three

Today sees the ebook publication of Abduction, Alex Caine #3, in Australia and New Zealand. So now the entire trilogy is out there in ebook (only for Australia and NZ readers at the moment, but as I’ve mentioned before, my agent and editor are working hard to secure US and UK deals for the books too.)

And you can still get the entire trilogy for less than twelve dollars. That’s barely the same as a single movie ticket. For three entire novels. Crazy! Book 1, Bound, is currently still $1.99 – for how long, I’m not sure, so get in quick. Book 2, Obsidian, is out now and only $4.99. Book 3, Abduction, is out today and also only $4.99. That’s all three books for $11.97. That won’t last, so get it while you can. Go to Amazon AUS, iBooks, Google Play or Kobo and search my name. Or start here and select the store of your choice for Bound.

And if you have read these books, or you plan to, and you enjoy them, please talk about them. Tell friends and family, tell colleagues at work, mention them on Twitter or Facebook, Goodreads and so on. Nothing works better than word of mouth, so if you love a book, talk about it and share the love. Authors will love you for it. Your voice is just as important as anyone else’s when you recommend a book to someone. And thanks for reading!

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Here’s your writing motivational for the day. I needed this one myself today.

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The entire Alex Caine trilogy in ebook for less than $12!

It’s only one week until Abduction, Alex Caine #3, comes out in ebook in Australia and New Zealand. That’s very exciting, as it means the entire trilogy will be out there. Sadly, this is only for Australia and NZ readers at the moment, but as I’ve mentioned before, my agent and editor are working hard to secure US and UK deals for the books too. (Feel free to lobby (politely!) Harper Voyager in the US or UK if you’re really keen to read them and don’t live Down Under!)

However, for you lucky ANZ readers, you can get the entire trilogy for less than twelve dollars at the moment. I know, that’s just mental! Book 1, Bound, is currently still $1.99 – for how long, I’m not sure, so get in quick. Book 2, Obsidian, is out now and only $4.99. Book 3, Abduction, is out next week and is available for pre-order now and also only $4.99 – so click to buy it now and it’ll download next week. That’s all three books for $11.97. That won’t last, so get it while you can. Go to Amazon AUS, iBooks, Google Play or Kobo and search my name. Or start here and select the store of your choice for Bound.

And if you have read Bound and Obsidian, or you plan to, and you enjoy them, please talk about them. Tell friends and family, tell colleagues at work, mention them on Twitter or Facebook, Goodreads and so on. Nothing works better than word of mouth, so if you love a book, talk about it and share the love. Authors will love you for it. Your voice is just as important as anyone else’s when you recommend a book to someone. And thanks for reading!

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All about The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings

By now you all know I’m good friends with Angela Slatter. You should also know that I’m a huge fan of her work – it’s great when one of your friends is also one of your favourite writers. One of the best books I’ve read in recent years was Sourdough & Other Stories, Angela’s collection of short stories published by Tartarus Press. Not only is it a collection of brilliant stories, it’s a beautiful artifact of a book too. Tartarus make wonderful things. Well, Angela was supposed to write a sequel collection, but being the contrary writer she is, she wrote a prequel collection instead. It’s called The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings. Tartarus agreed to publish it and Angela scored the amazing Kathleen Jennings to do internal illustrations for it. The result is a book even more beautiful than Sourdough, and equally chock full of amazing stories. I know that, because I’ve read it. The book’s not out til September 1st, but we’re friends, remember? So I got Angela and Kathleen to talk a bit about it and the process of its creation. You can read that below. At the end is a link to the Tartarus Press website where you can pre-order the book, and I really, really recommend that you do. And if you haven’t read Sourdough, buy that too and you can read it while you wait. I’m not just talking up my friends here, either – Sourdough was nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Aurealis Award for Best Collection. These are books you do not want to miss. Over to Angela and Kathleen.

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Angela:

My Author’s Note to Bitterwood goes thus:

The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings is intended as a prequel to Sourdough and Other Stories. It was meant to be a sequel, but the tales were determined to defy me—they insisted upon telling what had happened before, to show how the books of Murcianus came to be, how Ella came into the world, where Hepsibah Ballantyne—who appears only as a name on a headstone in Sourdough’s Lodellan cemetery—began the chain of events that are traced through the mosaic of this book. Bitterwood expands and builds upon the world of Sourdough and, I hope, makes readers feel they are coming home once again.

I’d written “The Coffin-Maker’s Daughter” in 2011 as a standalone story for Steve Jones’s A Book of Horrors anthology, and that seemed the place to start. Hepsibah had gone from being a name on a grave to a powerful presence, so that story is one that threads through the whole of Bitterwood. As I wrote the stories fell into place and I can honestly say that this collection was one of those rare things that a writer dreams of: knowing exactly what was going to happen, when, and to whom. I was able to weave together so many of the things I love: elements of history and myth and fairy tale and folklore. There are little nods to writers as diverse as Umberto Eco and Kim Newman. There are vampires, boarding schools for assassins, pirates who are being hunted to extinction, a brazen head that tells the future, bakeries and rats, transformed badgers and dreadful revenges − and books. So many books.

As the narrative came together I started to think not about a cover, strangely, but about internal illustrations. I love Kathleen Jennings’ artwork and I knew she had an ambition to do endpapers, so I asked if she would like to beta read the stories as I finished them and, if perhaps the spirit moved her, do some illustrations as she read? She said yes, which was lucky for me; luckier still the lovely people at Tartarus took both the collection and agreed to use Kathleen’s illustrations. I feel very fortunate and privileged to have drawings done that truly capture the spirit of the tales I wrote. And of course there was the absolute wicked delight of having Kathleen text me photos of what she’d done as she read a story.

It was such a pleasure to work with her and I hope I was a well-behaved author! I don’t think I was critical or asked for any kangaroos to be added to The Last Supper. I’m doubly spoiled because Kathleen also did the artwork for my limited edition collection of Black-Winged Angels (Ticonderoga Publications), which echoes the silhouette technique of Arthur Rackham, but has its own wonderful unique beauty.

Kathleen:

Angela would keep dropping hints about the most beautiful parts of her stories, often before they were written – badgers (sigh) and a school for poison girls, doors in trees, dangerous quilts… so any workload-related resolve was fairly well weakened by the time she sent me the manuscript, because now they were here! They were real stories in the world, and I could read them!

I spent a lot of time in cafes, reading and sketching, sending Angela texts with reactions and pictures – each gaining energy from the other’s excitement! We’re still doing this, if you saw our comments back and forth when Tartarus released pictures of the Actual Book.

It was a lovely way to work, actually: just a free hand to sketch my way through the book. Because the original plan was to try and sell Tartarus on the idea of endpapers, I was going for multiple small images and the individual pressure was off – I could just draw anything that caught my fancy. And then Angela would edit it out of the manuscript. But anyway.

I’m still haunted by images from this book. Images and titles (‘Now all pirates are gone’). And Tartarus did a lovely job of putting the pictures in just where they ought to be – Angela and I had to check in with each other to say, “Did you see where they put the badgers? I knowwww!”

Still haven’t drawn endpapers.

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The Tartarus Press website is here and you can buy Sourdough & Other Stories here (This is a link to the paperback. I think the beautiful hardback is sold out, but worth sending an email maybe) and pre-order The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings here. Go. Now!

You can learn more about Angela here and more about Kathleen here.

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Cultural appropriation and the inclusion of the other

I read this excellent article by Jim C Hines today. I agree with it completely. There has been much discussion on published writing, especially SFF, being an old white man’s club and that we need to see more diversity in the stories we read. Then there are people saying that white people shouldn’t/can’t/aren’t allowed to write other cultures. It’s not actually a problem, because the second opinion is bullshit. Let me explain.

I don’t believe any subject or culture is off-limits for fiction. With fiction we actively engage with the world around us, we interrogate our reality and look at how it reflects back at us and we try to make some sense of it. Even the most dense, hard SF is, at its core, an exploration of simple humanity. In my world I’m surrounded by people of many races and cultures. I’m surrounded by people of varying sexuality. I will absolutely reflect that in my fiction. If I don’t, the darkest and most fantastical part of any dark fantasy or horror I write is this imagined homogenous world of hetero cis white people like me. That’s just horrible. I do not want to be a part of that vanilla environment.

But, and here’s the big but, I also firmly believe in the simple premise of don’t be a dick. I’m not going to take a white character and simply blackface them for the sake of some perceived cultural diversity. I’m not going to take a hetero guy and stick someone else’s cock in his hand and cry, “See! A gay character!” That’s not only disrespectful, it’s just bad writing.

But I’m equally not going to try to make a point of otherness either. Unless a character’s sexuality is key to the story, it’s not going to be a big deal beyond her saying “my girlfriend” rather than “my boyfriend”. Thereby we know she digs girls, that’s a part of who she is and that’s all we need to know. I’ve written gay couples who just act like any other couple throughout the story, because, you know, they’re humans. The fact that they’re together says enough. Unless the practice of their sexuality is key to the story, it doesn’t matter. Just like in real life, you don’t spend all your time with your gay friends talking about their lovelife, or your straight friends, for that matter. Most of the time, if not all of it, they’re just your friends and you talk about all the normal shit.

My story “The Darkness in Clara”, published in SQ Mag has a gay couple as it’s central protagonists. Their gayness has a direct influence on the story as the story deals with country town bigotry. I hope I did a good job with that yarn, but the story is more about bigotry that about being gay. The characters are just people who have their own problems to deal with. That story is free to read online, so you can judge for yourself.

Same thing with People of Colour (PoC). I know people of many cultural backgrounds, so I include that in my stories. In the Alex Caine books there are people described as having black skin, of Maori descent, of Chinese descent and so on. Those people add to the richness and diversity of my fictional world just like they do to my real world. But they’re just people. Their race is not relevant to their humanity or their role in the story. If and when a cultural history or race becomes relevant, then I use it and I try really hard to use it respectfully and accurately. I research, I ask friends, I try to get beta readers on the case. I’ve done proof reading for a publisher when they have an American writing a scene in England, because that’s my culture. In one case, I corrected the English characters so they said pavement instead of sidewalk and torch instead of flashlight and stuff like that. Otherwise, that would be lazy appropriation on the part of the American author not doing their research and not recognising difference.

When that laziness and disrespect is poured onto a culture or group already marginalised and struggling for recognition and inclusion, it’s even worse. It’s disrespectful and emotionally damaging. But should that mean we can’t or shouldn’t do it? Hell, no. It means we need to work harder, be better and do it right.

I try to get that stuff right. If I get it wrong, I want to be told. I’ll try harder. But to suggest that anything is off-limits is bullshit. It’s being a dick that’s off-limits and that will always be the case. So this long arse post is basically just me agreeing with Jim Hines in his post that I linked at the start. But I felt it necessary to say so in detail for myself. I’d be interested in your opinions.

EDIT: All this applies to female characters as well, of course, but that really should go without saying. They make around 50% of the world and they’re human too.

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