Alan Baxter's Blog, page 40

Writing isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but at least there are video games – Guest post from Jo Anderton

I host a guest post on this here blog from time to time for various reasons. This one is from my friend and amazing writer, Jo Anderton. Jo’s new book, Guardian (Book 3 of The Veiled Worlds), the final book of the trilogy, is out TOMORROW! It’s a fantastic series and so worth your time and effort. Meanwhile, Jo’s been very honest about what it’s really like to be a writer sometimes and I couldn’t agree with this post more. – Alan

Writing isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, but at least there are video games

Jo Anderton

I’ve never liked the term “writer’s block”. Even now, I’m not keen on it. Writer’s block sounds like a plumbing problem, with a quick and easy answer possibly involving a plunger. I prefer writer’s “there’s stuff going on and it kinda sucks so let’s learn to be gentle to ourselves, yeah?” Experience has taught me this. Although I admit it’s not as catchy.

There was a lot of that “stuff” going on in my life last year. Some of it was writing related. Some of it was real life related. All of it sucked, and it got in the way, and my writing just… stopped.

This had never happened to me before, and it was awful.

I felt like a failure.

Urg.

There was a long while when I couldn’t have written those words. I’m still tempted to delete them. I didn’t talk about them either, except to my closest writing friends, the ones who would really understand. For everyone else I plastered on the smile, posted on Facebook and tweeted on Twitter, went to work, and neatly changed the subject if writing or stories or books came up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to write. I had ideas, I had plans. I even had deadlines. But every time I sat down and managed to squeeze words out onto the keyboard, I hated them. And I mean that in the absolute ugliest sense of the word. I loathed every single thing I came up with, with all my body and soul. They made me sick. They made me angry. They made me cry.

So I gave up trying.

At the time, I thought this made me useless and pointless and absolutely not a writer. But now, I think it’s the best thing I could have done. I let it all go, stopped hating on myself, and found a distraction. In video games. In the Giant Bomb 2009 Persona 4 Endurance Run, to be precise.

Video games have been a distraction of choice for some time now, but this was different. For one thing, there wasn’t any actual playing involved. Instead, hubby and I were absolutely addicted to a video of a couple of blokes playing a long, complicated game that we had already played. Yes, you heard me. We played Persona 4 ages ago and loved it. We knew all the plot twists, how to get the true ending, and when not to cast bufu. We can fuse personas like a boss, sing the Japanese Junes jingle, and spent way too much money in Tokyo on merchandise.

So why the addiction? Jeff and Vinnie from Giant Bomb are hilarious to listen to, so that definitely helped, but I don’t think that quite explains it. At least not for me. It was… comforting. Does that sound strange? Because we’d already been there, explored the world, and knew the characters so well, it felt a little like coming home.

Every day, for at least a couple of months, when I wasn’t at work or forced to leave the house for some other “real life” reason, we sat on the couch and watched the boys from Giant Bomb play Persona 4. At first, I felt awfully guilty about it. I mean, can you think of a lazier thing to do? So I fought the addiction, tried to write, failed, and ended up back on the couch feeling miserable. But after a while, I just gave myself permission to rest, and enjoy it.

That’s where my whole “there’s stuff going on and it kinda sucks so let’s learn to be gentle to ourselves” came in. I stopped being so damned hard on myself. I’m not a blocked drain that needs chemicals or plungers or whatever it takes to get moving again (and this is the last time I use that analogy!). I needed rest, or healing, or something like that, and the Giant Bomb endurance run was the form my healing took.

So that’s what we did, and it worked. I came out the other side of those 155 videos feeling refreshed and ready to write again. I have a few theories as to why. First and foremost, I needed to stop, and I gave myself permission to do so. I know I keep repeating this but I think it’s vital. There’s a lot of advice out there for writers, and one that gets repeated a lot is the whole “write everyday” thing. I agree with this to some extent – not necessarily that you have to write everyday, but rather the message that dedication and routine are essential. However, I now believe that you also need to know when not to write (and learn to tell the difference between laziness, and a genuine need to take time out, or refresh the creativity well).

Second, my writing break had time constraints. I only stopped long enough to watch the endurance run, beginning to end. Which is a considerable amount of time, I am aware of that! But my point is that it wasn’t indefinite. It was a nice, neat little package of downtime. When I was finished with it, I could tape it up, put it away, and get back to normal.

Last but not least is that whole “coming home” thing. I didn’t just mope around feeling awful, but I totally indulged in something that might sound strange to other people, but made me happy. No stresses, no pressure – I wasn’t even doing the playing! I just sunk back into a world I knew and loved, and enjoyed watching other people experience it for the first time.

This is what I’ve learned. Sometimes, writing is hard. And that’s fine. Sometimes, life makes it impossible. And that’s fine too. Just remember to be kind to yourself, and always have a goal to get back on track.

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You can find Jo Anderton online at http://joanneanderton.com/wordpress/ and on Twitter @joanneanderton

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Signed ARCs of Bound being given away at Continuum X

So you all know I’ll be at Continuum X. My schedule is posted here. Well, it turns out those awesome people at HarperVoyager have made some ARCs of Bound available. An ARC is an Advanced Reading Copy, so it’s not the final version of the book – the artwork on the cover, the back cover blurb and some internal corrections are not final – but it is the full novel. There aren’t that many changes between the ARC and the final version coming out on July 1st, to be honest. The front and back cover will be a bit different, especially the back, but the content is purely some corrected typos and a few very small changes that you probably wouldn’t even notice unless you’re particularly pedantic. You are? Then I challenge you to find the changes!

Anyway, so at Continuum X, we’ll be giving away a bunch of these ARCs. Every time I give one away, I’ll sign it for you. If you get a giveaway from the organisers, come and find me and I’ll sign it for you. The best chance of getting one will be to come to any of the panels I’m on. I’ll give away at least one ARC at every panel I’m sitting on, and at least two at my reading. Can’t say fairer than that. Well, maybe I could, but I have to eat, you know?

See you at Continuum! I’ll be arriving around midday on Saturday.

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On output and quality

I’ve been reading a few posts lately that seem to contradict each other. What do you know – there’s no one true rule. I won’t bother linking to all those posts, at least partly because I can’t remember where they all are. But the general gist of it all was either:

Write as much as you can, it’s the only way to be noticed and have a career!

vs

Stop just writing for the sake of it! There’s too much shit out, you need to write well, not lots.

Obviously I’ve paraphrased the general messages there. The thing is, they’re both right. The reason they’re both right is because there are many types of writers out there with many styles of work and opportunity to write. It also depends what you want from your career.

You certainly need more than one book to build a career, unless you’re Harper Lee. It’s true that the more people see from you, the more likely they are to check out your stuff and the more likely you are to build a loyal fan base. But don’t be in a rush.

If you write purely for output’s sake and you’re desperate to get as much stuff out there as quickly as possible, then you may well get noticed. The thing is, your work is likely to be fairly mediocre. Are you happy with a mediocre body of work? If so, then bully for you, but I think you’re doing a disservice to yourself and readers. There’s a lot of noise out there. That’s where the second generalisation above supersedes the first. It’s better to send out the absolute best stuff you can. It will mean you have work you can be absolutely proud of and readers will know they can expect quality from you. There are plenty of readers happy to consume masses of mediocre fiction, but is that really where you want to be?

However, this doesn’t mean that prolific writers are therefore all mediocre. Some people are excellent and prolific. A lot of that has to do with how much writing time they create. Two good examples of what I’m talking about are Ted Chiang and Jay Lake. Chiang publishes stuff very infrequently, but his skill is exemplary. Lake writes heaps of stuff, and his skill is exemplary too. Jay Lake writes everywhere he can. I don’t know about Chiang, he writes whenever he writes, but obviously has a much lower output rate. Regardless, these two are producing excellent work at very different rates. They’ve both built excellent skills over many years, not through purely getting work out as fast as possible, but by building up at a pace that suited them and ensured they put out quality stuff. (Sadly, Jay Lake has recently entered hospice care after a long struggle with cancer, so it’s good for us that he was so prolific. Vale, Mr Lake.)

So ask yourself – are you putting out the best work you possibly can, whether that means one story a year or ten? Three books a year or one every three years?

Or are you happy churning out mediocre work and just adding to the noise?

It’s really okay however you answer, but you need to make sure you answer the question honestly and then decide whether or not that’s really who you want to be.

I’ve created a lot of writing time in my life and I can be fairly prolific as a result. But I always try to make the best work I can and always improve. I like to think I’m managing that, very slowly. How about you?

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Bound reviewed at Marianne de Pierres’ blog

The early reviews of Bound are starting to come in, and the reaction so far is pretty fantastic. I’m so pleased people appear to be enjoying it. Recently Marianne de Pierres was kind enough to host on her blog a review from Jamie Marriage. Here’s an excerpt:

Bound is a fantastically gritty and modern view of dark fantasy, with twisted mythologies, sexual deviancy, and unapologetic characters. Most chapters have plenty of action, but not enough to hide the fact that there is a great story-line and dialogue going on from cover to cover. Greed, gluttony, wrath, and lust are all demonstrated in large portions throughout, and no character is without their vices and imperfections. It all comes together to create a book that’s difficult to put down and thoroughly worth re-reading. Baxter has proven he has real skill with this genre, and if this first novel is anything to go by, there are even greater things to come.

Honestly, it really doesn’t get any better than that. Read the full review here:

http://www.mariannedepierres.com/jamie-reviews-bound-by-alan-baxter/

I’ll be over here Snoopy dancing.

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Bound launch evite and the first 3 chapters free online!

I apologise in advance. My new book, Bound, the first Alex Caine book, comes out in almost exactly one month, on the 1st July. So my apology is because I’m going to be crapping on a lot about this book over the next month or so. I really hope I don’t bore you, and I’ll try to be interesting on other subjects too, but the reality is, I have a fucking book coming out!I’m equal parts excited, nervous and panicking. But yes, if I go on about this a lot, please forgive me. It’s not something that happens often.

So, with that in mind, here’s some more Bound news. As I’ve already blogged, there will be pre-release copies available at Supanova Sydney and a few ARCs up for grabs at Continuum in Melbourne. The book will be available in shops from July 1st or so. But the first official launch of Bound is on July 10th in Sydney and you’re all invited. Margo Lanagan is launching the book. Margo Frickin’ Lanagan who writes with a frickin’ pen! (She does, you know – writes everything longhand first. Mad.) I mean it, all of you are invited. Please come if you can, it would wonderful to see you there. It’s at Kinokuniya Bookshop, as I’ve mentioned before, but now there’s a proper electronic invite with an RSVP email address so Kino can get an idea of numbers. That’s below – click on it for a larger image.

Meanwhile, to whet your appetites (cos I know you all have voracious appetites) I’ve put a PDF of the first three chapters of Bound on the official Bound webpage here. So, go and have a read and I hope you like it. I hope you like it enough to buy the book. Nothing would make me happier. Well, world peace would make me happier. As would a cure for all cancers. And so on. But, in context, you know what I mean.

Here’s the invite – I really look forward to seeing people there.

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Adelaide signing event for Bound, July 19th

I’ve already blogged about the Bound events happening in Sydney at Supanova in June and the official launch at Kinokinuya on July 10th (and some pre-launch stuff at Continuum in Melbourne). All those details here. But Adelaide is getting some love too. I’m coming down to Collins Booksellers Edwardstown, Shop T54, Castle Plaza, 992 South Road, Edwardstown, Adelaide, South Australia on Saturday July 19th at 1pm, where I’ll be signing copies and generally hanging out to have a good time.

There’s a Facebook event you can join here to stay updated.

As the bookstore say, “If you enjoy Jim Butcher and Kevin Herne, then you will love Alan Baxter.” I can’t complain about that kind of comparison.

So if you’re anywhere near Adelaide on July 19th, I’d love to see you there.

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Amazon, Hachette and the swinging of gorilla dicks

I was planning to blog today about the Amazon/Hachette debacle, but good old Jay Kristoff has said pretty much everything I wanted to say, so I’ll just direct you over there (link at the end). But I will add one thing – I’m generally a fan of Amazon and the amazing things they’ve done for writers and readers. The game is constantly changing and big dogs will always come out on top in the fight. But there’s a line where game-changers become game-dictators and then it’s a problem.

This is what Jay is talking about, so I’ll leave that there. But remember also that Amazon are trying to corner ebooks with mobi when everyone else (and I mean EVERYONE) is using ePub. This is something they’ve been doing all along – and you don’t even get to own the mobi. Only a licence to read it. So while you’re considering Jay’s words, consider that too and maybe reconsider your choice of ereader and ebook. You can shop just as easily online for print and ebook with Barnes & Noble, kobo.com and so on. (I think I might do some research and blog about alternative stores at some point.)

Regardless, do as Jay says and exercise your consumer power. If we all do this, Amazon’s strongarm, bully-boy bullshit might just swing that big old gorilla cock right back into their own face. (Blame Jay for this analogy.)

Now, go and read his post here.

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My Continuum X schedule

Continuum X is just around the corner. Have you voted in the Ditmars? If not, stop reading this and read this. Then go and vote! Then come back and read the rest of this. I’ll wait. *starts filing nails*

*makes a cuppa*

*squeezes in a quick game of Hearthstone*

You’ve voted? Good. You’re making the world of Australian SFF a better place.

So, other than the Ditmar Awards, loads of other stuff is happening at Continuum X and here’s my schedule:

Signings – Saturday 13:00-13:30 in The Midway (Foyer)

I’m pretty sure there won’t be any copies of Bound available yet, but I’m happy to sign anything else. Really, I’ll sign anything. Surprise me

Judging a Book By Its Cover panel – Saturday 15:00-16:00 in The Hall of Mirrors

with: Alan Baxter, Nalini Haynes, Kate Cuthbert, Laura Wilkinson, Dirk Strasser

This should be an interesting panel!

Readings – Saturday 16:00-17:00 in Sideshow Alley

with: Alan Baxter, P.S. Cottier, Helen Stubbs

While there won’t be copies of Bound available, I will be reading an excerpt from the book, so if you want a sneak preview, come along to this.

Demystifying Social Media panel – Saturday 18:00-19:00 in The Haunted House

with: Nalini Haynes, Alan Baxter, Jim C. Hines, Satima Flavell, Helen Stubbs

This is always too big a subject for a single panel, but we’ll do our best, I’m sure.

The Aliens Are Too Human! panel – Sunday 10:00-11:00 in The Hall of Mirrors

with: Alan Baxter, Steve Cameron, Darren Sanderson, Bismuth Hoban, Stacey Larner

I’m looking forward to this. No Star Trek galactic DNA seeding bollocks here, please.

At the Crossroads: Music and Genre Fiction panel – Sunday 15:00-16:00 in The Haunted House

with: Julia Svaganovic, Jason Franks, Narrelle Harris, Alan Baxter

RAWK!

How To Make a Podcast panel – Sunday 16:00-17:00 in The Big Top

with Sean Wright, Alan Baxter, Kirstyn McDermott, Terry Frost, Alex Pierce

I’m sure my co-panelists will be far more knowledgable than me on this one, even though I’ve co-hosted over 100 episodes of Authorcast, but there you go!

So that’s me actually fairly busy at the con this year, but that’s cool. Plenty of bar time in between. And I’m sure I’ll be checking out a lot of the other interesting panels and things going on. Come and find me, say hello, let’s have a beer or something.

See you there!

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Albedo1 reviews SQ Mag 14 very positively and is very kind to my story

Roderick McDonald over at Albedo1.com has reviewed issue 14 of SQ Mag. It’s a fine review and says very nice things about my novelette.

“The Darkness in Clara” by Alan Baxter punched you in the face right from the start. On discovering her long-time partner Clara hanging by the neck as a result of suicide, Michelle feels she has to dig up the past to try to fathom the depths of the departed’s soul. Maybe not a wise decision, nevertheless she goes back to the town where Clara grew up only to find severe hostility. Of the many characters there was nobody to beat Wendy. What great descriptions you get in the story! Anyway, it turns out that Wendy and her pals detested Clara and had no sympathy for her suicide. Something in the past was the source of irritation and it was possibly to do with black magic!

An uncomfortable story to read because of the subject matter, it nevertheless became gripping especially with very believable characters that don’t miss and hit the wall. A really good story!

Can’t get much better praise than that.

You can read the full review here.

And you can read SQ Mag and my story here.

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Bound official Sydney launch at Kinokuniya, plus Continuum and Supanova news!

This writing life sure has its ups and downs, often to great extremes. There has been one huge downer recently, but I’ll keep that to myself – I don’t want to bring you guys down and, after all, the nature of a down is that it can only go up again, right? Thankfully there have been some real highs too, so I’ll share those. These really are Good Things!

Firstly, Bound, Alex Caine #1, is now on Goodreads. You can add it to your shelves and list it among the books you want to read – click here to find it. It would be great if you could add it and give the book some early exposure among your pals.

And talking of exposure, I’ll be on the promotional tour soon, starting with Continuum X, this year’s National Science Fiction convention in Melbourne, over the first weekend in June (7th – 9th). Bound is officially out on July 1st, so I don’t think we’ll have copies for Continuum, but there will be Bound-related stuff going on, and maybe a few ARCs up for grabs. If you can get along to Continuum, come and say hi and we’ll have a drink at the bar. I’ll be on a few panels and doing a couple of signings and a reading too, so plenty happening. Signings will most likely be previous things, as Bound won’t be out yet, but I’ll definitely do a reading from Bound, so if you want an early sneak peek, come and have a listen then.

Talking of sneak peeks, over the next weekend in June (13th-15th), I’m very excited to say I’ll be an author guest at Supanova in Sydney. It’ll be my first Supanova. And here I can reveal that we’ll have the first official pre-release launch of Bound during the Supanova weekend and there will be copies of the book available. If you get to Supanova, you can get the book three weeks before it’s officially out and available in shops. And I’ll be there to sign it for you. Here’s the list of author guests – I’m honoured to be in this kind of company.

But, if you can’t make Continuum or Supanova (or even if you can) and you’re in or near Sydney, here’s the skinny on the:

Official public launch of Bound

Thursday, July 10th at Kinokuniya Bookshop

Level 2, The Galeries, 500 George Street (opposite QVB) Sydney NSW 2000

From 6.00pm for  6.30pm start.

And I’m very chuffed and more than a little honoured to announce that the wonderful Margo Lanagan will be there to launch the book.

Margo is a good friend and a tremendous writer. Honestly, you need to seek out and read her stuff. This launch should be a good party, with reading, signing, nibbles, booze and great people. Of course, if you just can’t wait and you buy the book on release day, that’s absolutely fine – You’re more than welcome to bring it along to the launch if you want to get it signed and join in the festivities.

Please tell everyone who you think might be interested and help me spread the word about these events. I can’t wait to share the story of Alex Caine with you.

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