Alan Baxter's Blog, page 56

New year’s resolutions be damned, these things I WILL do

I don’t really believe in new year’s resolutions. I get the concept, and it’s an entirely admirable pursuit, but it’s often like crash dieting or NaNoWriMo – it’s fundamentally unsustainable. People make all these promises to themselves in the heat and excitement of a new year, and then sink in guilt and stress when those things may not come to pass.

After all, January 1st is only one day after December 31st and it’s entirely arbitrary that we choose to tack onto that day a new identifier for the year. The Chinese aren’t celebrating their new year until February 10th next year, for example. It’s all bollocks, as is all time. As Terry Pratchett said, we just invented time to stop everything happening at once. Which is funny, but also not true. Time is a purely human invention to help us make sense of things and organise when to meet at the pub.

My simple point is this – making specific resolutions for the new year is a fine sentiment, but it’s often very hard to follow through. For example, saying, “I will lose 20kg in 2013″ is potentially opening a person up to failure. But if you say, “I will be a healthier person in 2013: eat healthy, exercise and try to lose some weight”, then that’s more of an attitude than a particular goal and easier to hang onto for a longer period of time. It’s easy to look at that sentiment throughout the year and try to stick to it, as there’s no specific measurement involved that might slip away. And if you fall back from that attitude for a while, it’s pretty easy to look at it, remind yourself and get back on that horse to ride again. Giddy up, motherfucker, there’s no point in crying when you could be trying.

So instead of making new year’s resolutions, I’m going to list a bunch of things I intend to hang onto all year. Not resolutions, but attitudes to never forget. These are ways of being that I’ve always tried to maintain, and intend to maintain into the future.

So, in 2013 (and beyond):

I will continue to work hard at being the best writer I can be, because this shit isn’t easy, nor should it be.

I will finish all the things I start.

I will continue to pursue publication in all the places I’ve yet to crack and further publications in the places I’ve already been featured.

I will have more work published.

I will write novels, novellas and short fiction, because stories are great in all sizes.

I will grab every opportunity that comes my way, because I am a fucking professional and time is made, not found.

I will celebrate the successes of all other writers, because their success is proof I can succeed too. And they deserve it.

I will share the good shit and ignore the rubbish.

I will help my writer friends wherever I can, because I didn’t get where I am now without help.

I will strive to excel and improve, because where I am now is nowhere near where I want to be. I want the moon and the fucking stars, baby.

I will continue to read like a voracious word devourer, because a writer who doesn’t read is a crappy writer. And a bad person. A really, really bad person.

I will look after my health.

I WILL WRITE, because the only actual requirement to be a writer is that you write. Being published, being famous, being rich and successful, being happy with your creative endeavours, none of it comes unless you write. First and foremost before everything else: WRITE. You will not find the time to write – you MAKE the time to write. If you really want it, you will make it happen. Only got one hour, twice a week? Fine, start there. Write for two hours a week, every week. Guess what? You’re a writer now. Then make more time. Make. It. Happen. Then all that other stuff can follow.

These are only my writerly attitudes, of course. Similar philosophies apply to my life as a martial artist, instructor and personal trainer, and to my life in general as a human person of Earth. It’s good to focus on these things and remind ourselves of them regularly. New year is a fine time to take stock, but so is every other day of the year. These things are not resolutions. These things are constants.

May 2013 be everything you want it to be. I wish you all (and myself) happiness, health and success in all you do. Now get out there and make it happen, motherhumpers. I want to hear your names sung from the mountaintops, and mine sung along with them.

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A Killer Among Demons (featuring me!) cover reveal

As if the announcement about the new CSFG anthology, Next, wasn’t enough, there’s also this. Check out this freaking awesome cover by the amazingly talented Vincent Chong.

This is the cover for the Dark Prints Press anthology, A Killer Among Demons, which is coming out around April next year. It features ten tales of paranormal or supernatural noir and will contain my story, The Beat Of A Pale Wing. Check out the table of contents:

Stephen M Irwin – ’24/7′
Angela Slatter – ‘Cuckoo’
William Meikle – ‘Truth Decay’
Alan Baxter – ‘The Beat of a Pale Wing’
Marilyn Fountain – ‘The Intruder’
Greg Chapman – ‘A Matter of Perception’
Chris Large – ‘New York, New York’
SJ Dawson – ‘The Tape’
Madhvi Ramani – ‘Angel’s Town’
Stephen D. Rogers – ‘Grievance Visitation’

Seriously, how cool is that selection of names? And if you’re not familiar with them, pre-order this book now and I guarantee you’ll get ten stories that are just awesome (even if I do say so myself!) You can pre-order the book now right here.

Go on, get yourself some dark, spooky, supernatural crime action.

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“Next” anthology – table of contents announced

I’m a very proud member of the Canberra Speculative Fiction Guild, better known as the CSFG. I’m proud for many reasons, not least among them the fact that I’m a two and half hour drive from Canberra, but they’ll still have me. Living in the country like I do, it’s difficult to get involved with anything like a writers’ group, so it’s nice that the CSFG extend their welcome to people like myself.

The CSFG is a great and supportive group of people, with regular gatherings, short story and novel crit groups, a very active mailing list and more. And they also have a publishing arm, through which they produce regular anthologies of short fiction. All the anthologies are managed by a slush wrangler, so all the submissions are read blind by the editors, which means there’s no favouring friends or Guild members, as the submissions are open to everyone, Guild or not.

The latest project from CSFG Publishing is the “Next” anthology. Here’s how they pitched the anthology theme:

Sequence. Succession. Cause and effect. Show us what happened. next.

Next suggests ‘change’, perhaps, but it doesn’t have to invoke change, it can simply be an account of cause-and-effect. Soemtimes it’s the absence of change, the sense of inevitability, that gives the story its terrible power and its resonance. Or it might be a rite-of-passage; of invention and exploration; of the testing and transgression of boundaries; or a story laden with doom or hope or just the inevitability of inescapable repetition. Yup, this theme is a theme for all seasons; it’s a cut and come again theme that can mean pretty much whatever people want it to mean.

Today, the CSFG announced the table of contents for the book and I’m very happy to say that my name is among them. It’s going to be a big book, with 30 stories from established names and newbies alike. Here’s the full ToC:

Next Table of Contents (in alphabetical order):

Kris Ashton: ‘The Midway Hotel’

Daniel Baker: ‘Stories in the Square’

Alan Baxter: ‘Quantum Echoes’

Adam Browne: ‘Animal the Colour of Waiting’

David Coleman: ‘Gambler’s Blues’

Craig Cormick: ‘Ned Kelly and the Zombies’

Elizabeth Fitzgerald: ‘Phoenix Down’

Ross Hamilton: ‘When Money Talks’

Richard Harland: ‘Here’s Glory For You’

Edwina Harvey: ‘Next, cried the Faun’

Rik Lagarto: ‘The Wild Hunt’

Chris Large: ‘Girl Finds Key’

Martin Livings: ‘Cause and Effect’

Tracie McBride: ‘Wooden Heart’

Chris McGrane: ‘The Cat and his Zombies’

Ian McHugh: ‘Vandiemensland’

Claire McKenna: ‘The Ninety Two’

Shauna O’Meara: ‘The Dream Tracker’

Robert Phillips: ‘A Dream of Something More’

Gillian Polack: ‘Someone’s Daughter’

Angela Rega: ‘Almost Beautiful’

Nicky Rowlands: ‘On the Wall’

Leife Shallcross: ‘A Little Warning’

Daniel Simpson: ‘Those Days’

Steve Simpson: ‘The Electrician and the Circus’

Helen Stubbs: ‘Casino Five’

David Versace: ‘Imported Goods—Aisle Nine’

Janeen Webb: ‘Hell is Where the Heart Is’

Catherine Whittle: ‘The Room’

Suzanne Willis: ‘Of Starfish Tides’

Editors: Simon Petrie & Rob Porteous

It’s a great cross-section of authors, and there are several names there I’ve never come across before, so it’ll be good to read their work. Out of those 30, there are 11 CSFG members, including myself, which is a good result for the Guild.

The book is scheduled for release at Conflux 9, which is next year’s Australian NatCon, so that should be a lot of fun. When there’s a cover reveal, I’ll let you know.

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Get your Christmas out of Sol Invictus! (Redux)

Originally posted on December 20th 2011. I think I’ll probably repost this every year.

We’re nearly at that time again. It should be stated from the outset, and really doesn’t need to be for regular readers, that I hate Christmas and everything about it. I do love being able to spend time with friends and loved ones, enjoy good food, exchange gifts and all that malarkey. But you don’t need a special day for that. Just like you should tell your partner that you love them all the time and not only on February 14th. But what really pisses me off is all the Christians who think it’s okay to berate people who leave Christ out of Xmas. Given that the whole thing is stolen and shoe-horned into a medieval fantasy in the first place, it’s a bit rich.

I’ve also taken to responding to, “You can’t have Xmas with Christ!” with, “Then you can’t have Thursday without Thor! Where’s your celebratory hammer?” There’s history with all these things, and it behoves the modern mind to know it.

If you get off on the whole Christ mythology, then bully for you. Why you pick one crazy mythology out of hundreds and insist it’s the truth absolutely mystifies me, but if that’s your wagon, then giddy up. And the Western world has certainly jumped on board the whole Xmas lunacy and subverted it into a materialistic circus of misery and one-upmanship. So I can understand the desire to suggest that people look past the crass commercialism and look for what Xmas is really about. But you know what? It’s not Christ. Sure, it’s been hijacked to be about Christ, but if these people were really honest with themselves, they’d admit there’s more to the story. Then again, as that great physician Gregory House said, “Rational arguments don’t usually work on religious people. Otherwise there would be no religious people.” – (Season 4 Episode 2, The Right Stuff.)

The Christians, since some decades after the death of Christ when the Christians began (thanks to the cult set up by Paul), have always been keen on appropriating something popular, pretending it’s theirs and then using it to further their own agenda. They’re like a virus, chewing up holidays and spitting out Christian rhetoric. But it’s not only the Christians who have pinched things for their aims.

Over the years we’ve merged and melded many things into our modern culture and, while the Christians always shout the loudest at Xmas, there are many other influences that have survived the Jesus takeover.

Burning candles, mistletoe and holly berries, for example, are originally from Yule, the Pagan celebration of the sun god, Mithras. Who is also a very clear blueprint for the myth of Christ himself:

“Both Mithras and Christ were described variously as ‘the Way,’ ‘the Truth,’ ‘the Light,’ ‘the Life,’ ‘the Word,’ ‘the Son of God,’ ‘the Good Shepherd.’ The Christian litany to Jesus could easily be an allegorical litany to the sun-god. Mithras is often represented as carrying a lamb on his shoulders, just as Jesus is. Midnight services were found in both religions. The virgin mother…was easily merged with the virgin mother Mary. Petra, the sacred rock of Mithraism, became Peter, the foundation of the Christian Church.”

Gerald Berry, Religions of the World

Mithras (from the Persian god, Mithra, adapted to Greek as Mithras) allegedly has many features Christians might find familiar:

- Mithra was born on December 25th of the virgin Anahita.
- The babe was wrapped in swaddling clothes, placed in a manger and attended by shepherds.
- He was considered a great traveling teacher and master.
- He had 12 companions or “disciples.”
- He performed miracles.
- As the “great bull of the Sun,” Mithra sacrificed himself for world peace.
- Mithra ascending to heaven in his solar cart, with sun symbolHe ascended to heaven.
- Mithra was viewed as the Good Shepherd, the “Way, the Truth and the Light,” the Redeemer, the Savior, the Messiah.
- Mithra is omniscient, as he “hears all, sees all, knows all: none can deceive him.”
- He was identified with both the Lion and the Lamb.
- His sacred day was Sunday, “the Lord’s Day,” hundreds of years before the appearance of Christ.
- His religion had a eucharist or “Lord’s Supper.”
- Mithra “sets his marks on the foreheads of his soldiers.”
- Mithraism emphasized baptism.

Funny old list, that, eh? I said allegedly above as there’s often about as much evidence for these things as there is for the mythology of Christianity; that is to say, not much at all. Though the vast majority of it is backed up by archeological evidence well predating Christian times.

The Roman emporer Aurelian first instigated Dies Natalis Solis Invicti in 274 CE, which is the birthday of Sol Invictus, the sun god, often considered to be one and the same as Mithras. This birthday festival was celebrated with a huge party and feast on December 25th, a date I’m sure you’ll find familiar. It was Constantine who decided, for mostly political reasons, that Christianity would be the state religion, though he did release an edict in 313 CE proclaiming religious tolerance of all faiths. But there were still enough adherents to the Mithraic tradition that even in the 5th century, Augustine preached against them as Christianity continued its takeover.

Incidentally, it was also Constantine who made Sunday a day of rest. Not because of Christ myths, but for Sol Invictus. In March, 321 CE he decreed:

On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for grain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost.

But I digress. Going back to Christmas being a Sol Invictus celebration, even the Syriac bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi wrote in the 12th century:

“It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries the Christians also took part. Accordingly when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day.”

Ernest Renan, in 1882, pointed out how things could have been when he said, “if the growth of Christianity had been arrested by some mortal malady, the world would have been Mithraic” (Renan, E., Marc-Aurele et la fin du monde antique. Paris, 1882, p. 579)

And the whole celebration of the sun god idea can be taken back to well before Roman times. There is much evidence — including many ancient monumental alignments — to demonstrate that the event of the winter solstice, and the return of the sun through longer days, was celebrated hundreds to thousands of years before the common era in numerous parts of the world.

When “the people” are really into something, the worst thing to do is try to tell them they can’t enjoy it any more. The best option is to co-opt it into your own agenda over time. So the Pagan sun worship was Borged (resistance is futile) by Mithras and Sol Invictus celebrations, and those in turn swallowed by the Christians; not as biblical doctrine but to compete with Pagan cults.

Regardless, in the end the effect is the same: “Christmas” is not the birth of the “son of God” but the birth of “the sun”. The deity Mithras and the celebration of Sol Invictus, inextricably intertwined, also ended up drawing in the Christian mythologies and the Christ myths gathered the most adherents and strength and swallowed up those things that birthed them.

Then combine into this Saturnalia, described by the poet Catullus as “the best of days”, which was a big old party in honour of the Roman deity, Saturn. There was a huge banquet followed by gift-giving and partying, where social norms were put aside in the name of hedonism and good times. Which sounds damned fine to me. This festival was originally held on December 17th, but subsequently extended right through to the 23rd. After all, why party for one day when you can get your groove on for a week. And many of those practices were also taken into the Christmas celebration and made a part of the whole thing.

Saturnalia

And everything I’ve written here only touches on the depth and complexity of the history of our culture. So the next time some twat says, “You can’t have Xmas without Christ!” you can respond with, “Yes, you can, actually. Just ask Mithras.”

Enjoy the things that make you happy. Be nice to each other, have fun and indulge yourselves. Give gifts, eat too much, drink too much, and don’t forget to spare a thought for those less fortunate and try to do something to help them as well. But don’t be wilfully ignorant. It’s never been easier to explore truth and history, to understand yourself and your culture. Get out there and expand yourself.

And blessed Solstice to you all.

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My name in the writing credits of a video game

The title of this post says it all, really. I’ve mentioned here a few times about the video game, Leornian, that I’ve been working on for the NSW Department of Education. I blogged a little bit about the game here and you can also see the game trailer if you scroll down my Bibliography page here.

The team have just put the end credits up on YouTube, however, and that’s the bit where it says “Written by Alan Baxter”, which is bloody cool. Well, I think it is, anyway. So here, have a look for yourself:

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Chuck Wendig on ThrillerCast

It’s been a while since I posted about a new episode of ThrillerCast, which is a bit slack of me really. In case you’re new here, ThrillerCast is the podcast I co-host with action/adventure author, David Wood. It’s all kinds of chat about anything thriller and genre fiction related, with stuff for readers and writers. In the latest episode, I have a chat with the potty-mouthed paragon of awesome penmonkey advice, Chuck Wendig. You can find the episode here.

In recent episodes, we’ve talked about all kinds of writer-related stuff and had great chats with the likes of Greig Beck, Thomas Greanias, Rich Steeves and many more. Have a stroll through the archives or, even better, subscribe via iTunes.

And if you’re a fan, please drop by iTunes to leave us a rating or review, and tell your friends. If you’re unsure, why not let our two existing iTunes reviews speak for themselves:

Thrillercast is seriously good writer talk. (Five-star review)

by Lynda Washington

David Wood is American writer of action adventure. Alan Baxter is an English writer of dark fantasy/horror with a pronounced Aussie accent. Both are serious students and practitioners of their art, and they share generously with the listener. I’m a serious student, too, though not a practitioner. My judgment is trustworthy. If you want to strengthen your understanding of writing and the writer’s place in publishing, listen to these guys. They are intelligent and focused. The sound quality is good. The episodes never seem to go on longer than they should. No downside.

Great Podcast! (Five-star review)

by GregD65

David and Alan produce an ejoyable, intelligent, and always entertaining look at writing thrillers. Writers and readers of others genres should give a lsiten as well since the advice, interviews, and banter cross genres easily. My only complaint — frequency!!! I need MORE ThrillerCast!!!

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On idiot reviews

I’ve said many, many times here that reviews are the lifeblood of an author’s career. And reviews can mean literal reviews, posted at places like Amazon, Goodreads and so on, as well as reviews in newspapers and on dedicated reader blogs. But reviews can also refer to readers simply talking about a book they enjoyed with friends, family and colleagues. That may lead to those people buying the book, so it works just like reviews are supposed to. But not all reviews are created equal.

In essence, any review is valuable. Even if you didn’t like a book and you give it a bad review and a low star rating, it’s still useful to potential readers and it may lead a different reader to think, “Well, the problems that person had with the book don’t sound like problems to me, so I’ll give it a go.” And besides, you can’t please all the people all the time, so a good spread of reviews and ratings shows honesty and means we don’t start to suspect that Auntie Mabel and the Sockpuppets are the only people reviewing the book.

For example, American Gods by Neil Gaiman is a book universally recognised by readers and awards alike as being quite excellent. But not everyone likes it. On Amazon it has a 4-star average rating, but that includes 92 1-star reviews. (I’d be ecstatic with 92 reviews of any kind, but that book has over a thousand in total!) Anyway, my point is that not all reviews are going to be good ones and giving a one or two star review is fine. If you’re reviewing the book.

Wondering what I’m talking about? Look at this fucking idiot:

In case you can’t read that, it says:

Taming a Seahorse was good. However, Monday I purchased another Spencer book, and it took sooooooooooooo long to get to my Kindle, I was 20 pages into another book………………..

And the idiot gives the book a 1-star review. I’ve deliberately blurred the name, as I’m not here to witch hunt. It’s just one of many reviews I’ve seen that are like this. This “reviewer” is directly damaging the author’s career by reducing their rating average for reasons that are nothing to do with the author or the book and for things over which the author has no control. The “reviewer” even says they thought the book was good, but they’re giving it a one star review because the Whispernet service was slow delivering a completely different novel by the same author. The degree of stupid here is staggering. What the fuck did the author do to deserve this one star review, exactly?

It’s just petty hollering because the person wanted to have a moan about something publicly and arbitrarily tacked that whinge onto one of Parker’s books. If anything, they should have simply complained to Amazon directly (which, admittedly, is like trying to water a garden bed by pissing on the roof).

This is not an isolated, or even uncommon, incident. These fuckknuckles are everywhere. There are even blogs set up to collect all the reviews that are small nuggets of human idiocy distilled into illiterate paragraphs. This is one of my favourite examples of blogs like that, but I can never get past a few entries before the red mist of rage descends: http://leasthelpful.com/ Seriously, it starts off quite funny for the first one or two, then I begin to despair at the stupid, then, after half a dozen or so, I just want to go out and block the blow hole of a dolphin until it drowns. Then hit stupid people with the dead dolphin.

Reviews are awesome and anyone who takes time to review a book is a fantastic person who will be rewarded with cookies and whisky. But only people who review the book. If you’re using a review and slamming an author’s work in order to whinge about postage times, delivery networks, the fact that your dog shat in your bed (which you deserved, by the way) or anything else, then you’re a broken, stupid person and you should have your internet privileges revoked. Please, won’t someone think of the authors?

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365 Shorts Challenge

It’s no secret that I’m a fan of short stories. I love the form, and that applies to writing short stories as well as reading them. With the advent of POD, digital publishing and online magazines, there have never been so many venues for short fiction, and some of them are top notch. As I read so much short fiction, I’ve decided to set myself a challenge. Next year, I plan to read at least 365 short stories, one for every day of the year. Maybe I’ll read even more, but let’s not get carried away. I listen to a lot of short fiction podcasts, so I’m going to include those in my count as well. I read electronic magazines, online zines, print anthologies, print magazines as well as listening to those podcasts, so it should be pretty easy to average one story a day throughout the year. The trick, I think, will be to read several stories at a time and get a few in the bank for each week. We’ll see if I can do it.

I’m going to try to keep track of all the stories I read using the iPhone notepad application, so I can hopefully publish a list a year from now which will detail each one I read, who wrote it and where it was published.

I’ll say now, I kind of expect to fail this challenge. Maintaining an average of one short story a day doesn’t seem too hard, but as soon as a couple of days go by without a story read, the debt begins to grow. I may never even mention this blog post again…

I seem to remember blogging something similar to this a while ago, but I couldn’t even find that post, let alone whether I’d succeeded or not in whatever it was I challenged myself to achieve. Either way, attempting this will mean that I can continue to read at least as many short stories as I already do, possibly even more, and I will hopefully keep a record of what I’ve read.

I won’t be reviewing or commenting on any of the stories as I go along, I’ll simply list what I’ve read. However, come the end of the year, I might try to compile a list of favourites.

So there it is. We’ll see if it happens. If you want to join me in the challenge, please do and I’ll post your results up here too.

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A new authorly tattoo

I’m no stranger to inking my skin. For a long time now I’ve wanted a writing related tattoo – a writer’s quill, in fact. I know several writers who have the quill or a variation of it, so it’s definitely a bit of a thing among writerly folk. In fact, myself and two friends all discovered a couple of years ago that we wanted a quill tattoo and decided we would get one together at the Australian Worldcon, as we were all going to be there. As it turned out, only one of us, who happened to live in Melbourne anyway, managed to organise it then. She got a very cool peacock-style quill on her thigh. It’s taken me until now, two years later, to finally get mine. The third among us, and he knows who he is, is still very slack on the whole affair.

Anyway, I wanted my quill to be unique, obviously, even though it was following a common theme. I wanted it to reflect me as a person and a writer, and to reflect my writing and style too. I worked on the design for a long time. I’m no artist, so I had to source suitable images and work in photoshop until I’d built the design I wanted. Then I took it to a tattooist of high repute, Karen Rand of Rand Family Tattoo. Karen did an amazing job of turning my photoshopped design into an actual tattoo. I couldn’t be happier with the finished result.

Along with the quill/writing aspect, you’ll see that there are obviously other influences at work – ravens, crows, bats, clouds, and so on. There’s actually a lot going on in this design, but tattoos being, at their core, intensely personal things, I’m going to go into too much detail here. Feel free to interpret it however you see fit. If you get me drunk at a con one day, I might be persuaded to talk more about it.

(Note: the fact that the tattoo is on my chest meant that there was very clear nipple action in the photos below which, when posted online yesterday, caused quite a stir. So I’ve spared you all the nipple in this version.)

These photos are obviously taken during and right after, to show the process, so the skin is very red. Once the tatt heals, all the areas that look red or brown will settle back to black or grey. I’ll try to remember to post a follow-up pic when it’s all healed.

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Tuesday Toot – Jodi Cleghorn and Deck The Halls

Tuesday Toot is a semi-regular feature here. An invite-only series of short posts where writers, editors, booksellers and other creatives have been asked to share their stuff and toot their own horn. It’s hard to be seen in the digital morass and hopefully this occasional segment will help some of the quality stuff out there get noticed. It should all be things that regular readers here will find edifying.

This time, it’s Jodi Cleghorn talking about something I can really get behind. Take it away, Jodi!

Who is Jodi?

Jodi (@jodicleghorn) is an author, editor, publisher and innovator.

By day (and sometimes night), she runs the many facets of eMergent Publishing (eP), a small press dedicated to nurturing next-crop authors, editors and visual artists.

Between the cracks she chases her own characters in a blending of themes and genres best described as “dark weird shit”. Fruits of these adventures include the collaborative epistolary serial Post Marked: Piper’s Reach and Elyora (Review of Australian Fiction—special edition), a horror novella set just off the New England Highway.

She’s occasionally known to loiter at her blog 1000 Pieces of Blue Sky.

What are you tooting about?

Deck the Halls: festive tales of fear and cheer, the first and most recent (I can explain) publication from eP’s Literary Mix Tapes imprint of conceptual anthologies. But first…that explanation.

Born From…

The origins of Deck the Halls are bizarre, to say the least.

In December 2010 I created a shit storm on Facebook when I commented about my displeasure with the overtly Christian tone of the carols night at my son’s school. (He goes to a state school with a diverse ethnic demographic and I felt it totally inappropriate to push any one brand of religious fervour, when their Easter bonnet parade is included as a ‘cultural’ event on the school’s calendar, devoid of religious connotations).

I know, I know, Christmas is a Christian holiday… but, historically, it was many other things before the Christian’s got their pesky hands on it.

Rather than whinge—or delete the exploding Facebook thread (with people telling me, among other things, how intolerant I was)—I decided to publish a bunch of twisted, non-traditional Christmas tales. It’s apparently the sort of therapy an editor-writer-publisher seeks out in the wake of a social media implosion.

In The Beginning

The original idea was to rope nine friends into writing stories based on the lyrics of Deck the Halls (the idea of a troll for Christmas set my imagination on fire as I sat there in the hot, humid school hall!) and then publish the stories online on Christmas Eve. First, I contacted Jim Wisneski to get his blessings (I was riffing off his idea from 12 Days project) and then sent announcements out through the usual channels to see who was interested. I referred to the project as a Literary Mix Tape (a concept everyone immediately got and a name that’s stuck.)

Nine places became nineteen places, with the caveat everyone was to beta read for each other—I was too busy to edit. On Christmas Eve twenty twisted stories—rocking the dark and light side of the Christmas and New Year period—went up, one an hour, on a dedicated website. Christmas Day I made all the stories available as a free eBook.

Beyond Christmas

The ideas of writing to musical prompts and cooperative submission (a term later coined by Tom Dullemond) found traction. That traction spawned the official launch of Literary Mix Tapes (as an imprint under the eMergent Publishing umbrella) and three more anthologies: Nothing But Flowers: tales of post apocalyptic love, Eighty Nine and From Stage Door Shadows [I have a story in that one! - Alan]. Two years on I am still amazed that of all the ideas I’ve had over the years, this was the one that garnered the most enthusiasm. Many of the cornerstones of the LMT imprint, and the way each anthology is released, can be directly traced back to that very first Christmas adventure.

Redux

I felt the original authors deserved to see their stories in a paperback, so I rebooted Deck the Halls in 2011, opening ten (then twelve) new places in the anthology. Andrew McKiernan offered to do the front cover (based on Susan May James’ chilling story, “Bosch’s Troll”). This Thursday (6th December) a revised, revamped, extended and fully edited edition of Deck the Halls goes on worldwide sale as Deck the Halls: tales of festive fear and cheer.

DECK THE HALLS traverses the joy and jeopardy of the festive season, from Yule to Mōdraniht, Summer Solstice to Years’ End. The stories journey through consternations and celebrations, past, present and future, which might be or never were.

Along the way you’ll meet troll hunters, consumer dissidents, corset-bound adventurers, a joint-toking spirit, big-hearted gangbangers, an outcast hybrid spaceship, petrol-toting politicians, mythical swingers and a boy who unwittingly controls the weather.

Heart-warming and horrifying, the collection is a merry measure of cross-genre, short fiction subverting traditional notions of the holiday season.

At under $20 for the paperback (or $4.95 for the eBook) it’s a brilliant stocking stuffer or Secret Santa present. Better still, treat yourself to a copy and use it as an antidote to everything irritating, painful and nauseating about the holiday season.

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