Alan Baxter's Blog, page 90

Night-Mantled, the best of Wily Writers

It's all about the announcements right now. You may remember in a post a few days ago I was talking about great fiction podcasts. One of those I mentioned was Wily Writers. They do great podcasts, with two new stories every month. Well, their first print anthology, called Night-Mantled, the best of Wily Writers Volume 1, is due out in March and I'm very proud to have a story in it. As you can see, the cover art has been released.

Wily podcast my story, Stand Off, back in July 2009. It's an Isiah short story (the protagonist from RealmShift and MageSign) and I'm really pleased to see it selected as one of the Best Of stories for this book.

Here's the blurb for the anthology:

SCIENCE FICTION
FANTASY
HORROR

Out of the darkness come the monsters, the mysteries, and the miracles that engage our minds and engorge our hearts.

This collection of short stories from exceptionally wily writers will take you from looking over your shoulder to pondering the wonders of the universe and back again.

The WilyWriters.com Speculative Fiction podcast chooses only the best two stories per month from its submissions and records them for your listening pleasure.

This volume collects Year #1's best of the best.

Author Lineup:

* Alan Baxter: "Stand Off"
* Jennifer Brozek: "Honoring the Dead"
* SatyrPhil Brucato: "I Feel Lucky"
* Nathan Crowder: "Ink Calls to Ink"
* Richard E. Dansky: "Small Cold Thing"
* Seanan McGuire: "Julie Broise and the Devil"
* Lisa Morton:"Sane Reaction"
* Ripley Patton: "A Speck in the Universe"
* Grant Stone: "The Salt Line"
* Joel A. Sutherland: "The Death of Captain Eugene Bloodcake and the Fall of the Horrid Whore"
* Bruce Taylor: "The Prey"
* Mark W. Worthen: "The Minimart, the Ruger, and the Girl"

You can learn all you need to know here. I'll let you know when the book's available for pre-order or purchase.

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Ditmar Award nominations open, and I could use your vote

The Ditmar Award (formally the Australian SF ("Ditmar") Award; formerly the "Australian Science Fiction Achievement Award") has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention (the "Natcon") to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction (including fantasy and horror) and science fiction fandom. The award is similar to the Hugo Award but on a national rather than international scale.

The awards are open for nominations now, so if you have favourite stories, novels and so on from the last year, and if you're a member of NatCon or active in fandom, get your votes in now for the people you'd like to see nominated.

There's a list here of eligible works, though the list is incomplete and you're encouraged to add to it.

The rules of the Awards can be found here.

So get involved and have your say in who wins awards this year.

Of course, this post is slightly self-serving, which I tried to make clear from the title onwards. I have two stories published in 2010 that are eligible for Ditmars this year. They are Trial Not Required, published in M-Brane SF Issue #13, February 2010, and The King's Accord, published in Flesh & Bone: Rise of The Necromancers, an anthology from Pill Hill Press, August 2010. Trial Not Required is a science fiction story and The King's Accord is a dark fantasy yarn. If you read those stories and liked them, and are eligible to vote, I'd love your nomination vote.

If you're eligible to vote, but haven't read those stories (as they're both US publications it's possible that a lot of eligible voters haven't seen them) then I'm more than happy to send you a copy to read. If you did take the time to read them and consider them, I'd be very grateful. I don't really like asking for things like this, but the truth is that people can't be expected to read every publication every year and often you'll only get a story noticed if you point it out to people.

So if you'd like a see the stories and consider them for voting, leave me a comment or send me an email (email address in bold under the typewriter on the right hand sidebar) and I'll get copies off to you right away.

Regardless, I'll keep you all up to date on Ditmar news as it happens.

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New Age Of Publishing – 10 – Essential reading

So I've been running a series of guest posts about the new age of publishing, talking about ebooks, indie authorship, where the traditional bookshop is headed and so on. One of the guest posts was from Shane Jiraiya Cummings and he's running a similar series of posts on his own blog right now.

I've been watching his series with interest and today he has a post up that is an absolute must read. It's from Elfwreck, "an avid (some would say fanatic) ebook reader with over 10 years professional experience with digital imaging and over 25 years with document conversion and editing."

It's a brilliant post, in three parts, covering loads of detail and I agree with every bloody word of it. Seriously – go now, and read.

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New ThrillerCast, with Joanna Penn

The latest edition of ThrillerCast, the podcast I do with fellow author David Wood, is up now. In this episode we interview Joanna Penn, author of the new novel Pentecost.

You may remember that I reviewed that book recently and Joanna guest posted here as well. Get the podcast here.

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Fiction podcasts

I plan to start blogging a bit about good places to find quality fiction. I've been meaning to do this for a while, but keep not getting around to it. Today I sold a story to one of my favourite podcasts, so that triggered me to get started. With the net and all associated digital content, new ways to receive stories are popping up all the time. I plan to blog about some of the best online fiction magazines in a future post, but thought I'd start with podcasts.

You probably know that I do a podcast myself, with David Wood, called ThrillerCast. We talk about thrillers and all kinds of genre fiction, about writing and publishing and so on. There are loads of good podcasts like ours out there with people chatting about stuff. But there are also some brilliant podcasts that deliver fiction. There's something primal and heartfelt about having a story read to you. I love to read, I love to immerse myself in a book and have that time to myself, living a story as the author delivers it directly to my imagination. But I also love to be told a story. Since time immemorial people have shared stories by voice. Sitting around a campfire, being transported by a good story, is one of the simplest and most profound pleasures in life. The podcast gives us the opportunity to recreate that in the digital age.

I often drive to Sydney and back, which is about an hour and a half each way. When I make that drive, I'll listen to stories all the way there and back. I subscribe to quite a few story podcasts through iTunes, which means that whenever I sync up my iPhone any new podcasts are automatically downloaded to it. When I get in the car I plug it in and see what new stories are waiting for me. These are great audio magazines and I can't get enough of them.

Here are some of my favourite podcasts:

Pseudopod – I'll start with this one because I'm currently Snoopy dancing about the fact that they've just bought one of my stories. Pseudopod, PodCastle and Escape Pod are three projects run by Escape Artists, with Pseudopod being the horror arm of the trifecta. They have great stories, which is why I'm so happy to have one of mine appearing there soon. Also, from a writer's perspective, they pay well, which is always a bonus, and accept "reprints". Pseudopod publishes quality dark fiction, rarely for the faint-hearted, but never the kind of mindless splattergore so often associated with horror. When I say this is one of my favourite podcasts I might be lying. It's possibly my absolute favourite. If you like dark fiction and don't listen to anything else, at least listen to this one.

Escape Pod – This is the Sci-Fi podcast of the three mentioned above. The quality of sci-fi here is comparable to the quality of horror at Pseudopod and well worth your time. Also, from a writer's perspective, they pay pro rates of 5c a word and accept reprints.

PodCastle – This one makes the final third of the Escape Artist podcasts, being the fantasy arm. Again, the quality is invariably high, the pay rate, like Escape Pod, is a pro 5c a word, they accept reprints and the reading in all these podcasts is top notch. In fact, the majority of stories in all three of these podcasts are things that have originally appeared in print somewhere first.

Everything about the Escape Artists podcasts is brilliantly done and I always enjoy what they have to offer. They're definitely my top three fiction podcasts. Have a listen, subscribe and, if you like them, think about donating something via the buttons on the websites so they can continue to pay well for great stories.

Wily Writers – This bunch were my first experience of podcast stories. My story, Stand Off, was published by them in text on the site and as a podcast. It was the first time I'd heard someone else read my work and hearing a professional American voice actor delivering my story was quite bizarre. It was also excellent. Wily Writers are releasing an anthology soon, collecting the best stories they've podcast so far, and Stand Off is going to be included, so I've got a lot to thank them for. I'll let you know when that book is available. In the meantime, subscribe to the podcast as they always put out good stories that are always very well read.

Terra Incognita – "The best Australian Speculative Fiction read by the authors who created it" is the tagline of Terra Incognita Australia Speculative Fiction Podcast, or TISF, and it says it all really. It's run by Keith Stevenson as part of cour de lion publishing and Keith gets the best of Aussie spec fic and gets the authors to read it, simple as that. It's always good as Keith is a great editor and has an eye/ear for a good story.

Dark Fiction Magazine – This one is out of the UK and another example of quality dark fiction, again shattering the preconceptions of horror. Top stories, top readers and regular episodes.

Outlandish Voices – This one is a bit like TISF, but they focus on local voices. They've had some great stories read by their authors, all of whom are in the Wollongong area of New South Wales, in Australia. Included among these is me, reading my story Crossfire. They haven't done much in the last six months, but it's worth subscribing to catch anything new they do put out.

So that's my pick of the fiction podcasts for now. Most of these are just like audio magazines in that they include news and reviews as well as the stories and often read out and discuss feedback from previous episodes at the end. If you haven't tried podcast fiction, give some of these a go. But I warn you – it's addictive.

What about you? Do you like podcast fiction? What are your favourites? If you have any good tips, please leave a comment.

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Free copies of RealmShift and MageSign for reviewers

A little while ago there was a problem with the MageSign page on Amazon. It's all sorted out now, except all the reviews and ratings people had left got deleted. People do respond to Amazon reviews, so it's always good to have a few on the page. So, here's where I need some help.

If you've read either RealmShift or MageSign and can spare a minute to write a review for them, that would be awesome. If you'd like to read them, and promise to write a review, I'll send you a free ebook copy of both books. The reason I'm offering both books is because MageSign is the sequel to RealmShift, so you get a lot more out of it if you've read both. Plus, more reviews for RealmShift certainly couldn't hurt.

Please understand – I'm not soliciting good reviews! You're under no obligation to write something positive. All I ask is that if you've read the books, you leave an honest review. If you'd like a free ebook version of both, I'll happily send them if you promise me an honest review when you've read them. If you don't like them, well that's fine.

I'll leave this offer open until a bunch of people have responded, so if you're after a free ebook get in quick. I'll supply whatever format you like – mobi for Kindle, ePub, PDF, etc. Just email me at alan [at] alanbaxteronline.com with your preferred format. But get in quick, because I won't be giving away free books for long!

If you've already enjoyed the books and could spare a few minutes to rate or review, then I thank you profusely. If you'd like to include them in a Listmania or So You'd Like To… list as well, please do. Here are the direct links:

RealmShift at Amazon.com

RealmShift Kindle at Amazon.com

MageSign at Amazon.com

MageSign Kindle at Amazon.com

RealmShift at Amazon.co.uk

RealmShift Kindle at Amazon.co.uk

MageSign at Amazon.co.uk

MageSign Kindle at Amazon.co.uk

Thanks again in advance to anyone that helps out. Apologies for this shameless self-promotion – normal service will resume shortly.

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100 Stories For Queensland

I'm sure that wherever you are in the world you've heard about the shocking run of extreme weather Australia has been enduring lately. Foremost among that devastation are the floods and cyclone that have thrashed Queensland over the last few weeks. The damage and loss of life and property are heartbreaking. But true to the much lauded Aussie spirit, people across this country (and overseas) are stepping up and helping out, either with donations to the various rebuilding funds or with actual hands on, shoulder to the wheel clean up work. It's amazing to see on the news pictures of notices on telephone poles in flood ravaged suburbs offering free board to people that have lost their homes and people turning up, unbidden, from all over the place and saying, "Right, what can I do?" It's enough to make a cynical bastard like me think that maybe there is hope for the human race after all.

I've tried to do my bit where I can. I'm a long way from Queensland, but I've donated in a few places where I was able and then I saw the call out by the 100 Stories For Queensland team. Well, that's something right up my alley. 100 Stories for Queensland is a charity anthology of short stories following in the footsteps of 100 Stories for Haiti and 50 Stories for Pakistan. 100% of sales profits go to The Queensland Premier's Flood Appeal.

I immediately wanted to be part of this project so I wrote a story specifically for the anthology and sent it off. I was pleased to see that I made the long list last week and now I've just learned that my story has been accepted as one of the 100 that will make up the book. I'm really proud to have been selected for this and would like to think that my story and the 99 others will go some way to helping repair the damage in Queensland. Writers from around the world have donated stories – you can see the full list here.

The anthology will be available in digital and print form as well as an audio book, and is due for release on Tuesday, 8th March, 2011. I'll drop a reminder here when it does come out. Please think about buying a copy to help out a bit with people that really need a hand right now.

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New Age of Publishing – Guest Post 9 – Joanna Penn

Joanna Penn is a person at the vanguard of indie authorship. She runs The Creative Penn website and has made a name for herself with her self-published books, How to Enjoy Your Job (2008), From Book to Market (2009) and From Idea to Book (2009). She's also a blogger, speaker, internet entrepreneur and international business consultant. She's now ventured into the realms of fiction and her first novel, Pentecost, is launching right now. Overachiever, much? I helped to beta-read Pentecost and can vouch for its exciting thrillery goodness. It's a ripping read, with great characters and excellent MacGuffins, so if you like thrillers, you should try it out. On the basis of Joanna's experience in the indie author scene, she's got a guest post here today talking about the lessons she's learned along the way. If you've been thinking of going it alone with your writing, you'll appreciate this post:

On Being An Indie Author: 5 Lessons Learned

Attitudes towards self-publishing or independent (indie) publishing are changing fast in today's digital world. Print on demand technology is now mainstream and dramatic ebook sales have turned heads in the publishing industry, outselling hardback fiction last Christmas. More authors are now entering the indie publishing market because they realize it is within their control to see their book in the hands of readers. You don't have to wait for the gatekeepers anymore and that's exciting!

In the last three years, I've self-published four books and I would love for you to avoid the mistakes I've made! Here are some of the biggest lessons I've learned that will save you time, money and heartache in your journey towards becoming an indie author.

1) Know thyself. This ancient wisdom holds true in the internet age. To be successful as an indie author, you have to be willing to play around with new technology as well as take the risk of looking stupid or failing before you succeed. You need to be impatient enough with traditional publishing to want to embrace the DIY attitude. You have to consider multiple aspects of the process from writing, to building a platform, and then everything that goes into publishing (which is more than you think!) You have to be (kind of) a control freak and a perfectionist because you need to get everything right. Your personality definitely matters when it comes to indie publishing (although you can cultivate these personality traits!) Look at what you need to do and assess whether or not you are willing to jump in 100%.

2) Embrace technology. Print on demand changed my life as an indie author. It means you can load a digital file to a provider like LightningSource or CreateSpace and your book can be available for sale on Amazon.com. When a customer orders a copy, it is printed and sent direct to the customer. No holding stock. No upfront costs for printing. No shipping effort for you. That can save you thousands of dollars as you don't have to order a small print run as old-style self-publishers had to. Please don't print a garage full of books unless you have guaranteed distribution. Understand and use POD as well as ebooks and the cost of entry to publishing a quality product is much lower. Learning about publishing technologies and online tools like blogging and social networking are the linchpins of a successful indie author. You are doing yourself out of a lot of money if you don't embrace the computer!

3) Treat indie publishing as a business. You are a small business-person which means you need to track costs and income. You are not just a writer when you go the indie route. I set up my own company when I started The Creative Penn, fully intending it to become a publisher as well as the vehicle for my speaking business and online book/product sales. It's also good to remember that small businesses usually have a rough time for the first 3-5 years. I'm at the end of year two now and track all my sales as well as expenses. I still have a day job (like most writers) but the business pays for itself. This means I can budget for the inevitable costs of running a small business and also use the income to develop my business.

4) Use professionals for outsourcing. I have tried doing everything myself before i.e. book cover design, formatting of files for the Kindle, interior book layout etc but I have found that there are just some things I can't do well enough to have a professional finished product that is indistinguishable from traditionally published books. In the name of all serious indie publishers, I implore you to use a professional copyeditor as well as a pro cover designer (unless you are highly skilled at either). Those two are critical for a quality output. I also recommend you use someone with technical ability for formatting ebooks and print output. It will save you time and a lot of frustration which is worth the money (see above for budget!)

5) Embrace marketing. When I self-published my first book, I didn't know anything about marketing. I thought that people were just out there waiting for my book. After practically zero sales in the first month, I decided to learn about marketing. I read books, did online courses, listened to audios and played around with direct marketing. I made it onto Australian National TV with one press release, but I only sold one book so then I learned about internet marketing and blogging which has been the turning point for me. I had no marketing background but embracing marketing has changed my whole life. You need to learn to love it too as there are millions of books out there. How will anyone know about yours unless you start marketing?

Importantly, being an indie author is a great adventure where you can choose your own path. It's empowering to spend your time writing and promoting your own books instead of chasing that elusive traditional publishing deal. There are also more success stories these days of indie authors getting print deals after self-publishing generated great sales, so whatever your goals as an author, independent publishing can be a great start. I wish you the best on your indie journey!

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Joanna Penn is the author of Pentecost, a thriller novel, out now on Amazon.com. Joanna is also a blogger at The Creative Penn: Adventures in Writing, Publishing and Book Marketing. Connect @thecreativepenn

Watch the book trailer for Pentecost here.

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ThrillerCast, episode 11 is up

The latest episode of ThrillerCast is up with myself and fellow Gryphonwood author, David Wood. It's called ThrillerCast, but we talk about all kinds of genre fiction, as usual.

This time it's an episode mainly about description, and what kinds of description work in various styles of fiction. Of course, we ramble on about a bunch of other stuff too. Our usual 20 minute timeframe is stretched out to about 30 minutes in this one.

You can find the show notes here and the download link. You can also subscribe through iTunes. Enjoy, and feel free to offer feedback. We're still quite new at this.

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Free fiction and the value of our efforts

The advent of the internet has had many effects, not least of which is giving a voice to pretty much everybody. We're all sitting at keyboards making noise, like a flock of a billion seagulls fighting over one bag of chips. It's not a bad thing, as far as I'm concerned. The really strong voices lift above the white noise and everyone gravitates towards those voices that interest them. It's a big world and an infinite internet, so there's room in this sandbox for everyone. However, another aspect of that easy online voice is a million wannabe writers posting their stuff online and hoping people will read it. Again, not necessarily a bad thing, but a potentially damaging one for a writer's career in the long run.

I'm one of those voices, obviously. I've got some of my own fiction posted here for anyone to read. I've engaged in the Friday Flash phenomenon. Is this damaging for my career? I don't think so. I think it's helping my career, by giving potential readers an insight into some of my stuff. I've had some nice comments from people about stories they've read here. But I've engaged in the practice with careful forethought.

I decided to write about this after reading this post on Benjamin Solah's blog. You may remember that Benjamin guest posted here about a week ago, talking about his experiment self-publishing an ebook of his fiction. The power of the internet gave him some pretty solid and honest feedback very quickly. It can be summed up quite well in these comments on Ben's post by Jason Fischer:

My two cents is this: trunk stories belong in your trunk. You either take them apart and make them good enough to sell, or you leave them there. Why would you want anyone to see a piece of your writing that isn't working? If your career takes off, do you *really* want these out there?…

There's so much fiction out there for the reading, even more with the new e-book markets. As such, it is remarkably easy to slide into the infamous "90% of everything that is crap" of Sturgeon's Law. You should be aspiring to be in the other 10%, not taking the path of least resistance and self-publishing your unsellable trunk stuff.

Work on the nuts and bolts of your writing first and foremost. Be brutal with your own writing, edit, and edit some more. If you can't get it to work, trunk it and try something else, and LEAVE IT IN THE TRUNK. You can promote something till the cows come home, but if it's no good, no-one will want it…

These comments are culled from a longer conversation and it's worth reading Ben's post to see the whole discussion. Jason is someone worth listening to – apart from being a top bloke, his advice comes from great experience. He's made many quality short fiction sales and is a recent winner of Writers Of The Future, among many other awards and nominations. Check him out here.

I agree with his sentiments. So how is what I've done with fiction on my site different to Ben's experiment? There's one simple difference – all the fiction I've made available to read here is previously published somewhere (with a couple of exceptions that I'll talk about in a minute). Some of it is older stuff published in non-paying markets, but it's still stuff I'm proud of. Other stories are published in better markets and the links here are directly to sites where the story can be found. The point is that it made it past an editor, so I've got unbiased, third party confirmation that it's worth a read. For that reason, I'm happy to direct people towards it and say, "Here's some of my writing for you to check out, I hope you like it." If I wasn't able to sell that story to an editor, even "sell" it to a for the love market, then I certainly won't put it up here with a pouty face and a "well, I think it's good enough" attitude. Because it's not. Writers are the worst possible critics of their own work. Of course we love everything we write – we wrote it!

If people do like it, with any luck they'll seek out some of my other stuff, they might take a punt on my novels. Hopefully then they'll enjoy my books and recommend them to friends or buy copies to give as gifts. Using the same hypothesis, the first three chapters of both my books are available here (just click on book covers to find them) so that people can try before they buy.

The other exercise in free fiction I engaged in was Ghost Of The Black: A 'Verse Full Of Scum. In an effort to generate return visits to my site and more interest in my fiction, I wrote a 30,000ish word novella in a series of episodes, which I then posted here every Monday during 2008. This was a conscious decision to write a piece of fiction that I had no intention of trying to sell. Rather, it was a deliberate exercise in giving something away to showcase my writing. It's still available on the Serial Fiction page and it's also available as an ebook and print book, that I've self-published. On the whole it's been very well received and garnered a few decent reviews. Whether it's really done much to enhance my career is hard to say, but I certainly don't think it's done any damage. Whether I leave it here indefinitely is also hard to say. For now, I'm happy to leave it for people to enjoy. I may take down the Serial Fiction page one day, and just leave the ebook and print edition available for people to buy. I may take those away too at some point. (Leave a comment if you have a particular opinion about that – I'd be interested to know.)

What I haven't done is post here those stories that I couldn't sell. Believe me, my story trunk is a dark and nasty place, full of things I really don't want anyone else to see.

Another example of free, unpublished fiction here comes from my occasional jaunts into the Friday Flash meme. This is essentially a community of writers that post flash fiction on their websites and promote it with the #FridayFlash hashtag through Twitter and Facebook. A lot of those people don't care about getting published, they're just happy to be part of a community of likeminded people. Things that I've posted on Friday Flash are stories that I've decided are a good idea and an entertaining little yarn, but one that I don't want to spend time trying to sell or expand into a longer piece. They're all taster stories, exercises in writing and storytelling.

For me, writing is a very serious business. Friday Flash was a brief hobby. I don't mean to denigrate the community by this statement at all, it's just my own personal situation now. I'm not likely to post any more Friday Flash – I agree with the comments on Ben's post that it's a time-sink and I intend to spend that time on sellable short stories and novels. I've had fun with it, but now I'm moving on.

These days I only approach semi-pro and pro markets with my work. I know I can get stuff published in other places, but I'm improving my craft and expecting better results from myself. If I can't sell a story to at least a semi-pro market, I won't sell it at all. Nor will I post it here on my website. As the things on my site here attest, I was happy to get acceptances from much smaller markets before. Every writer starts somewhere. But I won't stay there. I want to improve as a writer and I want to sell my work to better and better places all the time. I intend to be a pro writer, as in, get paid pro rates for my work, and I'll keep working towards that. Recent sales are bearing out the worth of this endeavour – I'm making better sales all the time. I'm still yet to crack the big time pro markets, but I will one day.

In the meantime, I'm happy to leave the stuff here that I've already posted. I may well decide to take it all away at some point. Who knows?

What do you think? Do you appreciate free fiction as a taste of a writer's work? Are you a writer for or against the idea? Have you had good or bad experiences posting fiction on your site? Do you think I should leave free fiction here or take it away? Leave your comments – I'm interested in people's thoughts.

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