3Q’s – Alan Baxter takes us ’round the BEND!
Today’s 3Q’s is a fun one friends!
Alan Baxter is a writer who I’ve always found to deliver high-octane releases, while keeping things dark and mysterious. He’s a fantastic short-story writer as well as an accomplished long-fiction releaser and on the heels of his next opus, Alan was kind enough to answer the 3Q’s!
Welcome, Alan!
Steve: What does your writing time look like? Do you try to write at the same time each day? Do you have a word count you attempt to hit?
Alan: I have a mainly three-pronged life – writing, teaching kung fu, and parenting. Parenting is the most important, of course. My wife – who’s an artist – and I split that fairly evenly. Some days she’s in the studio and I write, other days I’m in “the cave” and she parents. Weekends are together time as much as possible. Otherwise, my only fixed commitment is when kung fu and qi gong classes are on. Those times aren’t negotiable, but everything else is. I mostly write during school hours throughout the week. I don’t believe in hitting arbitrary word counts. Sometimes on a first draft I might write 5,000 words a day, sometimes I might spend the day doing research, updating my website, working on a pitch, editing someone else’s work… it’s all being a writer to me. I also mentor people with autism, so that takes several hours a week.
Steve: If you could write a story for another author’s fictional world/series, which would it be and why?
Alan: I’m not entirely sure I would want to… I mean, I’d love to get a chance to write an official Batman story. It would be crazy fun to write in the Star Wars universe, or the Alien universe. But I don’t think I’d ever want to write in a particular author’s world. That’s what they’re best at – I want to write my stories.
Steve: Tell me about your newest release (novel/story/poem/novella) and why someone should read it!
Alan: The newest one is a novel called SALLOW BEND out now through Cemetery Dance Publications. It’s the story of a small town where two teenagers go missing. The entire town turns out to find them, which they do, but that’s only the start of the trouble. The girls don’t come back alone. It’s a small-town folk horror, and my first full-length novel since 2018’s DEVOURING DARK so I’m really excited about it. Weirdness, carnivals, strange deaths, something evil in the woods… Booklist just said about it: “the unceasingly intensifying dread quickly escalates from unsettling to terrifying” So that’s pretty exciting!
Cemetery Dance Direct Link:
https://www.cemeterydance.com/sallow-bend-alan-baxter.html
Steve: Bonus Question! Do you have a cherished book?
Alan: You mean one I wrote or one I own? I wrote a novel for my kid and only our family has read it. I’ve promised I won’t ever publish it, so that’s pretty special. Otherwise, probably my favourite novel is Clive Barker’s The Great and Secret Show. That’s close to a perfect book for me. And as for a book that’s an artefact, I have a first edition of “The History of Magic” by Eliphas Levi which is a bit of a treasure.
Very cool! Thank you so much for doing this Alan and best of luck with the launch!
For more information and to discover more of Alan’s work – check the links!
Website: https://www.alanbaxteronline.com/
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Alan-Baxter/e/B002BOBQFQ/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AlanBaxter
