What’s up, my droogs? I hope this finds you well. I mean, notwithstanding literally everything else in the world right now, I hope you personally are managing okay. If nothing else, we’ve always got books to escape into, right?
You know, I had a weird experience on Bluesky recently, talking of books. For a while there, Bluesky was a really cool place to hang out. It’s still by far the best alternative social media, in my opinion, especially as the block function there is so powerful and I recommend blocking early and often to keep your peace of mind. But it is becoming more rabid as the number of users increases.
Which brings me to the weird experience I had. I posted, just casually and without expecting much discussion, that’s it’s absolutely fine to review a book you DNFd (Did Not Finish).
Life’s too short for bad books, for one. If something isn’t working for you, quit and find something better. And it’s perfectly fine to review that book. Something like “This book was terrible, I couldn’t even finish it” is perfectly valid. Equally, something with a bit more information would be better. “This book was so badly written” or “This book was full of plot holes” or “This book was so violent and disgusting I threw it against a wall”, etc. All fine and reasonable reviews.
But I had so many people come yelling at me that you can’t review a book you didn’t finish. That it’s somehow doing a disservice to the author. The really bemusing shouts, and there were a lot of these, were the ones along the lines of “What if it all came together in the end and was actually a great book?” Yeah, I don’t think so, Chad. If I’m eating a steak that’s rancid and disgusting, I won’t keep going in case the last bite is delicious. Everything that came before is a pretty solid indicator of where it’s going. And even if somehow the book has an absolute banger of an ending, the author should have put more care and attention into the rest of the book if they want to keep readers. That’s literally how this job works.
Anyway, by all means DNF books that aren’t working for you, and by all means review them, even mine.
With that in mind, I really hope you won’t DNF my new book, which is actually three old books in a trench coat.
If you read the Eli Carver novellas back between 2018 and 2021 as they were published, you might not be interested in this one unless you fancy a copy to look good on your shelf. If you didn’t catch those back then, now is a great time. Manifest Recall, Recall Night and Ghost Recall have been collected into a brand new omnibus edition, called RECALL, coming on February 25th from Sobelo Books. The original cover artist from Manifest Recall, Wendy Saber Core, has absolutely knocked it out of the park with this new cover for the collected edition. Check it out:
I love this cover so much. All three novellas have been reformatted to read as a single novel in three parts, following Eli Carver’s journey from psychotic break to… whatever life holds for him and just who or what the ghosts all around him might be.
You can see the cover in more detail here.
This book is by far the most violent and high octane thing I’ve written, with more action even than the Alex Caine books (I think, maybe? The Alex Caine Series is a trilogy of novels and this is essentially one novel, so the pace is more intense by that definition alone, I guess.) Anyway, I love the Eli Carver story and I’m so happy it’s coming back into print. That also means I may get to write more Eli Carver stories, so please grab a copy if you’re keen and please do help me spread the word so more people find Eli’s exploits. I’d love to write more about him and his ghosts.
RECALL will be available in paperback, hardcover and ebook from February 25th 2025, with audio hopefully to follow sometime before too long.
You can read an excerpt and find all the links you need here: https://alanbaxter.com.au/my-books/recall/
Or you can pre-order the paperback direct from the publisher here: https://sobelobooks.com/shop/p/recall
Right now there’s not much other news, as we’ve been simply getting through the Xmas season and surviving the long summer school holidays. But please keep your fingers crossed for me as I have few irons in the fire publishing-wise and it would be great to see one or two of those land before too long.
What I’ve Been Enjoying
Many years ago, we started watching Sons of Anarchy, but for some reason we stopped after the second season and never got back into it. Just recently I’ve been correcting that and bingeing the thing. There are seven seasons overall and I’m now up to season five. No spoilers, please, and I’ll probably talk more about it in the next newsletter, as I’ll have finished watching all seven seasons by then.
With reading, I enjoyed Finishing Touches by Thomas Tessier. It’s an old book, brought back by the Valancourt Paperbacks From Hell range. It’s a slow burn of a horror novel and I was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It’s really well written. I also caught up on a Josh Malerman book I hadn’t read before called Pearl, which is absolutely bonkers and Malerman at his unhinged best. And a shout out to Night Bleeds Into Dawn by Graeme Reynolds, a crime/horror hybrid that I had a lot of fun with.
I guess that’s about all for me right now. Look after yourselves and each other, resist in every way you’re able to and remember that joy and enjoying art are acts of resistance in themselves.
Big love and catch you next time.
Al