Sydney and Adelaide come and say hi!

Dec 1, 2021

Real life events are starting up again! I’m so excited to be getting out into the world once more. And a little daunted, if I’m honest, but mostly excited! The next two weekends I’ll be at big events in Sydney and Adelaide.

First off, this weekend, the 4th and 5th of December, I’ll be a guest at Oz Comic-Con Homegrown at Homebush in Sydney. All the details here.

Then next weekend, the 11th and 12th of December, I’ll be a guest at Supanova at the Adelaide Showgrounds. All those details here. I’ve only been to NovAdelaide once before, five years ago. I can’t believe it’s been that long. I can’t wait to visit again.

At both events there’ll be loads of books for great prices, and of course, I’ll sign pretty much anything for free! There’ll also be panels and heaps of other cool guests and stands and mad stuff going on. If you’re in Sydney or Adelaide on those weekends, come along and say hi! And please tell your friends if you think they’d be keen to come too. Hope to see you there.

Oz Comic-Con Homegrown December 4th and 5th

Nov 17, 2021

I’m excited to be a guest at the next Oz Comic-Con in Sydney the first weekend of December. It’s mighty strange to be thinking about big, in-person events again, but the world is slowly emerging from the recent madness. The event is being run as safely as possible and I’m pleased that it’s only open to fully vaccinated people (assuming you are eligible and able to be vaccinated.)

You can find full details on the website here: https://ozcomiccon.com/sydney/

I’ll have a whole bunch of stuff with me, all at extra-special Comic-Con prices. Below is a breakdown of what I’ll have available, but some stuff is in very limited supply, so come and see me early. Of course, you’re also welcome to bring books you already have and I’ll be glad to sign them and have a chat. There’ll be heaps of other great guests and pop culture coolness, so I hope to see you there!

Click to embiggen:

THE ROO nominated for a Ditmar Award

Nov 1, 2021

It’s always an absolute thrill when something of mine makes any kind of list. Ultimately what we want are readers and thereby good book sales – that’s what a career is made of, after all. But recognition outside of that can be so incredibly gratifying and it’s good oil in the motivation machine. The thought that there are people out there who like my stuff enough to add it to recommended reading lists or put it on an award shortlist is outstanding. And with the announcement of the 2021 ballot for the DITMAR AWARDS – Australia’s genre fiction fan-voted awards – it’s a blast to see THE ROO on the shortlist for Best Novella or Novelette. The voting on this award is a bit different now, which is great to see. It used to be open only to members of the last and current Australian National Convention. This time, the voting pool has been expanded and it’s open to anyone who was a member of any National Convention from 2016 to now. That means that you have voting rights if you were a member or supporting member of any of the following:

Contact2016 in Brisbane in 2016

Continuum 13 in Melbourne in 2017

Swancon 2018 in Perth in 2018

Continuum 15 in Melbourne in 2019

OR (even though Covid stopped them going ahead) if you had a membership (full or supporting) for

Swancon in Perth in 2020

Conflux 16 in Canberra in 2021

So if you held a full or supporting membership for any of the above NatCons, even just one of them, you retain voting rights in the Ditmars. This is important, because the bigger the pool of eligible voters, the more accurately the Awards will reflect the views of the fans. So please if you qualify, have your vote. And if you see your way to adding your number 1 vote to THE ROO as Best Novella, I’d be beside myself with joy. This is the 8th time I’ve been a Ditmar finalist, but I’ve yet to win one! You can place your vote electronically here (which only takes a minute) or you can vote by email to [email protected]. Get involved!

Here’s the full 2021 Ballot:

Best Novel
—————————————————————–
The Crying Forest, Venero Armanno (IFWG Publishing Australia).
Hollow Empire, Sam Hawke (Penguin).
The Animals in That Country, Laura Jean McKay (Scribe Publications).
Monstrous Heart, Claire McKenna (HarperCollins).
The Left-Handed Booksellers of London, Garth Nix (Allen & Unwin).
Poison & Light, Gillian Polack (Shooting Star Press).
Repo Virtual, Corey J. White (Tom Doherty Associates).
No Award

Best Novella or Novelette
—————————————————————–
“The Attic Tragedy”, J. Ashley-Smith, in The Attic Tragedy (Meerkat Press).
“The Roo”, Alan Baxter (Self Published).
Bad Weather”, Robert Hood, in Outback Horrors Down Under (Things in the Well).
“Flyaway”, Kathleen Jennings (Pan Macmillan Australia).
“The Weight of the Air, The Weight of the World”, T.R. Napper, in Neon Leviathan (Grimdark Magazine).
No Award

Best Short Story
—————————————————————–
“The Genetic Alchemist’s Daughter, Elaine Cuyegkeng, in Black Cranes: Tales of Unquiet Women (Omnium Gatherum).
“Hacking Santorini”, Cat Sparks, in Dark Harvest (NewCon Press).
“The Calenture”, Kaaron Warren, in Of Gods and Globes 2.
No Award

Best Collected Work
—————————————————————–
Rebuilding Tomorrow, Tsana Dolichva (Twelfth Planet Press).
The Zookeeper’s Tales of Interstellar Oddities, Aiki Flinthart and Pamela Jeffs (CAT Press).
Songs for Dark Seasons, Lisa L. Hannett (Ticonderoga Publications).
Neon Leviathan, T.R. Napper (Grimdark Magazine).
Dark Harvest, Cat Sparks (NewCon Press).
No Award

Best Artwork
—————————————————————–
Cover art, Keely Van Order, for Drive, She Said by Tracie McBride (IFWG Publishing Australia).
Illustrations, Rovina Cai, for The Giant and the Sea (Lothian).
Illustrations, Kathleen Jennings, for Mother Thorn and other tales of courage and kindness (Serenity Press).
No Award

Best Fan Writer
—————————————————————–
Bruce Gillespie, for writing in SF Commentary.
LynC, for writing in Ethel the Aardvark.
No Award

Best Fan Artist
—————————————————————–
Lyss Wickramasinghe, for fanart on Tumblr including (Elsie, Hold On), (The Gem and the Other) and (Vesuvia Pride).
No Award

Best Fan Publication in Any Medium
—————————————————————–
Pratchat, Elizabeth Flux and Ben McKenzie (Splendid Chaps Productions).
Ethel the Aardvark, LynC (Melbourne Science Fiction Club).
The AntipodeanSF Radio Show, Ion Newcombe.
The Coode Street Podcast, Jonathan Strahan and Gary K. Wolfe.
No Award

Best New Talent
—————————————————————–
Nikky Lee.
No Award

William Atheling Jr Award for Criticism or Review
—————————————————————–
Terry Frost, for reviews in Terry Talks Movies (YouTube)
Kathleen Jennings, for “Contracts and Calcifer, or “In Which A Contract Is Concluded Before Witnesses”: the transactional structure of Howl’s Moving Castle”, The Proceedings of the Diana Wynne Jones Conference, Bristol 2019 [paper published 2020]
Grant Watson, for reviews in FictionMachine.
No Award

Trick Or Tweet 2021

Nov 1, 2021

I think it was Gabino Iglesias who came up with this one (please correct me in the comments if I’m wrong there). The idea was to fill Twitter with little bite-sized horror yarns, disturbing tales that fit in a single tweet. Everyone posted them under the #TrickOrTweet2021 hastag. I had fun with it all month, and as I ended up accumulating quite a few I decided to collect them together here. Twitter can be ephemeral, after all. Another reason I liked this was because it really highlights something I try to get across when I teach workshops. People are always asking where ideas come from and I point out that ideas are not the problem. Ideas are everywhere. Turning an idea or a few ideas into a good story is the real trick. So an exercise like this really shows how ideas are easy to come by. Every one of these is an idea. Hopefully most of them are good ideas! They’re little snapshots and could potentially be expanded into interesting stories. But as they stand, they’re simply ideas in tiny narrative form.

I’ve embedded each tweet in this post, with the tweet transcribed beneath it. If you enjoy mine, be sure to click through on the hashtag and read all the other great stuff people have been posting.

It’s so dark. Did I fall asleep? I can’t move much. Feels like silk. There are hard walls all around me, a ceiling right above my face. Hard to breathe, but I smell lavender. Grandma loved lavender. We put some in her coffin right before the funeral. Oh no.
#trickortweet2021

That thing about your nails still growing after you die? Yeah, that’s a total myth. I’ve been dead for months and my nails haven’t grown at all. Doesn’t matter though, I can still hold a knife perfectly well.
#TrickOrTweet2021

I donated a kidney anonymously last year. Then a lung, and a heart. I’ve lined up another anonymous kidney donation next week. It’s getting harder to source the organs, but as long as I keep moving, they won’t find me. I’ll head over to Kidney 2’s house tonight.
#trickortweet2021

“Daddy,” she said. “Will you hold me?”
I said nothing as she slipped under the covers and snuggled in. She smelled of strawberry shampoo and something else. Something earthy.
“I’m so cold, Daddy!”
And she was. Tomb cold.
I said nothing.
I don’t have a daughter.
#trickortweet2021

Nowhere left to go. They hunted me out of the woods, so I hid in the house. They attacked me in the house, so I retreated to this basement. Now they’re coming for me again. I have no choice. They’ll feel my teeth and claws. And still they’ll call ME the monster.
#trickortweet2021

She cries all night, every night. Inconsolable. Her sobs echo through the house. I hear her whatever room I’m in. The third house now, but still she cries all night long. I’m so very tired. I guess she’ll follow me everywhere. I really shouldn’t have killed her.
#TrickOrTweet2021

“Don’t do this!” he cried.
Tentacles writhed from her body, took him in a slick cold embrace, began to crush, his bones popped, cracked.
“You should’ve dressed less provocatively,” she said, quoting him. “Shouldn’t be out alone. Don’t you know it’s dangerous?”
#TrickOrTweet2021

I thought I might need the dentist but it wasn’t so much a toothache as a tooth vibration. Then the next tooth and the next. They began to shift, pulse, become flexible like white rubber. Then their voices, tiny but insistent. And the things they tell me to do!
#TrickOrTweet2021

Hey, nice house. You live here all alone? Thanks for inviting me back, not many women would take a guy home right after they met. Err… are you okay? What’s happening to your face? Are your eyes bleeding!? Oh gods, your teeth! Let me go! Stop! LET ME GO! LET-
#TrickOrTweet2021

This town has been drowned since they dammed the valley over 60 years ago. SCUBA diving here is incredible, exploring abandoned buildings and streets, frozen in time, submerged under more than 50 feet of water. But why can I hear children’s laughter?
#TrickOrTweet2021

The pains started in my knees. Then elbows, shoulders, chest, back. Debilitating agony doctors couldn’t explain. Psychological, they said, but it wasn’t. Then mother died and I found this doll that looks just like me, with pins in all the places I feel pain.
#TrickOrTweet2021

He was always scared of monsters under the bed. Ironic, really. I told him the only monsters were the ones we let grow inside us. I’m glad he took the lesson to heart. Tonight we hunt together for the first time. I’m so proud. They grow up so fast.
#TrickOrTweet2021

Every once in a while my dog tucks his tail and shivers and growls at this one particular spot in the corner of the room. He’s been doing it for months. Tonight, the wall growled back…
#TrickOrTweet2021

The footsteps behind me stop every time I do. Whenever I look back, only darkness. As I walk again, so do they. The steps sound wet, and with them now a damp and rasping breath. Cold air on my neck, a whispering voice I can’t understand. I daren’t stop again…
#TrickOrTweet2021

“I don’t feel well,” he said, eyes wet.
“What’s wrong, kiddo?”
“My tummy’s all squirly.”
“You need to vomit? Want some water?”
“I’m SO hungry, Daddy.”
His mouth opens, wide. Then wider, stretching further than any mouth should. A maw, emitting a howling wind.
#TrickOrTweet2021

I couldn’t sleep as the shed door banged in the wind. Finally I got up, crossed the dark garden. Something too tall, too thin, long fingers ending in curved claws smiled with too many teeth. It banged the door again. “I thought you’d never come,” it whispered.
#TrickOrTweet2021

“That a new book?” she asked.
“Neat, huh?” I said. “Found it in the attic. It’s in a weird language. Sounds kinda cool.”
I read a section aloud. The room got suddenly cold and shadows swelled from the corners.
“I don’t think you should have done that,” she said.
#TrickOrTweet2021

I got this guitar for $20. Great price for such a sweet instrument. It sounds amazing. I can pull off all the riffs and solos I never could before. I’ll never give this up.
A man in black with short horns steps in front of me. “I was hoping you’d feel that way.”
#TrickOrTweet2021

She said it was over. I thought that meant she was leaving me. I wondered why she made such a nice dinner before that awful news. But now I can’t feel my feet or hands, my tongue is swollen. It’s getting harder to breathe. She’s across the table, smiling at me.
#TrickOrTweet2021

My little angel died too young. The abject cruelty of childhood cancer. We planted a cherry tree on her grave. Cherries were always her favourite. But I never eat the fruit from it any more. I can’t bear the screams as each cherry is picked.
#TrickOrTweet2021

A pact with the devil? Sure, why not. A little blood sacrifice, a little heinous torment, and a soul to buy his favour. No one said it has to be MY soul, after all. Now keep on screaming if you like, there’s no one to hear you. Not for miles and miles.
#TrickOrTweet2021

I didn’t want to die. I thought life was pretty good, you know? I had family I cared about. I enjoyed sunny walks in the forest, days at the beach, all that. And everyone has to die sometime. Besides, it’s worth it. Human blood just tastes soooo damn good.
#TrickOrTweet2021

Every night I call, “Hey, Kitty!” She slinks a little nearer each time. So cautious. I offer milk, ham. “Here, Kitty!” It takes a few weeks but she’s finally close enough to pat. My hand goes right through. I don’t know when she died. Tomorrow we start again.
#TrickOrTweet2021

White noise howls in my ears, I can’t see properly. I feel dizzy. Nauseated. The noise resolves into a scream and I realise it’s my wife. On her knees, crying hard, leaning over something. My god, it’s a body. I can’t get to her. She moves. Oh. It’s me.
#TrickOrTweet2021

Pins in the knees first. Nothing. Tried again the next night at the shoulders, hips. Nada. So I drove the pin right through the heart. Then heard my mother, who I hadn’t seen for a while, had a heart attack. Not that thieving bastard. I collected the wrong hair.
#TrickOrTweet2021

The first time I heard it, that incessant scratching, I thought it was outside. After a few nights I realised it was in the walls. It kept getting louder. Tonight, one thick, segmented black leg emerged through the plaster. I hear more, scratching, scratching…
#TrickOrTweet2021

They said she was a witch. I didn’t believe them, but couldn’t stop them. They chained her up in the forest, stretched like an X between two tall trees, and left her there. I can still hear her screaming. It’s been three years now. I guess she is a witch.
#TrickOrTweet2021

“If you die in the game, you die in real life,” he said, handing me the USB.
I laughed. “Sure, okay!”
I loaded it up, clicked start, then got suddenly dizzy.
Now I’ve woken up and everything’s blurry. Well, it’s blocky-looking. Oh. Shit. Everything is pixels.
#TrickOrTweet2021

So there you have it. I was hoping to get 31 tweets in through the month, one for each day of October. I ended up missing several days, but doing more than one on several other days. I ended up with 28. Not bad! I hope you enjoyed them.

 

Wee Taggart – another Twitter yarn

Oct 8, 2021

It’s become a habit to tell the occasional spooky story on Twitter. I’ve also made a habit of copying them here to my blog as Twitter is so ephemeral. Here’s one I tweeted out last week.

You can click through and read the tweets, or here’s the whole thing all together:

 

I’ve been thinking lately about a holiday we took years ago.

I was about 12 or 13 when we stayed in this old Scottish hotel not far from Ullapool. It was a creepy place, but super cool. I loved all the old stone and weird corridors and leadlight windows.

It was also the first time I stayed anywhere and had a room of my own. This tiny single room right at the end of the hall on the top floor, with a bed, a bedside table, a wardrobe and just enough space between them to get dressed.

There was a window at the end, leadlight and narrow, with a deep stone sill. It looked out over the neat gardens four stories down.

The room was always cold. The place was really old and it was Scotland, but Scottish summers can be nice, the hotel was warm inside, but not this room.

I was equal parts enthralled and creeped out every night.

One night I was mostly asleep, when I heard a tree branch scratching at the window. Tapping and kinda scraping at the glass.

It must have been late, because it was full dark, and it didn’t get properly dark until after 11pm that far north.

Then I remembered, there was no tree outside the window.

The gardens were neat lawns and rose beds, a pond with a circular stone edge on the far side. No trees at all.

I sat up and looked over at the window. It took a while for my eyes to adjust, but I finally made out a small boy there, tapping with one index finger.

His eyes were bright in the darkness, wide and beseeching. His face a pale moon in the night. I couldn’t see much more except that one finger, tap-scraping at the glass.

His mouth moved, he was speaking, but I couldn’t hear his voice. And all I could think was, “I’m on the fourth floor.”

Above my room was a sloping slate roof with these cool as hell stone gargoyles and things, a deep, green metal gutter. And below a drop of more than thirty feet. What was he standing on?

I buried my face in the pillow and did my best to ignore it. Eventually it stopped and I finally fell asleep again.

I didn’t tell anyone. I thought I’d sound mad.

The next night it happened again. Those wide eyes, that pale face, that one finger tap-scraping away. His expression was pleading.

The next morning at breakfast in the hotel dining room, my parents asked if I was okay. “You look pale,” my mum said. “You look tired,” my dad said.

“Yeah, I didn’t sleep too well.”

“Ah, you’re in the wee room at the end of the top floor?” said the hotel manager. He would wander the dining room, asking how the guests were, stuff like that. He always wore tweed, and had this crazy shock of grey hair like an explosion all around his head.

I nodded and he smiled, kindly, but his teeth were yellow and I didn’t like them. “You saw Wee Taggart, did ye?” he said.

“Wee… Taggart?”

“Aye, the Taggart boy. Not everyone who stays in that room sees him, but some do.”

My parents were confused, frowning, but I had to know. “He’s real?”

The hotel manager smiled again. “Depends on your definition of real, wouldn’t you say? Toby was his name. He fell from the window of that room more than two hundred years ago. Didn’t survive, of course.”

“His parents were in the room next door,” the hotel manager said. “The one right opposite where your parents are staying. That nice Mrs. Armitage is in there at the moment. She’s a regular.”

“Anyway, every once in a while he shows up when someone is staying there, asking to be let back in.”

“He wants to be let in?” I asked.

“Did you open the window for him?” the hotel manager asked in return, eyes narrowing.

“No!” I said, aghast. “I didn’t realise that’s what he wanted.” Those pleading eyes… “Should I?” I asked. “Let him in?”

The hotel manager shook his head. “Oh, I wouldn’t advise it. No one ever has before. I don’t know what might happen.”

That night I complained to my parents I was scared and they cursed the hotel manager for telling stupid stories. But I knew he wasn’t lying. I asked if I could sleep on the floor in their room and they agreed. It was our last night there anyway.

But before I went to bed, I left the window open in the tiny room at the end of the hall.

We were woken in the night by screaming. Doors opened all up and down the hall as people looked out. The hotel manager and other staff came running, asking everyone to please return to bed, so sorry, nothing to see.

Gossip was alive in the dining room the next morning. Apparently Mrs. Armitage, in the room opposite my parents, had died.

I overheard one couple saying they talked to the night porter and HE said the woman had been middle-aged and healthy, but suffered a massive heart attack. They found her pale and wide-mouthed. “She looked to me like she’d been scared to death,” the porter told them.

We were moving on that day, heading out to the Skye. Before we left, I had to go and pack up my stuff in the little room. The window had been closed again, and someone had fitted a padlock to it.

I’ve always harboured guilt about poor Mrs. Armitage. I mean, did I kill her? Inadvertently, of course, but did I?

One day I’d like to go back to that hotel and see if the lock is still there on the window. I hope it is.

 

 

I’m now on Patreon

Jul 31, 2021

I’ve long been trying to find ways to simplify my online content and also offer more to people. I’ve tried a few different things, but it’s all a bit disparate. I tried building up Ko-fi as I liked that platform, but while it’s good, they’re still not offering an app, which is weird in this day and age. But it was kinda okay and I had Curious Fictions where I could post stories for a small fee and things were ticking on. Then we got the notification last week that Curious Fictions is shutting down. A damn shame, it was a cool idea and a slick site. But it’s pushed me to act. I’ve finally bitten the bullet and centralised everything with a Patreon page. This will replace my Curious Fictions and my Ko-fi pages. (I’ll still keep the Ko-fi, as it’s useful as a kind of tip jar, but I imagine it’ll go a little dormant now.)

My Patreon has four tiers of membership, from a simple $2/month set and forget tip to a $20/month Elder God tier where you get pre-publication copies of all new work, Q&A opportunities and even a 30 minute zoom with me once a month if you want it. Have a look here to see all the options.

Currently there’s a bunch of stories up there for everyone at the Devourer Tier and above. I’ll be updating it a lot more as time goes on. Lots more stories to come, plus all kinds of other content including behind the scenes stuff, excerpts of works in progress, early release news of books, subscriber exclusive articles, writing advice articles, and more. Maybe even some kung fu/martial arts related stuff if people are interested in that. I’ll also, as I get more settled with it, post some stories exclusively for Patrons, that won’t be published anywhere else. They may find their way into future collections, but they’ll be Patreon-exclusive until then. I may also serialise some stuff there too… I have a few ideas. Please let me know what you think would be cool. If you were a Patron, what would you like to see.

Something like Patreon really does make a huge difference in this current climate, I hope you’ll have a look. https://www.patreon.com/AlanBaxter If you do, I can’t thank you enough. I really appreciate and I promise you’ll get a lot out of it. I have such sights to show you…

Here’s my page:

Become a Patron!

Second Life Book Club recording

Jul 25, 2021

I have to say, Second Life is not some weird aberration from 20 years ago. It’s a vibrant and active online community, showcasing some truly wonderful creative talents. I got invited to be a guest on the Second Life Book Club and had an absolute ball. The interview was great fun, the avatar they created for me is badass, and the set they built based on THE GULP is just stunning. So Cool! There was even a bit where a sea monster came out of the ocean near the lighthouse and read an excerpt. Brilliant. I fully intend to spend a lot more time there, discovering the community and cool places. Meanwhile, if you missed the live stream, the recording filmed during the chat in Second Life is on YouTube now. I’ll embed the video below, and I’ll post a bunch of screenshots from the event below that. Check it out.


Here’s some photos I grabbed while we chatting.

.

A good day for The Gulp

Jul 20, 2021

It’s tough being an author, whether you’re indie or trad published, or a hybrid of both like me. But whatever kind of publishing path you follow, self-promotion is a huge part of success. We have to let people know our stuff is out there if we want them to read it, and that’s a tough gig. Hopefully publishers will market your work as much as possible, but we have to do our own too. And a lot of it is free – just being online, active in the general reading community, is a huge part of it. It’s a privilege to pay for marketing, but that’s something worthwhile too. The trouble is, a lot of what you pay for doesn’t help. Paying to attend conventions is a good investment, as it gives all kinds of benefits and opportunities. (That’s a blog post in itself, really, so maybe I’ll address my thoughts on that at a later point.) But one of the ways paying for marketing does help is when you get on board with one of the big promotional newsletters. Bookbub is always the gold standard of these and holy shit, it is not cheap. But I decided to take a punt on it recently, desperately hoping I would at least make my money back, and hopefully get my book out to a whole slew of new readers in the process. I applied for a Bookbub promotion for THE GULP, which is one of my indie titles. I honestly didn’t expect to get it – far more miss out than are approved – but I did get it. Holy crap!

So the deal is that you reduce the price for a limited time and hope a whole bunch of people give it a shot when the newsletter goes out. A few days before the promo was due, I reduced the price of the ebook on all platforms to 99c and over the few days leading up to the Bookbub I mentioned it in different places, hoping that would kickstart a bit of a climb up the charts, especially Amazon. Then the promo ran and I’m incredibly grateful it went really well. My overall goal was to reach new readers, and I’m fairly confident I’ll manage that. Beyond that, I had three main secondary goals. I’ll definitely break even on the cost of the promotion, which was my first secondary goal. I’ll hopefully make a few bucks too, which was my second goal, especially as my kung fu school is closed again at the moment due to another Covid outbreak. And my third goal was to hopefully score a few decent ranks at the main Amazon stores – those being Australia, the US, and the UK for me. Maybe I’d even get a #1 ribbon. I’m pleased to say I did really quite well! I’ve never had a US store #1 and just missed out again this time too, but I did score a bunch of great ranks and a three #1 bestseller ranks in Australia, which is awesome.

Overall, I got the following positions:

Australia

#101 Overall rank
#1 in Occult
#1 in Occult Horror
#1 in Occult Stories

USA

#255 Overall rank
#2 in Occult Fiction
#2 in Occult Horror

UK

#691 Overall rank
#3 in Horror
#2 in Occult Fiction
#2 in Occult Horror

You can see all these things in the image below. Honestly, I’ve never had ranks anything close to any of those before. Amazing. I was never going to get the #1 spot in the US or the UK, as the Christopher Moore and Jim Butcher books holding those spots were hundreds of places high than me in the overall paid store rank. Honestly, those guys must be selling SO many books. Regardless, I’m over the moon with this result. I sold a lot of books and along with these immediate results, I really hope it does gain me a whole bunch of new readers. Massive thanks to everyone who got involved, either buying a copy or sharing the promo. I couldn’t have done this without you, so it really does mean the world to me.

The Gulp is still 99c for a few more days – find it here.

Now I’m going to get back to writing the second volume of Tales From The Gulp. The writing always matters most.

Second Life Book Club

Jul 15, 2021

Remember Second Life, the virtual world? Turns out it’s is still a thing – a really big thing! – and it also turns out it’s the domain of some incredible artists among many other things. People are creating wonderful stuff over there and there’s a thriving society going on. And one of the things that’s really popular is the Second Life Book Club.

Draxtor (the other character in the video below, reading The Gulp – find on Twitter) is the creator and host of the Second Life Book Club. He’s created something fantastic. I’m super excited to be a guest there in July. To be there, I needed a SL presence and they created this amazing avatar for me, which I just love. I’ll post more photos of my SL form below the video. Meanwhile, this is a trailer Draxtor put together for my appearance on the Book Club. It’s so moody, I love it! I’ll be a guest next Wednesday 21st July at 5pm SLT (which is 5pm CT, or for the Aussies, 11am AEST on Thursday July 22nd). You can find all the links here to join us in-world, or watch as it’s streamed everywhere. Meanwhile, watch the trailer below.

Here’s some shots from Book Club Island. I’m told a specific environment will be made for our interview, so can’t wait to see that. Click on these for a bigger res image:

If you missed the event, you can find it along with all the other guests right here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLC31ohsOopvcMWUU_B4_7o2SvbZVDRCb8

 

SHADOW BITES – a permanently free sampler of my stuff

Jul 15, 2021

Shadow Bites coverHere’s something for everyone! I’ve been meaning to get around to this for a while, and I finally found the time. On the one hand, I just wanted to give away something for free. It’s nice to be generous, right? But also, it’s often a big ask these days to expect people to take a chance on a new-to-them author. One of the hardest parts of being an author is getting noticed out there in the sea of great books available every day. Someone once likened it to a sports stadium, where all the readers are in the stands and all the authors are crammed shoulder to shoulder down on the pitch, waving their arms, trying to be seen. It feels a bit like that sometimes. So in an effort to make getting noticed a bit easier, I’ve put together Shadow Bites.

This is an ebook that will be permanently free on all ebook retailer sites. You can find it here: https://books2read.com/u/bojGVZ It contains a complete novella, three complete short stories, and the opening chapters of six longer books. That should be more than enough to give people a taste of my fiction. Here’s the full contents.

“Out On A Rim” from The Gulp
“Crow Shine” from Crow Shine
“Simulacrum of Hope” from Served Cold
“The Normandy Curse”

Plus the opening chapters of:

Devouring Dark
Hidden City
Bound
Manifest Recall
Primordial
Blood Codex

Feel free to grab a copy yourself, and please share this post or the link anywhere you think people might be interested. Thanks! https://books2read.com/u/bojGVZ

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