Blurring The Line: Alan Baxter
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
Today, it’s me!
Alan Baxter
Yep, that’s me, being all meta and interviewing myself, as mentioned above. It seems only fair, as a contributor to this amazing book, that I answer the questions I’ve been putting to everyone else. I’ll keep the same format too, so from here on, I’ll move to third person.
Alan Baxter is a British-Australian author who writes dark fantasy, horror and sci-fi, rides a motorcycle and loves his dog. He also teaches Kung Fu. He lives among dairy paddocks on the beautiful south coast of NSW, Australia, with his wife, son, dog and cat. He’s the award-winning author of six novels and over sixty short stories and novellas. So far. Read extracts from his novels, a novella and short stories at his website – www.warriorscribe.com – or find him on Twitter @AlanBaxter and Facebook, and feel free to tell him what you think. About anything.
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
For a long time I’ve been wanting to write a story that was in some way paying homage to that great horror novel, The Exorcist. But I also wanted to interrupt, to subvert, the strong Judeo-Christian framework of that book, and so much other western horror. I love the cosmic horror of people like Ligotti and Lovecraft, and non-western horror from Asia and elsewhere, so I tried to meld all those styles a little. “How Father Bryant Saw The Light” is the product of that desire. Hopefully I at least partly achieved what I set out to do.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Horror exposes us to darkness while at the same time providing the guiding light by which we examine that dark. Horror also shows us that sometimes there is no way out. It’s the skin peeled back to reveal the muscles and veins of life, to expose the truth more deeply than any other kind of fiction. And it helps us deal with what we find there, prepares us for the actual horror of real life.
G K Chesterton said, “Fairy tales are more than true – not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.” Horror is even more true than that, I think. Its pure honesty is the simple fact that sometimes the dragons exist and they can’t be beaten. And we need to face that.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
This is such a tough one and I apologise to all the other writers for asking them! There are so many, so I’m going to pick a recent one. I’ve lately become a huge fan of everything written by Nathan Ballingrud. His collection, North American Lake Monsters, is one of the best collections I’ve ever read. So I’m going to pick one of his stories, in this case, “Skullpocket”. It was originally published in Nightmare Carnival, edited by Ellen Datlow, and you can read it for free on online, here at iO9.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
Given what I said about my story above, I’m going to have to go with The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty. If you’ve only seen the film, you must read the book! (That actually applies to all films made from books.)
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
There’s a Japanese folkloric belief that if you can’t sleep it’s because you’re awake in someone else’s dream. That, to me, is a mind-blowing concept. On the one had it’s quite simple and demonstrably false, but just imagine if it were true…
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
Lia Swope Mitchell
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Blurring The Line: Lia Swope Mitchell
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
Today, it’s:
Lia Swope Mitchell
Lia Swope Mitchell is a PhD candidate in French literature at the University of Minnesota who writes fiction in moments of furtive, joyful procrastination. Her stories have appeared in Cosmos, Apex, and decomP, among other places. She teaches grammar, studies weird old books from the nineteenth century, and lives in Minneapolis.
Find Lia at liaswopemitchell.com.
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
My dad and his wife spend a good bit of time in New York, and a while ago they were telling me about this thing that apparently everyone learns if they ride the subway a lot: if it’s rush hour and every car on the train is packed except for one that looks totally empty… don’t get on the empty car. There’s a reason it’s empty. And the reason is probably someone who’s having one of the worse days of their life. “We can pray for him,” one woman said about an especially pungent man who was peeling the skin off his feet, “but we don’t have to smell him.”
That phrase—don’t get on the empty car—got me thinking about how people often try to close off and isolate things that disturb us. Maybe because they smell bad, but also because they’re sad and difficult and we don’t know what, if anything, we can do about them. So the story “Empty Cars” is about someone who’s trying to close off one particular thing, something difficult and sad that she wants very much to ignore, and the result is that it ends up invading her daily life in all these comically grotesque ways.
2. What does horror mean to you?
For me, horror is a lot like science fiction and fantasy in that it offers a perspective that we can’t get in everyday life, or at least not without some terrible consequences. Horror in particular is a way to explore all those weird and awful beings, ideas and fantasies, to see the world from dark and distorted angles that we would never want to experience in real life.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
Well, this is a classic, but every time I read Guy de Maupassant’s “The Horla” I love it more. It’s a strange, subtle, and occasionally hilarious text that actually fits the Blurring the Line theme very well—like in Henry James’s “The Turn of the Screw,” it’s hard to say what’s really going on, whether there’s really a monster or if the narrator’s losing his mind. But there’s this gradual increase of psychological tension that just grabs on and doesn’t let go.
4. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
You could tell me pretty much anything about octopi and I’d believe you. I mean, they have nine brains. Of course they’re psychic. And who knows what they’re doing out in the deep ocean. They could have a whole cephalopod society down there. Are they malevolent? Not yet, but at some point I bet we’ll manage to really piss them off. I’m just glad I live in the middle of the continent.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
Tim Lebbon
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Blurring The Line: Tim Lebbon
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
Today, it’s:
Tim Lebbon
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He’s had over thirty novels published to date, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is the thriller The Hunt, and other recent releases include The Silence and Alien: Out of the Shadows. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Awards. Future books include The Rage War (an Alien/Predator trilogy), and the Relics trilogy from Titan.The movie of his story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage, is out now, and other projects in development include Playtime (an original script with Stephen Volk), My Haunted House with Gravy Media, The Hunt, Exorcising Angels (based on a novella with Simon Clark), and a TV Series proposal of The Silence.
Find out more about Tim at his website www.timlebbon.net
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
I’ve always wanted to write a story about spooky clowns moving in next door. And that’s it. Sometimes a story’s inspiration is something deep, a driving need to explore a certain event or feeling. For me it was just the clowns. Scary buggers.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Real horror hits the head and heart, not the gut. Stuff that sets out purely to disgust or sicken isn’t really horror, although gore and nastiness can have a place in a good horror story or movie – The Thing is one of the best horror stories ever made, I think, because the bloody body horror serves to increase the intense sense of isolation and claustrophobia. The ultimate horror for me as a father is family in peril, and that’s what I write about a lot of the time, to a greater or lesser degree.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
“The Whimper of Whipped Dogs” by Harlan Ellison. Shocked and upset me the first time I read it, and it still does now.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Truly painful and disturbing to read, and the movie was also excellent.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Ghosts. I’ve seen no evidence, though I have an open mind. I think if they can be said to exist, ghosts are probably products of the mind – aspects we haven’t been able to pin down scientifically yet – rather than revenants of the dead.
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
Marty Young
Tom Piccirilli
Lisa Morton
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Blurring The Line: Lisa Morton
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
Today, it’s:
Lisa Morton
Lisa Morton is a screenwriter, author of non-fiction books, award-winning prose writer, and Halloween expert whose work was described by the American Library Association’s Readers’ Advisory Guide to Horror as “consistently dark, unsettling, and frightening”. Her most recent releases include Ghosts: A Haunted History and the short story collection Cemetery Dance Select: Lisa Morton. She currently serves as President of the Horror Writers Association, and can be found online at http://www.lisamorton.com .
1. What was the inspiration/motivation behind your story in Blurring The Line?
I work in a used bookstore (the Iliad Bookshop in North Hollywood, California) and some time ago we acquired a remarkably strange volume: a nineteenth-century home-made scrapbook called SWEET DEATH. The owner, whoever s/he was, had pasted hundreds of newspaper clippings into the pages of an old math textbook; the clippings ran the gamut from ghost stories to true crime tales to just oddball bits. I was really knocked out by a story that fell into the latter category, about two teenage girls who tried to escape their abusive families by dressing as men and fleeing on the train. The story was horrifying and melancholy and strange all at once, and I had to write about it.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Any work of art in which the primary intent is to horrify or disturb. My personal favorites are those works that you find yourself still thinking about days later, maybe with a little mental shiver.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
Anything by Dennis Etchison. He’s the world’s most under-recognized horror author. There are stories by him I’m still thinking about thirty years after first reading them. It’s just criminal that he’s not much recognized outside of a small circle of horror readers.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. It’s the great grand-daddy of all modern horror novels, and it’s still a damned fine read.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
Ghosts. Having just finished writing a big nonfiction history of them, I’m still not convinced that we’re haunted by spirits of the dead, but it would be downright silly to deny that SOMETHING’s going on. I tend to think the answer might be neurological – that certain people are wired to take stimuli, like ultralow frequency sound waves, and convert that into hallucinations of humanoid figures. Or it could be something completely different…
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Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
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Blurring The Line: Tom Piccirilli
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
The first story in the book is by the late, great:
Tom Piccirilli
Sadly, Tom died recently after a long struggle against cancer. I sent the interview questions to his wife, Michelle, and asked her if there was any way she could think of to include him. (Tom is a fantastic writer and you really should read anything by him you can find.) Here’s what Michelle sent back to me:
I wish I could help you by answering all these questions as Tom would have but in spite of the fact that I knew him better than anyone else, I don’t have specific responses to most of the questions. I can tell you that Tom never gave a serious answer when asked about inspiration so I guarantee that he would have responded with sarcasm.
As far as a book/collection or writer he would have said that everyone should read, number one would have been Harlan Ellison. He admired him tremendously and a month before Tom died, Harlan sent him a hand written note praising Tom’s writing and saying that Tom’s novel THE LAST KIND WORDS, which he had just finished reading, would make a wonderful addition to his library. I framed that letter for Tom and it now hangs in his office. He was so incredibly proud to receive recognition from a writer he admired that much. And I am so happy he received it in time to treasure it. Tom could rave about Harlan’s incredible talent for hours. I’d never read Harlan’s work until I met Tom. He insisted that I go buy a copy of DEATHBIRD STORIES right away. So he turned me into a huge fan of Harlan’s work too. We own every book Harlan has written (a few doubles from before we lived together) and they are all signed. We spent time with him at two World Horror Cons. Tom got on with him very well and loved to hear his personal tales about life in the writer’s trenches.
[So read Harlan’s stuff too! – Alan]
Previous posts in the Blurring The Line interview series:
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Blurring The Line – Marty Young, editor
Blurring The Line is the new anthology of horror fiction and non-fiction, edited by award-winning editor Marty Young, published by Cohesion Press. You can get your copy here or anywhere you normally buy books (the print edition is coming any day now).
To help people learn a bit more about it, I’ve arranged for each fiction contributor to answer the same five questions, and I’ll be running these mini interviews every weekday now that the book is available. (And yes, I have a story in it, so I’ll be interviewing myself too!)
But first off, I have the same interview (with a slightly different first question) from the editor himself. So without further ado, introducing:
Marty Young
Marty Young is a Bram Stoker-nominated and Australian Shadows Award-winning writer and editor, and sometimes ghost hunter. He was the founding President of the Australian Horror Writers Association from 2005-2010, and one of the creative minds behind the internationally acclaimed Midnight Echo magazine, for which he also served as Executive Editor until mid-2013.
Marty’s first novel, 809 Jacob Street, was published in 2013 by Black Beacon Books, and won the Australian Shadows Award for Best Horror Novel. His novel was also given an Honorable Mention in Shelf Unbound’s Page Turner competition. His short horror fiction has been nominated for both the Australian Shadows and Ditmar awards, reprinted in Australian Dark Fantasy and Horror (‘the best of 2008’), and repeatedly included in year’s best recommended reading lists. Marty’s essays on horror literature have been published in journals and university textbooks in Australia and India, and he was also co-editor of the award winning Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears, a landmark anthology showcasing the best Australian horror stories from 1836 to the present.
When not writing, he spends his time in the deep dark jungles of Papua New Guinea as a palynologist, whatever the heck that is.
1. What was your guiding framework for selecting stories for BtL? Did you have any methodology in mind?
I wanted to be taken somewhere uncomfortably real. Now I know the idea of all horror stories is to do that, to make you believe or to at least give you believable characters in an unreal situation, but there were some tales I rejected because they were just too far out there for what I had in mind (for example, set on another planet, or with humans integrated with monsters in society). I wanted the events in the story to seem like they could have come from a newspaper, but then I also wanted strange and surreal things to happen so it was a fine line to walk. Our world remains a mystery, despite all we know about it, and I wanted the stories to reflect that.
I also wanted these stories offset against non-fiction material. Some people might not get why non-fiction is included, or find this jarring, but it was an attempt at trying something a little different to what is standard practice. For me, it’s one thing to suspend belief for a story’s sake because you know, deep down, that what you’re reading isn’t real, no matter how realistic it might be. That’s the whole fun of horror fiction, right? It’s a safe scare. But it’s something else altogether to read details of actual real events or technological breakthrough that defy belief or cause you to question the world. So as per the title, I thought it would also be fun to take this a step further and blur the two, so some of the short stories are based on real events, while some of the non-fiction is made up. It’s up to the reader to work out which is which.
2. What does horror mean to you?
Horror to me is an emotional reaction to a horrifying event or situation. It’s something personal, hence why one person will call a book horror while someone else won’t. The genre is a nebulous beast, with horror being found in all kinds of books. We’ve come out of the ghetto and infiltrated the world; people read horror now without even realizing it, and then still claim it’s not a genre they like. In some ways, I think calling horror a genre isn’t accurate anymore. Maybe there’s a core element of horror that’s still there and easily classified as such, but there are certainly no boundaries anymore.
3. What’s a horror short story that you think everyone should read?
Phew, tough question, but one that comes to mind is ‘The Monkey’s Paw’ by WW Jacobs. The ending is just so perfect and terrifying. Another that I love for is surreal creepiness is ‘The Wendigo’ by Algernon Blackwood. Or for something a little different but still just as horrifying, ‘I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream’ by Harlan Ellison. Absolutely brilliant.
4. What horror novel should everyone read?
Mine! No? Okay then, I’m going to go for Clive Barker’s Weaveworld for it’s poetic language, the staggering scope of its imagination, and the horror contained within. It’s one of my all time favourite novels. Beyond that, any of Stephen King’s books (especially his earlier ones). Not very original of me picking King and Barker, but I grew up with those two and they have had a heavy hand in shaping my writing.
5. Name something that you think just might be real, or might not…
I believe in monsters – except for me monsters are just animals we’re yet is formally discover and classify. I believe we will soon enough create AI (and then find ourselves in trouble). I believe in aliens, and I believe in the power of the mind.
I’m not sure I believe in alternative dimensions, even if they have been proven mathematically. I’m also not sure I believe in ghosts, hence why one of my hobbies is ghost hunting. I’m a scientist so of course I need proper indisputable evidence to prove their existence before I’m happy to believe. Do other supernatural entities exist? Fairies and demons and vampires and werewolves, etc.? I don’t know but I hope that they do.
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New story in Review of Australian Fiction
The Review of Australian Fiction is a prestigious bi-monthly electronic publication showcasing the broad plethora of Australian writing talent. It has two stories every two weeks across all genres and styles. It’s really quite a wonderful thing. Now into its 16th volume (with 6 issues per volume) it’s doing very well for itself.
I’m very proud to say that the latest issue, volume 16, issue 3, has a story from me in it. My contemporary Australian horror story, “Reaching For Ruins”, shares the issue with “Only the Moon Rages” by Jarrod Boyle.
My story is based on a couple of real events that I’ve extrapolated into something well beyond real. Or is it..? You can find the issue here for only $2.99:
http://reviewofaustralianfiction.com/issues/volume-16-issue-3/
Or subscribe to RAF for only $12.99 per volume (six issues). You can subscribe here:
http://reviewofaustralianfiction.com/product/subscription/
I hope you enjoy the story!
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Motivation and refreshing the well
I spent this past weekend at GenreCon. You can see my previous post for some photos of that fantastic event. As part of his opening speech, con organiser Peter M Ball said the following incredibly true thing:
GOOD THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WRITERS TALK TO EACH OTHER.
He later blogged with the follow-up half of that truism:
BETTER THINGS HAPPEN WHEN WRITERS HELP EACH OTHER.
I cannot emphasise just how true these things are. You mix with other writers and you learn all you can. You help other writers, with no view to a reward, but you’ll be rewarded anyway with other writers helping you in turn. You will benefit from friendly and open socialising with your peers, whether they’re streets ahead of you in their career or just starting out. But apart from that, the reason to hang out with other writers is because it is just so fucking motivating.
You talk about writing and publishing, you share successes and failures, you learn things you didn’t know before or you’re reminded of things you’d somehow sort of forgotten. You come away from these events with such a burning desire to work harder and be better and chase success that it makes all the struggle and the default position of rejection so much easier to bear. It reminds you why you do what you do. Other than the old truth that we writers simply couldn’t not write, by going to events like GenreCon we’re reminded that there are so many other people out there who share our particular brand of insanity and that’s incredibly empowering.
It’s also important, however, to remember that you need time and space. Creativity is born in boredom. Brains need downtime, when they’re certainly not switched off, but they’re actively resting. It’s a necessary part of being a writer to get out and do nothing. Since GenreCon, which was only a couple of days ago, I’ve written about 5,000 new words, pitched a non-fiction article to a pro venue, polished a short story and sent it to a wonderful beta reader and more. This is alongside running the kung fu academy and having a two year old son. But that’s my normal. It’s great and I love it.
This morning I woke up with a virtual iron spike through my eye, quivering on the verge of a migraine. I don’t get them often, but when I do they’re utterly debilitating. They happen when I’m too stressed/busy and too tired. The busy-ness or the tiredness on their own are no big deal. When the two line up in force, BOOM! It’s migraine time. Usually I can tell it’s coming and head it off. Today I almost couldn’t.
Wednesday mornings are one of my dedicated writing times, before I go out to teach classes through the afternoon and evening. But with the head I had this morning, I knew I needed some self-care. So I took my dog to the beach and walked in the rain. It was beautiful. Then I went into town with him, got a coffee and just sat on a bench under an awning and watched the world go by for an hour.
Now I’m home, recharged, my potential migraine reduced to a dull ache that will continue to fade. I feel refreshed and enlivened. And the best bit? All that stuff I did this morning is still writing. My brain was actively resting, turning over plot and story in my hindmind. Watching people in town gave me insights into characters. Nothing conscious, no note taking, but it all feeds the beast. It refreshes the creative wells. So now I’m back at my desk, writing up this post about it, then I’ll get back to the novel for an hour or two before I have to go to work. I might only add 1,000 new words, where most Wednesdays I might write up to 5,000, but that doesn’t matter. It’s healthy forward progress, it’s sustainable and enjoyable.
So mix with your peers, online all the time and in person when you can. Be inspired, be motivated, but remember to look after yourself too. There’s an old proverb: Fear not moving slowly. Fear only standing still.
Be well and if you make half a page of progress one week, congratulate yourself. Aim to do more next week. If you don’t, so what? Do more the week after. Just keep going and stay healthy. And yes, in some ways this is a thinly veiled NaNoWriMo post, but it’s more than that. It’s about the importance of interaction and isolation, and recognising when you need both. It applies to everything, not just the writing life. It’s about all of life.
Be well!
A photo from my walk today – Kiama headland from Bombo Beach.
GenreCon 2015
I went up to Brisbane this weekend for GenreCon. It’s the third (I think) time GenreCon has happened, the second one in Brisbane. It’s run by the Australian Writers’ Marketplace and expertly managed by Peter Ball. Honestly, Peter and his ninjas deserve medals, as it’s a truly professional convention. You can learn more about it here.
I did my Write The Fight Right workshop up there and that seemed to go down very well. Otherwise there was a fantastic selection of panels and keynotes from incredibly talented and interesting writers. GenreCon is every two years, so get yourself organised for 2017.
I uploaded a bunch of photos to my Facebook page here. I wish I’d taken more, but I was too busy hanging with awesome people and having fun.
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And Then… Big book of awesome on its way
So this is quite exciting. I’ve been sitting on this one for ages and it’s finally being officially announced.
Clan Destine Press are crowd funding a giant anthology of cross-genre buddy-adventure sff stories by the likes of Jack Dann, Narrelle Harris, Jason Nahrung, Dan Rabarts, Tor Roxburgh, Amanda Pillar, Mary Borsellino, Jason Franks… and many more excellent writers of genre fiction. And me. I have a historical fantasy story in there that includes kung fu, Chinese spirit magic, the Australian gold rush and all kinds of heroic fun. Sounds great, right?
It’s going to be huge. Check it out here:
http://clandestinepress.com.au/content/and-then-great-big-book-awesome
There’s an indiegogo campaign to get involved too, from as simple as a couple of bucks in support, to paying now to pre-order the book, right up to some very sweet rewards, including critiques of your fight scenes by me and loads of other stuff. Check out all that goodness here:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/and-then-the-great-big-book-of-awesome–2#/
The fact that this commissioned anthology grew from one into two books, just because all the contributors turned in such great, and long, stories, is pretty exciting. My own yarn ran right up to the word limit and even tumbled over just a fraction. It’s a different story to anything I’ve written before and I’m really pleased with it. I can’t wait for it to get out there into the world.
Watch this space for more details, or just go and sling a few bucks at the indiegogo campaign and you’ll get regular updates.
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