About Alan Baxter

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 is the author of the dark urban fantasy trilogy, Bound, Obsidian and Abduction (The Alex Caine Series) published by HarperVoyager Australia, and the dark urban fantasy duology, RealmShift and MageSign (The Balance 1 and 2) from Gryphonwood Press. He co-authored the short horror novel, Dark Rite, with David Wood. Alan also writes short fiction with more than 50 stories published in a variety of journals and anthologies in Australia, the US, the UK and France. His short fiction has appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction (forthcoming), Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Daily Science Fiction, Postscripts, and Midnight Echo, among many others, and more than twenty anthologies, including the Year’s Best Australian Fantasy & Horror (2010 and 2012). Alan also writes narrative arcs and dialogue for videogames and wrote the popular writer’s resource, Write The Fight Right, a short ebook about writing convincing fight scenes. He has twice been a finalist in the Ditmar Awards.

Exile by Peter M Ball – review

Posted on December 4, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Exile by Peter M Ball

Apocalypse Ink Productions

Exile is the first novella in what is (I believe) a trilogy, The Flotsam Series. Broadly defined, it’s urban fantasy. But I like to think of it as a whole new subgenre: Gold Coast Demon Noir.

The story follows the return of Keith to the Gold Coast (in Queensland, Australia) from sixteen years of self-imposed exile. It was self-impose exile or die in circumstances that are slowly revealed through the plot. But returning is utter lunacy and Keith knows it. The trouble is, he and his partner, Roark, really messed things up with a cult in Adelaide and returning to the Gold Coast is about the least deadly option left open.

Ball has done a great job of creating a grimy Gold Coast noir setting here and it was great to read something so thoroughly Australian, yet retaining all the great tropes of noir as we know it. Then add in the supernatural elements and it’s a heady brew of worldbuilding. Ball’s description of the Gloom and the creatures from it who inhabit people and live just beneath the fabric of society is expertly handled. The development of the plot and characters shows a writer at the top of his game. He’s also used the novella length really well for structure.

However, it’s not all rainbows – after all, what is? As far as the writing is concerned, the only real complaint I have is that it’s a novella. I know that seems strange after my comment above, but Ball writes really tightly and with great economy of language, which suits the novella well, but this story is left hanging wide open and there are all sorts of things follow up on. It’s not like the next one will be a sequel – rather a continuation. So I wonder why all three weren’t put together as a novel rather than three novellas. But let’s be honest, that’s a pretty weak complaint.

My other concern is with the publisher. The edition I read via the Kindle Store was absolutely riddled with typos, missing words and so on. This is no fault of the author, as the publisher’s job is to find and fix that stuff. So that was rather disappointing. But it’s no reason to avoid this story.

Dark, gritty, funny in places, horrible in others, this is Gold Coast Demon Noir done perfectly. Highly recommended. I’m looking forward to the next one.

Fearful Symmetries, edited by Ellen Datlow – review

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Fearful Symmetries

Edited by Ellen Datlow

Chizine Publications

ISBN 978-1-77148-193-9

Ellen Datlow has long been established as one of the premier editors in the horror genre. Her work and awards really speak for themselves. So when she decided to Kickstart an unthemed horror anthology with the backing of Chizine Publications, it’s no surprise that it exceeded its target in short order. The result is one of the best horror anthologies I’ve ever read.

The Table of Contents is a Who’s Who of top notch writers in the genre working today. Twenty short stories are featured and the quality is incredibly high. There’s great variety too, with some stories being all out dark horror and others a more creeping dread or twisted dark fantasy. As with any anthology, not every story will resonate with everyone. For myself, there were two yarns in particular that really didn’t hit the mark, but my taste will differ from others’, so it’s to be expected. The authors in question are very well known and lauded, so not appealing to me is no issue and I’m sure others will love their work.

I won’t review story by story, but I’ll mention the few real stand outs for me. “The Atlas of Hell” by Nathan Ballingrud, an author whose work astounds me every time I read him, was a powerfully visceral story. And it felt like the start of something much bigger. “Mount Chary Galore” by Jeffrey Ford is an amazing twist on the modern fairy tale and incredibly well realised. “Suffer Little Children” by Robert Shearman is a story of almost perfect crafting, with an incredible sense of place. “Bridge of Sighs” by Kaaron Warren is one of the creepiest stories I’ve read in years, with a really horrible cast of characters and a very macabre idea at its heart.”The Worms Crawl In,” by Laird Barron is a story that escalates beyond all expectation very quickly and further cements Barron as a teller of mythic yarns of great proportions. And finally a mention of “Shay Corsham Worsted” by Garth Nix, which was an amazing slice of something much bigger and I’d really love to know more about the monster in that story.

The book is worth the purchase price for those stories alone, in my opinion, but of course that’s not to undermine the general excellence of all the others. I really hope Datlow continues to produce more unthemed anthologies, as she has an eye for curating a dark collection that it utterly compelling. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror – review

Posted on October 13, 2014 by Alan Baxter

SNAFU: An Anthology of Military Horror

Edited by Geoff Brown and A J Spedding

Cohesion Press

The publisher approached me prior to the publication of this volume and asked if I’d consider writing the Foreword for it. I said, sure, send it over and I’ll have a look. After reading the book, I was more than happy to write the Foreword. Here, as a review, I’m reprinting that Foreword.

War is hell.

Nothing puts people closer to their base state than a threat to their life. Nothing reveals their animal nature more than the desire for survival at any cost. People trained for war have to deal with these extremes time after time, surviving for a greater purpose. Or at least, one hopes so. Because survival in a personal fight can be selfish, but survival in war might mean the fate of nations, or even species. And pretty much every permutation of that kind of fight for survival is explored in the stories you’re about to read.

Don’t be fooled into thinking an anthology of military horror is just a book full of Platoon or Aliens knock-offs. In these pages, the variety of story you’ll find is staggering.

Historical and imagined, science-fictional and contemporary. Mythos, the Wild West and Special Forces. Great wars, small wars and the American Civil War. Shapeshifters and ghosts and extraterrestrial parasites. Japanese demons and supernatural special agents. Monsters large and small. Battles fought with raging gunfire and earth-shattering explosions and battles fought cold, with paper trails and subterfuge. Battles won and lost in moments and battles that stretch across aeons.

There’s great variety in story style and length too. From very short stories to novella length yarns with lots of meat ready to be stripped off their bones. This book is a fine achievement and a great example of a theme superbly explored.

You’ll enjoy all the approaches here and the great writing from both established names and emerging talents. But no matter the variety, one thing that doesn’t change from tale to tale is the underlying truth evident in every one. Lives are at risk, great stakes are being played but throughout every page we’re never allowed to forget that regardless of the nature of the enemy, the real horror is war itself.

Alan Baxter, NSW Australia, 2014

Strange Gateways by Simon Kurt Unsworth – Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

Posted on September 7, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Strange Gateways

by Simon Kurt Unsworth

PS Publishing 2014

Hardcover ,148 pages

Reviewed by Mario Guslandi

The third collection by Simon Kurt Unsworth is actually his second, appearing in print later than his most recent work (the remarkable collection Quiet Houses). Thus the present book assembles eleven earlier stories penned by this talented British author who, in a few years, has managed to gain respect and acclaim in the dark fiction area.

Having greatly admired his more recent body of work, I confess I was slightly disappointed by some of the material featured in Strange Gateways. A strange mix of horror and pulp fiction, the present collection cannot be considered as a real setback, but is not certainly up to my expectations.

Again, what we have here is a bunch of old tales which, evidently, are particularly dear to the author, maybe more because of the circumstances under which they have been written (as described in the interesting Afterword) than for their intrinsic value.

Don’t get me wrong: Unsworth is always worth reading (pun intended) and the book includes three outstanding pieces that I’d like to mention.

“The Knitting Child” is a delicate, insightful tale very effectively portraying a young bride saddened by her inability to get pregnant; “Implementing the Least Desirable Solution” is a quite horrific, scaring and breathtaking tale about a murderous, impossibly strong monster getting rid of the inept scientists devoted to investigate its nature; “Mami Wata” is another powerful , memorable piece of supernatural horror, set in a mine in Zambia where a terrible secret is lurking.

Those three stories alone amply deserve the purchase of the book.

Perfections by Kirstyn McDermott – review

Posted on June 23, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Perfections

by Kirstyn McDermott

Published by Twelfth Planet Press

Two sisters. One wish. Unimaginable consequences.

Not all fairy tales are for children.

Perfections is the second novel from Australian writer, Kirstyn McDermott. Originally published electronic-only, it won the Aurealis Award for Best Horror Novel in 2013. Now reissued in print and ebook, it’s entirely worth your time to read it in whatever format you prefer.

It primarily tells the story of a family – two sisters, Antoinette and Jacqueline, and their cold, hard-hearted mother, Sally. It tells a lot more story than this, of course, but it’s one of those books that’s really hard to review without any spoilers. It’s best if every delicious morsel reveals itself as the author intended. Suffice to say that Antoinette discovers a magical ability within herself that greatly complicates everything around her, especially life for her art gallery assistant sister and distant mother.

This book is fantastic in the truest sense of the word, with the darkness of the fantasy beautifully drawn out by McDermott’s lyrical prose. She’s an excellent writer and I think she’s found a voice here far more developed than any of her other work. And the book is dark. It’s a slow and subtle horror, that reveals itself in layers. The first real bombshell hits around the halfway mark after a strong and engaging build-up and the hits keep coming after that. The characters are all beautifully realised, all the moreso for the things we learn about them as the book progresses.

If I have one complaint, it’s that McDermott shies away ever so slightly from the brutality of the end of the story. Events progress to an inevitable climax – at least, one of several potentially inevitable climaxes – yet we see it from a remove and in a kind of shorthand that hadn’t been in effect for the rest of the book, at least not for such key events. Regardless, this is an outstanding book that I can’t recommend highly enough.

2014 Ditmar Award winners announced

Posted on June 10, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Last weekend at Continuum X, the 53^rd Australian National Science Fiction Convention in Melbourne, the winners of the 2014 Ditmar Awards were announced. They are:

BEST NOVEL

“Fragments of a Broken Land: Valarl Undead” by Robert Hood (Wildside Press)

BEST NOVELLA OR NOVELETTE

“The Home for Broken Dolls” by Kirstyn McDermott (Caution: Contains Small Parts, Twelfth Planet Press)

BEST SHORT STORY

“Scarp” by Cat Sparks (The Bride Price, Ticonderoga Publications)

BEST COLLECTED WORK

“The Bride Price” by Cat Sparks (Ticonderoga Publications)

BEST ARTWORK

“Rules of Summer” by Shaun Tan (Hachette Australia)

BEST FAN WRITER

Sean Wallace, for body of work, including reviews in Adventures of a Bookonaut

BEST FAN ARTIST

Kathleen Jennings, for body of work.

BEST FAN PUBLICATION IN ANY MEDIUM

Galactic Chat Podcast, Sean Wright, Alex Pierce, Helen Stubbs, David McDonald and Mark Webb

BEST NEW TALENT

Zena Shapter

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

2013 Australian Shadows Awards shortlists announced

Posted on June 6, 2014 by Alan Baxter

Yesterday, the 2013 Australian Shadows Awards shortlists announced. Here they are:

For Edited Publication:

MIDNIGHT ECHO 9, BY GEOFF BROWN
A KILLER AMONG DEMONS, BY CRAIG BEZANT
BABY TEETH – BITE SIZED TALES OF TERROR, BY DAN RABARTS AND LEE MURRAY
STAR QUAKE 1, BY SOPHIE YORKSTON

For Collected Works:

This year, there is no shortlist. In 7 days, the winner will be announced.
(No, this makes no sense to us, either.)

For Short Fiction:

NIP, TUCK, ZIP, PLUCK, BY JOHN PAUL FITCH
FENCE LINES, BY JOANNE ANDERTON
THE NEST, BY C.S. MCMULLEN
CATERPILLARS, BY DEBBIE COWENS
THE DEAD WAY, BY JC HART

For the PAUL HAINES SHADOWS AWARD for LONG FICTION:

SOUL KILLER, BY ROBERT HOOD
THE HOME FOR BROKEN DOLLS, BY KIRSTYN MCDERMOTT
THE UNWANTED WOMEN OF SURREY, BY KAARON WARREN

For Novel:

UNDEAD KELLY, BY TIMOTHY BOWDEN
TOPSIDERS, BY SCOTT TYSON
809 JACOB STREET, BY MARTY YOUNG

Congratulations to all the nominees. The winners will be announced in 7 days.