Alan Baxter's Blog

Sydney friends! I’m honoured to be a guest again at Oz Comic-Con in your fine city in September. I hope to see you there. All the details at ozcomiccon.com

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Stand firm for what you believe in

Hello my good fiends

Brace for impact: rant incoming.

It’s becoming increasingly hard to navigate an online existence. Which is fucking bonkers, really – if anything, existing online should be progressively easier, but the absolute enshittification of everything moves apace. You have these techbros forcing generative-AI into everything in the guise of making things easier when, in fact, it makes everything worse. It’s environmentally catastrophic and studies are proving again and again that it’s actively making people dumber. Which is, of course, a desired endgame for these fuckers, who want everyone stupid and compliant. It’s why they’re sinking irrecoverable fortunes into it and trying to convince everyone it’s inevitable. It absolutely is not.

The Horror Writers Association recently had to sack a Trustee because she published a massive pro-AI screed in the HWA newsletter that went out to all members. Which is madness! And the author of the piece is shilling an AI writing coach app thing, of course. (Further proof that my not renewing my membership there was a good move. The HWA is increasingly a clown car of an operation and this is just the latest in a series of debacles.)

Everyone needs to decide where they stand on any changing issue. For example, I left Substack when they refused to stop actively courting and financing white supremacists and nazis under the guise of “free speech”. And I absolutely draw a line of zero tolerance on generative-AI. I hold anyone who uses it to account. They are not creators, they are prompt jockeys. Even (perhaps especially) the folks who “only use it as an ideation tool” or “only use it for covers because I can’t afford art” or anything else. Too bad. Use it at all and you’re on the wrong side. We have to maintain absolute zero tolerance. We existed without it for the entirety of human history until a couple of years ago and suggesting it’s now inevitable is bullshit.

This is also why so many apologists try to conflate assistive software technologies with generative-ai. They are absolutely not the same and neither of them are actually AI. There is absolutely a place for LLM technology in scientific data research and the like. There is absolutely no place for it in the creative arts.

The awesome Angela Slatter (read her books, folks!) recently posted this which captures the essence of it perfectly (reproduced here with permission):

“I do NOT use AI because it’s shit. It’s lazy. It’s theft. It tells people that the only thing you’ve got to say is “I’ve nothing of my own to say”.

I LOVE writing. I LOVE the look, sound, feel of words as I take up the challenge of putting them in the necessary order for every story.

Writing is HARD and yes, there may well be a degree of masochism in my chosen art form.

Writing rewards me every time I create something beautiful or terrifying because I’ve expended effort and blood and tears and sweat. I’ve reached into my hard-won experience and melded it with the creative urge of something new.

Writing creates connection. Every book, every story, someone reaches out and says “It’s like you looked inside my life” or “I thought I was alone before”. It creates connection because you know another person has felt what you’re going through – which a machine never will.

My writing deserves effort.

Readers deserve my effort.” – Angela (A.G.) Slatter

I couldn’t say it better myself. So we continue the fight, we refuse to accept LLMs and Large Image Generators in our creative lives and we wait for the AI bubble to fucking burst.

I’ll stop ranting. Actually, just a little bit more. Talking about the enshittification of all things. I recently thought maybe I would revisit Threads. I absolutely hated it there the first time around and deleted my account, but a lot of folks still use it, so I went for another look. Because I’d previously deleted my account, it wouldn’t let me start a new one. Okay, weird, whatever. So I set up a new Instagram account with a different email address (as they’re linked because Meta) and started a new Threads account. No problem. I started following people, having a look around, made a couple of posts, then a message popped up. Completely unprompted. I didn’t actually appeal anything. Then a second message appeared about half an hour later. These messages:

​

See what I mean about everything getting worse instead of better. So more than anything, I’ll be relying on my website and this newsletter, as those are things (for the moment!) that I control. And I’m mainly on Bluesky for social media, which is by far the best of the social media option right now in my opinion.

I really will stop ranting now.

I don’t have much publishing news at this moment. America is on summer vacation and that means the already glacially slow publishing industry pretty much grinds to a halt for a few weeks. I do have plenty of stuff out there, so I’ll be sure to let you know when anything new is imminent.

I did recently sell a story called “The Long Shot” to Cohesion Press for their latest SNAFU anthology, called Level Up. The theme this time is LitRPG, which is what the Dungeon Crawler Carl books are. It’s the first time I’ve written in that genre and I had fun. The antho will be out on the 31st October.

Pre-order the Kindle here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0GQV1MNFB​

A print edition will be available on release date.

The only other news right now – and it is big news, so I saved it for last! – is that I’ll be one of the Guests of Honour at the National Australian Horror Convention in Melbourne next year. Angela Slatter scores a second mention in this newsletter here as she’s the other Guest of Honour. More details here: https://www.natozhorrorcon.com/guestsofhonour​

I can’t wait, it’s going to be epic. Loads of stuff planned celebrating horror in all its forms. So if you can get anywhere near Melbourne at the end of April 2027, I hope to see you there. Check out the website for all the news and how you can get involved.

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I’ve been catching up on a few movies lately that I missed when they were new. I watched the Frank Darabont version of Stephen King’s novella, The Mist. It’s a pretty cool adaptation but the ending is insanely bleak and not like the King story. I kind of respected the choice, but holy hell, I understand why it upset a lot of people.

I also watched Black Phone 2. The original The Black Phone (from a Joe Hill story, keeping the King theme going) was a great film. The second one develops the idea and follows well from what happened in the first one. It’s a great film, but I much prefer the first one and think it stands well alone.

And I finally watched Midsommar. That was a fever dream acid trip of a film. They really should have all run away after that first mushroom party in a field. (And Dani should have never even left America.) But well worth a watch. It’s a powerful film and has stayed with me.

With TV, I was talking last time about watching the final season of From. I got to the end and nearly lost my mind at how it finished and thank fuck it turns out that I was wrong. It‘s not the final season. There’s one more to go. I hope they stick the landing.

With reading, the latest John Connolly Charlie Parker book, A River Red With Blood, is excellent. He’s really drawing to a close with that story and the characters though, so I hope he officially wraps it up soon while it’s still great.

I also finished reading The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle since the last newsletter (which is a fantastic book) and then watched the TV adaptation. They do a good job adapting it, developing some ideas nicely. Of course, the book is better.

Otherwise, I haven’t read much but I’m in the middle of four or five books, as is my wont!

Okay, that’s about all from me for now. Sorry for ranting and rambling. But stand firm for what you believe in, be kind to yourself and others, and I’ll talk to you again soon.

Al

The post Newsletter 7th August 2026 appeared first on Alan Baxter.

Below is an open letter to the Queensland Writers Centre in response to their recently announced changes to the Aurealis Awards. We have collected a handful of signatories already and invite anyone who would like to add their name to this letter to please comment below. In one week we will collate all additional signatures and present this letter officially and directly to the CEO of the QWC. Many thanks!

*****

An Open Letter from members of the speculative fiction community to The Queensland Writer’s Centre regarding the recently announced Aurealis Awards
This letter is in response to the announced changes to the Aurealis Awards, and the widespread concern this has generated. We are writing in the hopes that the below will be taken on as feedback and the suggested changes, or versions thereof, made accordingly. Major concerns expressed are several and as follows:

The change to the fees is onerous, and a large change compared with the full history of the awards. This is perceived by many as a ‘pay to play’ situation that favours those able to absorb the cost, and disadvantages self-publishing authors and small presses as well as authors whose publishers won’t take on the costs. The new structure will ensure that many works worthy of consideration will not be submitted, and favours larger publishers and well-established authors.

As well, the reduced fees for QWC or GenreCon members is perceived as a clear conflict of interest between award management and the financial operation of the Centre, as well as a disadvantage to authors in regional, remote, or interstate areas for which the above is not practical nor feasible. No costs to enter an award should be passed onto the authors, and especially no preference given to some authors over others.

While we recognise there are costs to running an award, the Aurealis Awards has always been a community effort open to everyone. This can be maintained through QWC engaging with the passionate and willing community as the Award always has previously.

Related to the above, there has been mention of payment to judges. This has not been the case nor an issue before, and the general feeling is that this is unnecessary. If there are considerations of administration or management fees to be covered, this needs to be made transparent, or other options considered. Along with engaging volunteers within the community as has always been done previously, sponsorship from interested parties and a donation-based system to support the awards would greatly alleviate the above issue. There is also money to be made from ticket sales to the Awards presentation night that can offset the costs of trophies and so on, along with various fundraising drives throughout the year in support of the Awards.

There are also strong concerns around the changes to rules. There is lack of clarity around judge autonomy, particularly with the new references to shortlisting and awards being at the discretion of QWC. This removes impartiality and introduces at the very least the perception of internal and opaque preference being given, or ‘controversial’ works being removed by administration. This is a conflict of interest between management and judging, as is the use of the in-house readers to first screen works. This should not be considered within the remit of a state-based organisation working on a national award. Any work eligible for an award should be read by all judges convened for that category and only the judges convened for that category. Again, empanelling volunteer judges from across the community has always been the way this has been managed previously and one way to reduce the overall workload on those judges would be to limit the number of entries by any one author in any particular category (i.e. a maximum of 3 short stories per author in any individual category.)

The stated changes to the number of judges in each category and lack of clarity over the use or not of convenors in each category has also raised concerns. Historically, after the call out for volunteer judges, one of those volunteers has been nominated to convene that judging panel and take on the administration work of the panel. There is no reason this can’t continue to be the case, alleviating any need for QWC to manage that.

Another concern is the change of rule to make works only able to win in one category regardless of shortlisting. This is an impeachment on judge impartiality and artificially restricts works that blend genre or that cross categories. It is unnecessary and places ‘evenness’ above writing excellence, undermining the integrity of the awards. If separate panels deem any given work the best in that category, there is no reason it shouldn’t be able to win in more than one category.

Last but very much not least, there is no clear statement on the exclusion of AI nor how such works would be investigated or dealt with, which is a very large current issue that needs to be addressed. Any award that recognises the best writing can only recognise writing by people, not computers. A clear statement that AI-generated work is not eligible for the Awards should be clear in the guidelines. Several other awards (such as the Australasian Shadows Awards) have implemented policies like this and would no doubt be happy to share their policies and methodologies with the QWC to help them implement something similar with the Aurealis Awards.

The Aurealis Awards have been a long-standing and highly respected part of the speculative fiction and Australian literature scene, and we, as a community, believe the proposed changes undermine the perceived integrity and accessibility of the awards. We hope the concerns raised here will be considered seriously and the solutions we’ve suggested equally considered. We would be happy to meet with the CEO of QWC and anyone who is involved with running the Awards to further this dialogue and work towards solutions for the issues raised.

Please note that a very large number of the signatories below are previous Aurealis Awards winners, nominees and judges (in many cases all three). We look forward to a response from the Queensland Writer’s Centre.

Signed:
Alan Baxter
Matt Tighe

Co-signed (so far):
Angela Slatter
Cat Sparks
Garth Nix
Joseph Ashley-Smith
Robert Hood
Tansy Rayner Roberts
Zachary Ashford

The post An Open Letter from members of the speculative fiction community to The Queensland Writer’s Centre regarding the recently announced Aurealis Awards appeared first on Alan Baxter.

Let’s stick it to the man. The man in this case being Jeff Bezos (and his ilk). Apparently prime day runs from the 7th to the 13th July. That’s a fucking week not a day, but whatever. All my books will be their usual prices in stores, because let’s be honest, a good book is well worth the money you pay for it. But! Just because I can, I’m making the titles below all super cheap for the same period, but only direct sales through my website here. So until July 13th, you only pay 99c each for the ebook of: The Gulp Hidden City The Roo Served Cold
And Fire Poured Forth Click on any of those titles above to add them to your cart (and then use the Back button if you want to add another one). And please do tell everyone about it. Excellent books, amazing price, one week only. Get in!

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When I write anything new, I always save it locally and to a cloud account. Being super paranoid, I also send a copy to a web-based email address. I keep a folder of all those copies throughout the process in the email account. It used to be that I would subsequently delete all the backups from the webmail account once a piece was published, in order to save on the limited space allowed by those email accounts. In the latest example of AI poisoning everything and fucking everything up, however, it’s becoming clear that there are times when writers will need to prove they didn’t use AI.Therefore, I’m now going to have to keep every iteration of those backups in case my own writing is ever questioned. The recent debacle with the Commonwealth Short Story Prize is the latest example of this. Thankfully they didn’t use AI to track AI because that’s patently fucking mental. AI is trained on our writing so it just flags everything as some percentage AI. Someone recently showed the start of chapter 5 of Shelley’s “Frankenstein” where a fucking bot had declared it 100% definitely AI. It’s like asking someone who only sees in black and white if something is in black and white. It really is that fucking stupid. All gen-AI really is that fucking stupid. Yet here we are doing more labour to avoid the flood of slop from fuckwits. Yes, I’m getting angrier.The Commonwealth prize “examined evidence related to the development of their stories, including working drafts, time-stamped documents and notes”. This is good, at least, and it SUCKS that it’s necessary. But the integrity of actual writing MUST be maintained.So while it means extra work for us (thanks, Techbros, you useless shits) at least we have a potential way to address the issue. So regardless of how much email space it ends up taking, I won’t be deleting all my working draft backups any more. I’ll have a record, dated and very clear, of the development of every work I do. It pisses me off that it’s necessary, but it is necessary. So I encourage every writer to start doing something similar and having a solid, dated trail of drafts.Simply emailing yourself a copy of any work every time you do anything with it is a pretty good method and I’m not sure there’s a better way. At least, not a better way that’s as simple. Here’s a screenshot from my backup folder from when I was working on The Rise, for example. Anyway, I recommend you seriously consider the issue if you’re a writer. For artists, backing up sketches and progress would be the equivalent. Even timestamped phone photos of the work in progress might work. Something all creative people need to consider now.Anyway, absolutely fuck AI all the way into the sun, I hate it so much.

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This is a book that never really went away, in fact, but some books just don’t seem to get the attention they deserve on publication. This is one of them. I’ve recently taken back control of the title and I’ve re-released it independently. To be clear, there are no issues with the original publisher (who is still publishing some of my stuff), but this book has a rich and fucked up history. If you see me at a con or something, ask me and I’ll tell you the story over drinks. But meanwhile, this title has now rejoined my self-published stable of titles.

“Creepy. Visionary. Catastrophic. Apocalyptic. These are words occurring frequently in discussions of horror. But Alan Baxter’s Hidden City encapsulates them all to an unusually high degree.” – Michael R. Collings

Given that this book is eight years old, I figured it would be better to do it this way while I concentrate on finding good publishers for new titles. Hidden City will probably continue to flounder to some degree, largely unnoticed, as that’s the nature of this business without a decent publisher marketing team pushing things along. And also because it had its initial flurry of sales back when it was released. What I’m hoping is that new readers since the original release date might become aware of it now, and older readers who’ve been with me a while but maybe not pulled the trigger on this one might give it a go now. Mainly, I want it still out there and I might as well keep control of it. This way I know it remains in print, which is important to me.

“Action-packed from start to finish, layered with levels of subtle but deep backstory, lively, fast-paced, gripping, and fun, Hidden City is a definite winner. I’m thinking Netflix series. Somebody should get on that.” – Christine Morgan’s World of Words

I think Hidden City is a bloody good book. It’s a standalone novel that kinda bridges the gap between my dark urban fantasy stuff like the Alex Caine trilogy and the more straight horror stuff I’ve written like Sallow Bend and Blood Covenant. Or you might consider it an urban, city-based cousin to the Tales From The Gulp. Of course, everything I write is an Alan Baxter book, so while I always try to be original, I’m aware that I also have a voice and a style. I’d like to think that’s broad and never repetitive, but it’s fair to say that if you’ve liked any of my stuff, you’ll like this one too.

So what’s it about? Well, here’s the blurb:

When the city is sick, everyone suffers.

Steven Hines listened to the city and the city spoke. Cleveport told him she was sick. With his unnatural connection to her, that meant Hines was sick too. But when his friend, Detective Abby Jones, comes to him for help investigating a series of deaths with no discernible cause, Hines can’t say no. Then strange fungal growths begin to appear in the streets, affecting anyone who gets too close, turning them into violent lunatics.

As the mayhem escalates and officials start to seal Cleveport off from the rest of the world, Hines knows the trouble has only just begun.

“A grim and gritty fantasy noir with razor-sharp humor. I loved it!” – Tim Waggoner, author of Teeth of the Sea

If you haven’t given this one a go yet, I really hope you will. If you did read it and you enjoyed it, please help me spread the word and let folks know it’s back in the world. It’s available in paperback, ebook and audiobook, wherever you normally go for books. And, of course, you can get the ebook or a signed paperback directly from me. All the links you need and an excerpt to whet your appetite can be found here: https://alanbaxter.com.au/my-books/hidden-city/

“A tense, edge-of-your-seat ride through the streets of a city in chaos.” – Hush Hush Biz

Cover art by Christian Bentulan

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I see the gender fluidity in fiction discourse has raised its head again. I think this time it’s thanks to Rick Riordan’s old Twitter post doing the rounds once more. I’m not linking to the nazi cesspool of Twitter, but the post reads:

“Ah, yes, the occasional “Why did you put gender fluidity in your book your agenda is ruining the story” comment. Perhaps what is ruining the story for that reader is their insistence on believing that a non-cishet character’s right to exist in a story is an “agenda”? And of course, if the reader is wondering why I put gender fluidity in a Norse mythology story that reader doesn’t know much about Norse mythology.”

And, of course, he’s absolutely right. There isn’t any kind of agenda and Norse mythology is no stranger to gender fluidity. Loki approves of Riordan’s stance. But it goes further than that, because this always brings out the corollary arguments from supposedly well-meaning people that go something like, “Well, yes, if the gender fluidity serves the story, it’s okay.”

Which is really saying, it’s ONLY okay if it directly serves the story. Which is bollocks.

Since when does a character’s cis gender identity directly serve the story?

This thinking gets projected out to trans people as well and, beyond gender, to queer people too. And to people of colour or people with disabilities. Which perpetuates the assumption that cis-het, straight, white and able-bodied is the norm and everything else is somehow odd and needs to serve the story in order to have a right to be in the story. Absolute bullshit.

Since when does a straight, white, cis-het character have to somehow justify their straightness, whiteness or cisness for a right to exist in a story?

A character can be portrayed as trans, for example, and their transness can have absolutely nothing to do with the story at all. They’re in the story for other reasons and they just happen to be trans. Just like all the other characters, presumably, just happen to not be trans. The same applies to characters of colour, to queer characters, to disabled characters. We don’t just include them in our stories in order to mine who they are for story. We include them because they exist. Because the world is full of wonderful diversity and that should be celebrated.

If anything, it’s more important to include traditionally marginalised characters in roles where their gender, sexuality, race and so on is irrelevant. Because that’s what the world around us is actually like. And those folks deserve to see themselves in stories just like cis-het straight white people see themselves in stories all the time. Not because of their marginalisation, but because they exist.

Certainly a person’s gender or sexuality or whatever might inform things about their character and personality, it might affect how they interact with the world of the story, but there is absolutely no requirement that their existence somehow serves the plot beyond their role in the story itself. We need to write stories with the rich diversity we see around us because that’s what’s real. It’s a simple as that.

People absolutely can and should write stories featuring marginalised people where whatever the cause of their marginalisation might be is central to the story. Those stories are vitally important and ideally written by people with lived experience. But they should absolutely not be the only stories featuring traditionally marginalised folks. It’s on all of us as writers to include rich diversity in our stories and help to remove rather than perpetuate marginalisation.

We can all be better.

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Weathering the Doldrums

Hello, fiends. Been a while, my apologies. But as my dear old mum used to say, if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Which is bollocks, of course. Sometimes saying something unkind is really important. But I’m rambling already. It’s not that I didn’t have nice things to say, I just didn’t really have anything at all to share. I don’t want to ramble at you with no point, so I haven’t sent anything recently. However, there are a few things to talk about now.

First off, I’m sending this at the start of June, so I want to wish everyone a happy Pride. This isn’t something we should only celebrate for one month a year, but we won’t let the month pass without mention. Everyone is valid, everyone is valued, no one should be discriminated against for their gender, sexual orientation or anything else. Trans rights are human rights. Especially now we need to stand up for marginalised communities more than ever, and I will always do that. I saw this online recently, made by science communicator Rachel Lense, using only NASA images, which I thought was pretty cool.

(There’s a hi-res version here if you’re keen – ​https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Tqlg9nt4KiKyM8hiYLrT8vPGr3uCq8Q4​ )

But in terms of having anything personal to share, to say I’m in something of a slump in terms of writing and publishing would be an understatement.

Sailors used to always fear the doldrums. If you’re not a complete pirate nerd like me, you might think that just means being blue in mood, generally depressed or whatever. But it’s actually a nautical term. In modern usage, it describes a spell of listlessness or despondency, which we’re all prone to every once in a while. I mean, this fucking world right now? It’s hard not to spend long periods in despondency. But specifically and originally, the doldrums refers to a part of the ocean near the equator where strong winds are largely absent. When you relied on wind for propulsion, that was a terrifying prospect. If your ship was becalmed for too long, fresh water and food rapidly ran out. It wouldn’t be long before pretty desperate and horrendous decisions needed to be made.

Now, before anyone panics, I’m drawing a long bow with this analogy. I’m not about to start metaphorically throwing people overboard or anything.

These days, the doldrums can also, according to Merriam-Webster, refer to a period of inactivity or stagnation, like the ocean with no wind. That’s the part that certainly applies to my personal publishing life and the publishing industry in general right now. Lots of stuff is happening for some people, which is always great, but lots of stuff… isn’t, as well. I trust that things will pick up again. They always do, one way or another. My agent currently has two adult novels, a novella, a short story collection and a middle grade novella in various stages of submission. I haven’t been lazy. But, if I’m honest, I haven’t been writing much new stuff this year. It seems the winds of publishing are low, the industry in the doldrums. Everyone is talking about longer than usual wait times for a variety of reasons—chief among them, it seems, is lack of staff because of cuts and the fetid pollution of generative-AI causing all kinds of crap. Regardless, shit is slow, fam.

So I really hope I do have some news on the new book front sooner rather than later. We’re definitely putting the work in to make that happen. Meanwhile, I’ve been on a bit of a short story trip lately. A couple of places asked me for stories, which is always a thrill, and there’s a couple more out on submission right now. I have a couple of other new novel projects in various early stages and I’m not sure which way I’ll be jumping with those just yet. I’m letting things percolate while I work on short stories.

All of which is to say, nothing new yet, my friends, but I’m super grateful to anyone who sticks with me. The doldrums preventing propulsion applies to publishing as well and I know I’m not the only writer who has low key panic when it seems like it might be a while between books. Momentum is so important in this industry.

But ​The Rise​ was out in February and there’ll be some new short fiction before long, so all is not lost. Please cross your fingers, pray to your gods, make whatever sacrifices you see fit that some of those bigger projects out in the world land somewhere cool before long. All good and positive thoughts on that front gratefully received.

In other news, for the writers among you, I’ll be running my popular workshop Write the Fight Right online with the Queensland Writers Centre on June 25th from 5.30 to 8.30 pm AEST. Being online, it’s open to anyone and I believe there are a few spots left if you’re quick. All the details and booking here: ​https://queenslandwriters.org.au/events/write-the-fight-right-with-alan-baxter​

What I’ve Been Enjoying

I’ve been a huge comic book nerd forever. I mentioned Preacher last time, which I originally enjoyed as a comic and then started watching the TV adaptation. They took some liberties with the original story to say the least, but it was a hugely satisfying series for all that. I really enjoyed it and the end was well done. Which leads me The Boys. Man, I loved that original comic and wondered if they’d ever manage to make it a decent TV series. Again, huge liberties taken with a lot of the storylines, but they did a fantastic job in my opinion. There were certainly messed up parts that didn’t quite work out (I’m really disappointed they didn’t make more of Gen V, for example) but overall they nailed it. An absolutely bonkers show with a hugely satisfying conclusion. The fact that it’s also really upsetting the absolute worst people in the world only adds to the enjoyment. Homelander was always the bad guy, was always a horrible, weak, hate-filled manchild, and the fact that some people still didn’t get that even after the finale is wild. It’s why you end up with Trump in charge of America, of course. Anyway, The Boys was amazing and Anthony Starr’s performance as Homelander was award-worthy. Just brilliant.

I’m also currently really enjoying the final season of From. It’s been a powerfully enjoyable show and I really hope they nail the landing with it. My other current watch is a Netflix original series from Norway called Ragnarok. It’s a really good take on Norse mythology with some great performances. There are three 6-episode seasons and I’m just starting season 3. It’s really tightly edited, things move at a frantic pace, but it’s really well done. Also great to see something Norwegian—anything not American is refreshing.

As for reading, huge congratulations to Daniel Kraus for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction with his latest, Angel Down. A horror novel got the Pulitzer! Fantastic. It really is a remarkable book too. Kraus’s prose is outstanding. I’m not entirely sure it needed the device of one endless sentence, I think it could have worked just as well without that, but it’s a relentless, propulsive read. I also really enjoyed recently Shadow Season by Tom Piccirilli. Tom was recognised as a horror writer, and rightly so, but he was a brilliant crime writer too. This book was excellent. I’ve also recently enjoyed House of Idyll by Deliah S Dawson and Something in the Walls by Daisy Pearce. I’m currently reading The Devil in Silver by Victor LaValle ahead of the TV adaptation of that, which I’ll definitely be watching.

Right, that’s all from me for now. May you not get caught in the doldrums for too long, my friends. Be kind, to yourself and others.

Al

The post Newsletter 3rd June 2026 appeared first on Alan Baxter.

I’m so excited to have another story out in podcast form with the awesome Pseudopod. Graeme Dunlop does a stellar narration and Alasdair really nails some truths in his summation. What an honour. Thanks all!(C/W: child abuse, domestic abuse)Listen and read along here.

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Hey fiends

There’s another silly book rumble going on over on Facebook. These things are pretty good for getting books noticed and I’d love to go through to the next round. So if you’re in the Haunted Minds Book Club group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/hauntedmindsbookclub ) please do consider giving Blood Covenant a vote on Monday, as per the graphic below. The group posted this explainer:

“Feast your eyes, Rumblers! This is the gauntlet these authors have to make it through to even TASTE the final 24! Oh YEAHHHH! The dirt starts flying MONDAY, MAY 4th! One group a day, ten votes a day! The top 15 from each group advances to the second eliminator round on May 9th! I hope your affairs are in order, Authors! OH YEAHHH!”

No idea if I’ll get anywhere close to the final 24, but would love to get through a round or two at least. Thanks!

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