Interview with Alan Baxter

Alan’s 2015 Australian Shadows Paul Haines Award-winning story, In Vaulted Halls Entombed, was adapted for Season 3 of the Netflix Original Series, LOVE DEATH +ROBOTS.

We’ve seen you styled as Australia’s answer to Stephen King. But how would you describe your work and who would you say are some of your biggest literary influences?

I will never shy away from a comparison like that! Honestly, Stephen King is a huge influence on me – I’ve been reading his stuff for 40 years. I love his characterisation ability especially. My work is indeed reminiscent of King sometimes, and that’s been said often in reviews. I’m happy with that.

Although a bigger influence on me is Clive Barker. It was a real thrill when Australian horror and fantasy legend Angela Slatter compared my work to Barker’s. No one has been a bigger influence on me and it’s fair to say that Clive Barker is my favourite author.

I’ve also long been a huge fan of Ursula K Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, James Herbert, Thomas Ligotti, Anne McCaffrey… There are so many! And I’ve been heavily influenced by comics too, especially writers like Alan Moore, Jamie Delano, Garth Ennis. I’ve loved noir and mystery since forever, so writers like Dashiell Hammett, Megan Abbott, Raymond Chandler and more have been big influences. Then there are my contemporaries who inspire me every day, people like Kaaron Warren, Laird Barron, Nathan Ballingrud, Josh Malerman.

And of course, Stephen King is still writing! I could list literary influences all day long, and that doesn’t even start to cover the movies and music that also inspire me.

You’re currently serialising your novella, The Leaves Forget via your Patreon. Can you tell us a little about this story, and why you decided to write and release a story in this way?

This is a bit of a strange one, actually. I’m always on the lookout for good extra content for my patrons. I really appreciate anyone who throws a few bucks my way every month to help support my writing career – it really does make a HUGE difference – so I try to make sure they get something cool in return.

There’s loads of behind-the-scenes stuff over there at Patreon, there are exclusive short stories, articles, videos where I talk about my writing and the business in general, all that sort of stuff. And in the process of trying to think of good extra content for patrons, I thought it might be cool to write a serialised story for them, posting one or twice a week.

I had this idea for a novella that starts with a guy receiving a bunch of letters from his sister, who’s been missing for months, so the first several chapters are each one letter from her. Then the story continues as he goes off looking for her. The idea was to write chapters each week while getting on with other projects. But I learned in the process that I simply can’t do that. I ended up having to put everything else aside and just get that novella finished. Then I continued with other stuff and had this novella all tucked away and was then able to carry on pasting one or two chapters a week for patrons.

So in the end I learned about my process with that exercise! It’s still there for patrons to read (and will stay there) but it should also be coming out as a book in its own right at some future point. There’ll be more news about that soon, hopefully.

Your short story collections and novellas have won immense praise in the horror literary world. If you had to give us three ‘rules’ around writing short fiction, what would those three rules be?

This is a big old question, but if I had to pick three powerful guidelines (I hate the idea of writing ‘rules’) I’d say:

Remember that even though it’s a shorter work, it still needs a recognisable beginning, middle and end, with all the accompanying character development like a longer work.

Next, get in late and leave early – don’t try to build up backstory or take your time setting up. Start right in the action and leave the story before things get stale. In shorter works, tell a whole story (as above) but a bit of ambiguity can be cool.

Finally – and this is something someone else told me a long time ago that’s really stuck with me – the best stories are ones where something else is happening too. A short story is a very tightly focussed lens, but don’t focus so tightly that the story is occurring outwith the world around it. Maybe a character is going through a messy divorce, or has an exam looming, or needs to get a job before they’re evicted for non-payment of rent, whatever. Regardless of the story itself, it’s more satisfying and immersive when other stuff is happening too, so the characters have fully-realised lives and exist in a fully-realised world. It doesn’t have to be much, just a mention here and there, but it can make a big difference.

You’re one of the hardest working writers in Australia when it comes to promoting your work, and you’re vocal about the importance of authors maintaining a presence and connection with their readers outside of social media. What kind of advice would you give emerging writers about building their public profile from the ground up?

Be authentic. Get out there as much as you’re able to, be active online as much as you’re comfortable doing, but with all of that, be yourself. Don’t try to construct a persona as it will be exhausting to maintain. Make sure people are getting the real you – you are absolutely interesting enough. You don’t have to share everything, of course, but be genuine with what you do choose to share.

And promoting work isn’t just about shouting about your own stuff. It’s absolutely being proud of what you’re doing and having no problem letting people know all about it regularly, but be just as passionate about other peoples’ stuff too.

– Alan Baxter

Talk about all the books (and movies and songs and whatever else) you love. Share your enthusiasm for everything, not just your own stuff. People will respond to that.

At times, you’ve collaborated with US action/adventure bestselling author, David Wood to co-author eight horror and action/thriller novels. What do you like about that collaborative writing process, and what challenges arise when you attempt to write a book with someone else?

Well, if I’m really honest, it was initially a commercial decision. Dave and I have been mates for a long time and we thought it might be cool to try to combine our audiences and both gain new readers that way. As it happened, the collaboration process turned out to be great fun and we really enjoy writing those books.

It’s taken us a while to find our groove and figure out the best way of collaborating but we’ve got it down to a bit of an art now. The only real challenge is time – finding a suitable window each year to try to work on something. We’re looking at starting Sam Aston 4 any time now if we can get our schedules to line up.

Having your work move from paper to screen is a dream for many writers. Tell us a little about seeing your story adapted for LOVE DEATH + ROBOTS – how did it happen and what have you learned from that experience?

Genuine bucket list stuff there. I didn’t really have a lot to do with it, though, other than writing a good story.

It was originally published in SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest from Cohesion Press (now available to buy on Amazon) and it turns out that Tim Miller (Deadpool, etc.) who is the brains behind LD+R is a huge fan of the SNAFU series. He approached the publisher and asked to negotiate rights for my story, In Vaulted Halls Entombed, along with some others from the series. I think 5 or 6 stories from various SNAFU anthologies have been adapted for LD+R now.

One thing I’ve learned from it is to not be especially precious with your vision of the work. The film they made is brilliant and pretty faithful to the original story, but there are a couple of changes that I just have to accept. And the other thing I’ve learned is that I want more! Call me, Hollywood.

Horror comes with its standard tropes, like all genres. At the same time, it begs the writer to push and prod at its boundaries and challenge the status quo. In your opinion, what are some of the best ways you’ve seen that happen in recent years? And how would you like to see the genre evolve in the future?

Horror is a spice, you can add it anywhere.

I like to mash genres and have always mixed fantasy and crime and mystery and noir and whatever else in with my horror. I think that’s always the best way to push the boundaries—never be held to some idea of what horror is or what it’s supposed to be. Tell the stories you want to tell and go wherever you need to.

Horror is the genre of honesty, so when you stray from the light, keep going. Who knows where you’ll end up.

– Alan Baxter

And we need to continually lift new voices, especially marginalised voices. That’s how we’ll see the genre evolve.

Finally, we love a good story rec! What is one horror short story that you think everyone should read, and why?

Wow, that’s tough! Just one? Well, you didn’t say by me or by someone else, so I’m going to cheat a little bit and pick two.

From my own body of work, read Out on a Rim, the first story from The Gulp (you can read it for free in the sampler, Shadow Bites, which is available from my website). That’s a great showcase of so many aspects of my style.

And from someone else, read Father, Son, Holy Rabbit by Stephen Graham Jones. That’s a story that absolutely wrecked me.