Alan Baxter’s book series, The Gulp is essentially a dark re-imagining of Kiama, with the fictional harbour town having an eerily familiar layout.

Alan is a well-known horror author, living in Jamberoo. In 2021 Alan released The Gulp: Tales from The Gulp # 1 (The Gulp), which went on to win that year’s Aurealis Best Collection award (an award which recognises the achievements of Australian science fiction, fantasy and horror writers). The Gulp is set in a fictional NSW south coast town called Gulpepper, which everyone calls the Gulp, due to its way of swallowing people. Alan has cited Kiama and Stephen King as inspirations.

Ominously subtitled ‘Five Tales of Horror’, the five novellas comprising The Gulp are standalone tales, but by the end it’s clear how they all link together:

·        A truck driver thinks the stories about The Gulp are made up to scare him. Until he gets there.

·        Teenage siblings try to cover up the death of their mother, but their plans go drastically awry.

·        A rock band invite four backpackers to a party at their house, where things get dangerously out of hand.

·        A young man loses a drug shipment and his boss gives him 48 hours to make good on his mistake.

·        Under the blinking eye of the old lighthouse, a rock fisher makes the strangest catch of his life.

Alan has also recently released The Fall: Tales from The Gulp # 2, which also has 5 atmospheric novellas:

·        A man enjoying early retirement makes the mistake of visiting The Gulp.

·        A fishing boat crew find themselves somewhere entirely unexpected.

·        A farmer has an argument with his wife that turns violent and then entirely catastrophic.

·        A Venture Scout troop from Enden travel a little too far on their bush excursion.

·        Everything that’s already stranger than usual in The Gulp begins to run completely out of control.

The band in The Gulp (appearing in the #1 and #2 novellas) is Blind Eye Moon, which has become so popular that Alan created a line of merchandise, which can be purchased through https://www.alanbaxteronline.com/blind-eye-moon-merchandise/

We think it would be great to see The Gulp picked up by one of the streaming services and made into anthology horror series, filmed around Kiama – and think Eric Bana would be perfect as one of the main characters.

Alan’s Gulp is a place of gritty cosmic horror, where when you go down to the beach, something evil and malevolent is watching you back. Many of Alan’s novellas are inhabited by a range of tough action characters who’d be comfortable in a Guy Ritchie movie, being forced to deal with cosmic horrors in their everyday life.

One of Alan’s short stories hit the big-time recently and was made into an episode of Love, Death and Robots in 2022, starring Australian Jai Courtney, in which a squad of space marines encounter an ancient but familiar cosmic horror entity. Acclaimed director David Fincher is the producer.

Alan’s most recent offering is Sallow Bend, where folk horror sees a small rural town searching for two missing teenagers, Alan told The Bugle that a signed copy can be purchased through his website.

Baxter runs the Illawarra Kung Fu Academy at the Kiama Masonic Hall on Mondays and Wednesdays from 6pm to 7.30 pm.

Check out more about Alan and his projects on his website https://www.alanbaxteronline.com