Author: PeterMBall

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Val Vega makes an epic debut 🚀

It’s almost my birthday here in Australia—a birthday I share, give or take a few time-zones—with an incredible Brooklyn-based sci-fi writer named Ben Fransisco.  I first met Ben at Clarion South back in 2007, where be blew me away with a series of delicate, nuanced short stories that found homes in magazines like the Realms of Fantasy, Shimmer, and Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet. Ben’s stories are extraordinary, even more so because they’re rare. Precious glimpses of an extraordinary talent which appear every couple of years, then disappear beneath the weight of Ben’s other life where he worked for high-profile non-profits advocating for LGBTQ rights and immigrant rights. He’s legitimately one of those people who changes the world for the better, which makes it really hard to begrudge his job pulling him away from writing. Hard, but not impossible. I’m an unreasonable man who always wishes his favourite writers would produce more work. Which is why the recent release of this book made me

Eclectic Projects Newsletter

Never Fall In Love With The Fey

Miriam Aster made a big mistake: she fell in love with the Queen of the Fey. All this was ten years ago, when Miriam was an up-and-coming homicide detective and fairies were things out of fairy tales. Miriam met the queen of the fey in a bar, felt a rush of attraction, and soon they were head-over-heels in love (or as close to as they fey get). Then the favours started, trying to keep the fey’s existence a secret. Could you ignore some details from this case? Could you take care of this rogue fey? Hey Miriam, could you stop this unicorn from going on a rampage before people get killed? Never Fall In Love With The Queen Of The Fey It ends badly for everyone. Miriam Aster fell in love with the Queen of the Fey, and then her life fell apart. She made mistakes and quit her job. She ignored an order and paid the consequences. She ended

Journal

Notebook Mojo

Last week, I ran a bunch of writing workshops for Villanova College here in Brisbane. Four workshops spread over three days, focused on writing a crime story in 900 words. My year of producing original short fiction for Patreon came in incredibly handy, since I have a lot of thoughts on how to curtail your word count after doing that. An interesting side-effect of doing a lot of workshops: I do not go anywhere near a computer while running them. All my writing work gets done in notebooks, scribbling details by hand, rather than firing up a desktop and working in Word or Scrivener directly. Partially, this is a practical concern—notebooks are transportable and easier to flip open when you’re filling a half-hour between sessions in an unfamiliar space—but it has benefits beyond raw pragmatism. I made the switch because I operate from a baseline level of social anxiety, and it rages out of control when I break my routine.

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Talking Writing and Publishing on Stark Reflections

Back in April I stayed awake until 1:00 AM and recorded an hour-long chat with for Mark Leslie Lefebvre’s Stark Reflections podcast. It went live last week, and over the course of the interview we tackle many writing and publishing topics, including my start as an RPG publisher in the pre-Kindle days of the early 2000s. One thing I dig about Stark Reflections is Mark’s habit of ending every interview by reflecting on the things he can take away and apply to his own practice as a writer/publisher. It’s possible one of my own reflections is “don’t do interviews at 1:00 AM”, because oh wow, I was getting a big loopy towards the end, but such is the curse of writing and publishing in a different time zone to the vast majority of your contemporaries. Check it out on the Stark Reflections website. Here’s the summary of what we cover:

A car speeding off the side of the image with the text "Satuday Morning Story"
News & Upcoming Events

40 Stories

I recently posted my 40th weekly Saturday Morning Story to Patreon, which is a patently absurd sentence to write given I started this project under the belief I could no longer finish anything. I honestly believed I’d have a burst of enthusiasm, produce stories for six weeks, then I’d curl up in a ball and whimper for mercy. Maybe pack this whole writing thing in for a lark and start a new career in a fromagerie (not that I’m qualified to do that, but knee-jerk reactions to hard things are never entirely rational). Today’s a considerable milestone, though. See, I’ve actually posted 41stories to Patreon—one story in Eclectic Projects 001 went straight to the magazine, so patrons had to download it instead. Today is the point where there’s original short fiction on my Patreon than in all three of my short story collections combined. I’ll admit that I haven’t put a lot of thought into this project—again, I expected it

Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Don’t Write What You Love

My birthday is the 18th of March. The anniversary of my father’s death is the 19th of March. This one-two punch often catches me off-guard, a double-whammy of anxiety and guilt that throws me off my game despite my belief that I’m feeling fine. As mentioned in the authors note for this week’s Saturday Morning Story, I honestly figured this would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks where I could not produce and post a story for my patrons. Then Vulture did an article on Kelly Link, and I decided to spend Friday hustling to get a new story done. My biggest influences have always been short fiction writers, and Kelly Link rates up there as one of the biggest. Stranger Things Happen and Magic For Beginners are two of my favourite collections ever, and half the reason I attended Clarion South in 2007 was the chance to get taught by Kelly. In a lot of ways, her work

News & Upcoming Events

It’s My Birthday. Have A New Short Story…

Today’s my forty-sixth birthday, so I’m kicking off today’s post with the traditional unflattering birthday selfie. I gather these have long been robbed of their power to horrify my mother, but I kinda dig having an ongoing archive of my rarely-photographed face to reflect on as the years go by. This year, my birthday falls on a Saturday, which is also when I post an original story to the Eclectic Projects Patreon every week. I honestly thought this week would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks I skipped a day because I didn’t have a story done—the week before my birthday is always rough for me, and rougher still now the 19th of March is the anniversary of my father’s death—but the weekly short story project has changed my relationship with writing. First, because I don’t actually want to skip a week after thirty-eight weeks of showing up without fail. Second, because writing a story a week will change

Status

A Delivery From the Printer (14 March 2023 Status)

The long-delayed delivery from my printer arrived yesterday and I finally got the chance to see both issues of Eclectic Projects side-by-side for the first time. In a lot of ways, these magazine issues are my platonic ideal of a book: 80 to 100 pages, self-contained, with a standardised design creating unity as things progress. Individually, the issue doesn’t seem like something of value, but stack two issues together and they become interesting objects. Stack twelve together, and they’ll like like an impressive body of work. In other news, we’re on the countdown to my Birthday on the 18th and the anniversary of my father’s death on the 19th, and I’ve hit the traditional stretch where my mental health is wobbly. Taking it very easy on myself this week, and reminding myself that it’s not the week to be making big decisions. ON THE DOCKET Off to catch up with my weekly Write Club crew this morning, followed by an

Status

The Exodus of Boars (11 Mar 2023 Status)

As ever, you can read the story over at Patreon for as little as a buck a month—which gets you all thirty-eight of the stories thus far—or grab it when it comes out in a forthcoming issue of the Eclectic Projects magazine. ON THE DOCKET Today is an admin and chores day, where I run the profit and loss for the last few months and figure out what the next three months will look like. It wouldn’t be a lie to say February was grim from a publishing point of view—it’s not my best sales month at the best of times, and selling books is a lot harder when the economy is bad—and the teaching/mentoring income definitely shored up the weaknesses on the publishing side of the business. March promises to reverse that trend, thanks to the duel release of Bites Eyes and Gorgons Deserve Nice things on the Brain Jar side of things. Also on the list today: newsletter

Status

Award Season (10 Mar 2023 Status)

This week has been an embarrassment of riches regarding writing and publishing news, and just as I was thinking about how strange it would be to write a blog post with nothing big to share… BAM, the Aurealis Awards shortlists dropped with two Brain Jar Press titles included among the finalists (and many more authors who have published with Brain Jar nominated for work they’ve done with other companies). Congratulations to Kirstyn McDermott, who wrote the fantastic Never Afters series these two books came from. It was an incredible honour to publish them, and it’s great to see the series get the recognition it deserves. You can see the full Aurealis Awards finalist list here, and it’s full of great aussie speculative fiction for you to try. You can grab copies of the Never Afters novellas from Brain Jar Press or wherever good books are sold. ON THE DOCKET Today, I need to write the last scene in tomorrow’s Saturday

News & Upcoming Events

Let There Be Gaimans (9 Mar 2023 Status Post)

OUT IN THE WORLD I recently guested on the Pratchat podcast hosted by Ben McKenzie and Elizbath Flux, talking about Terry Pratchett’s non-fiction collection A Slip Of The Keyboard and the writing advice within. You can find the episode online now, or at any of the mysterious services that bring podcasts to your phone. Here’s the episode pitch: Liz and Ben are joined by writer and publisher Peter M Ball for Pratchat’s first foray into Pratchett’s nonfiction! We discuss fandom, genre, Sharknado, figgins and even fit in six pieces from “A Scribbling Intruder”, the first section of Pratchett’s 2014 nonfiction anthology A Slip of the Keyboard. Pratchett writes about the letters he receives from various kinds of fans as a popular genre author in “Kevins” (1993), before revisiting the same topic in the email age and explaining why he quit his own newsgroup in “Wyrd Ideas” (1999), both for The Author magazine. Then its time to discuss fantasy as a genre – both advice for writing

Status

Status: 8 Mar 2023

The latest short story collection from Brain Jar Press, Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Gorgons Deserve Nice Things, went on sale yesterday and the response has been phenomenal. Gorgons is our most pre-ordered book in two years, and while we shipped the bulk of those over a month ago, there’s also been a steady stream of first day sales to keep things bubbling along. By the standards of small press publishing—or, at least, my little corner of it—it’s on the road to being our smash hit for 2023. Here’s the blurb, for the curious: Right, then. Now that I’ve done my bit to pay the bills and keep the cat in kibble… ON THE DOCKET Shipping books will be a big part of my day, obviously, but I’ve also got the soft launch of the next Brain Jar Press book and a bunch of other titles to push forward. At some point, I definitely need ot sit down and work on this