PeterMBall

Journal

The Day After Valentine’s Day

I’ve just seen the first review of Electric Velocipde 21/22, courtesy of Lois Tilton at Locus online, and it says very nice things about Memories of Chalice and recommends it to readers. I’m going to steal a bit from the end, since the beginning mostly sets up what the story’s about: While the narrator speaks of dollars, rock stars and penthouses, the setting seems more to be some timeless European castle in a valley isolated from the mundane world, where wealthy gnomes guard vast fortunes in their vaults beneath the mountains. This author is one I always look forward to; his offerings are fine and well-crafted. And really, there are worse ways to begin the day than reading that, aren’t there? You can read the entire review for EV 21/22 and a few other fine magazines over at the Locus website. # Yesterday I stopped off to buy some groceries on the way home from work and the guy manning

PeterMBall 15/02/2011

Journal

Credit Where Credit’s Due

On Friday night, after a panel at the QWC’s One Book, Many Brisbanes program, I got the opportunity to go hang out with Cat Sparks, Trent Jamieson, and the elusive Ben Payne. There was beer and chatter and hot chips with tomato sauce. The true value of this experience probably doesn’t sink in unless you know Cat and Trent and Ben, but fortunately for me I do, so I got to be there (although, given I had to drive home, I elected to drink coke. This seems to keep happening when I find myself in pubs; somehow I seem to have lost the ability to get my drink on). Should you not know Cat and Trent, the short version goes something like this: one is the author of Death Most Definite and Managing Death and more quality short stories than you can poke a stick at, while the other possesses a resume similarly stacked with quality short stories and recently

PeterMBall 14/02/2011

Journal

Sunday Morning

When I was about twenty I lived in a motel, and it was the weirdest place I’ve ever rented in my life. If you’ve read Bleed, you’re already kinda familiar with it, ’cause it served as the basis for Palm Tree Row and abandoned motel where Aster finds the corpse. If you read the second installment of Flotsam when it comes out, the motel pops up again, albeit in a more inhabited form. It’s one of those touchstone places in terms of my fiction, a secret I’m still trying to unravel. The motel had these green fluorescent lights running along the first floor patios that turned on automatically at sunset and stayed on until midnight, which meant my second floor bedroom was lit up with an alien-abduction glow that was accompanied by the unearthly buzz that close comes from close proximity to bad lighting. One of my neighbours was a six-four American hip-hop fan with tourette’s who used to come home at

PeterMBall 13/02/2011

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Saturday Morning

It’s Saturday morning and I’m drinking instant coffee. Maccona Classic Dark Roast with milk and one sugar, for those who might be interested, although I have no earthly idea why you would be. In an hour or so I’m going to ignore the rest of the internet and start talking to the scattered members of my online crit group, who conveniently double as a group of good and articulate friends, so there’s still good reason to skype on the dates when we’re meant to be critting and no-one actually submitted things. This, I suspect, is as close to being one of the hidden secrets of writing as I can think of – find people you enjoy talking too who happen to be writers, then talk to them as often as you can. Ideas will form, ambitions will solidify, and the day-to-day despair of being underpaid and frustrated by the blank page will gradually fall by the wayside. I remember this far

PeterMBall 12/02/2011

Gaming

Gauntlet Free Posting

Tonight there was nerdery instead of writing. The crew came over for our bi-weekly Pathfinder/D&D session (it depends on how willing you are to acknowledge the shift) and we accidentally triggered what I hope was one of the nastier fights on our dungeon level. Relocating the session to my place is a relatively recent development, which is both awesome (since I no longer have to travel) and slightly problematic (since I don’t have table and that slows us down a little). ‘Course, now I’m wired on coffee, sugar, and elevated levels of geekery-related adrenaline (crits! holy smite! level-up!). I expect Fritz the laptop will be joining me for some pre-sleep wordcount, even if it’s not a huge number. Tonight also saw me sign up for my regular fruit and vegetable delivery, which means sometime over the weekend someone will deliver a small box of tasty, tasty food to my doorstep. All in all, I’m going to call this a good

PeterMBall 09/02/2011

Journal

Fists of Steel: Write Club Edition

Tonight there was write club, which is usually good news for the wordcount. I managed to bang out the first six hundred words of the next Flotsam story (faster than expected), but fell a couple of hundred words short of my goal to finally crack 5,000 words on the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft. I also tinkered with the Black Candy draft for the first time since starting the gauntlet, working out how it’s going to fit into the daily routine. And because I cannot help myself, I even added a hundred or so words to a short story that I’m resolutely not-writing and will continue not-writing until it magically becomes written. I absconded from proceedings slightly early because day-job demands rising early and I now turn into a miserable bastard if I’m not in bed by 11 o’clock. I was already a miserable grump this evening because I got the news that the owners of my flat are planning sell in the

PeterMBall 08/02/2011

Works in Progress

Fists of Steel: The snooze button edition.

– Gauntlet, an update: distractions, distractions, distractions. One Flotsam story is down, which means there’s three to go ‘fore the Gauntlet is done. I lost much of the afternoon catching up on things that needed doing (deadlines, proofs, contracts) – The weekend was long and only about 30% pleasant. I’m running short on sleep and planning on turning in early tonight. Hopefully today’s writing-induced adrenaline spike won’t keep me awake. I may take the laptop to bed and try to nail down 300 words of the lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckley-wahoo! novel draft. – Tomorrow there is write-club and going through more proofs. February is odly busy on the writing-and-getting-stuff-out front.

PeterMBall 07/02/2011

News & Upcoming Events

Blatant Self Promotion: February

Okay, since February is deveoted to the Gauntlet, I’m just going to cram a whole months worth of blatant self promotion into the one post. Strap yourselves in, ’cause it looks like February is a busy one: – Descended from Darkness volume II is out, collecting another twelve months of short fiction originally published in Apex Magazine (including my story To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament). For a limited time you can pick this up with the first Descended from Darkness collection (which included my story Clockwork, Patchwork, and Ravens) for only $25US. – My story Briar Day is live over at the Moonlight Tuber site, as part of the line-up of the “Moonlight Tuber #2 – Captain Homonculous Dines with ‘That Irascible Mizzen Mast’ – Part Three” issue of the zine that’s available for online reading or as a downloadable PDF. I think this officially marks editor Ben Payne as the man whose acquired more of my short fiction

PeterMBall 03/02/2011

Works in Progress

FISTS OF STEEL!

The 2011 Feb-March writing gauntlet has begun, whereupon Jason Fischer and I spent two months straight bellowing word-counts and motivational taunting at one another while attempting to attain crazy levels of writing productivity. The Rules of the gauntlet are simple: three projects enter, none of them leave. Right now, Jason is ahead of the curve. My goals for March 31st, incidentally: – Finish four Flotsam stories by March 31st, so I’ve finally built up a buffer on the monthly deadlines (this includes the Feb story, due in three days) – Finish the first quarter of the great-lovecraftian-ghoul-swashbuckly-wahoo novel (approx 30,000 words) – Finally rewrite the first quarter of Black Candy to make it legible and fix the pacing issues. I’ve mostly been focused on point 1, for lo, it has a deadline (and I’ve been sick). Today is the first day of February where I’m actually rested, so I expect there will feverish keyboard pounding taking place until the wee

PeterMBall 03/02/2011

Journal

CMS

Every couple of years I seem to end up in a job where someone wants me to write web-content for their small business. I’m not particularly sure why I end up with these jobs – I’ve never been particularly good at SEO and the accompanying headaches that come with writing for the web for money – but somehow it keeps happening despite my best intentions and heartfelt promise that it will never happen again. When I went into the interview for my current job they mentioned they might want me to do a little work on their website, and I brought up the question of which content management system they were using. This brought a blank look from the interviewer, but after a little explanation we eventually got the answer: “we don’t know; we paid a company to produce the website.” At this, I nodded and tried to hide the shriek of despair that threatened to escape at those words.

PeterMBall 28/01/2011

Works in Progress

I guess this is why people have day-jobs, huh?

It’s been a long time since I thought hard about the thing I’m writing as I wrote it, rather than sprinting for the finish because I needed stuff to be done and sent out and justifying itself now now now! 600 words on the great-swashbuckly-lovecraft-ghoul-wahoo! novel draft this afternoon, which brings the total up to about 5,000 for the week. It feels so very slow, working like this, but I suspect it may actually be better for me – when I’m not trying to rush things and get wordcount for the sake of wordcount, I have time to start picking at phrasing and thinking about the pace and structure of the scenes. Oddly, writing slow and considered is also a means of curing myself of my addiction to semi-colons. Also, 2011 is the year I teach myself to write in third person or die trying; place your bets on whether it works, but my money’s on the latter. I’m going to

PeterMBall 27/01/2011

Works in Progress

Toil

‘Tis actually a horrible name for the blog post, ’cause the writing thing doesn’t actually feel much like toil this week. Not even yesterday when it took me seven hours, total, to get fifteen hundred words down across two projects. There is probably toil coming though – there’s a Flotsam deadline looming in nine and a half days – but for the moment I get to skip through the word mines surrounded by bone-white moths and singing ravens and tinkling silver bells whose chimes echo strangely in the dark and shady corners. Plus I have Leonard Cohen CDs on, which is always a source of the happy. One day I will remember that the cure for not-writing is writing, rather than having to relearn that lesson every time I stop. I recently chatted to a friend of mine who enjoys the discussion of toil on the blog, watching the numbers stack up and the reports of work done come in. I

PeterMBall 27/01/2011

Author: PeterMBall

The Day After Valentine’s Day

Credit Where Credit’s Due

Sunday Morning

Saturday Morning

Gauntlet Free Posting

Fists of Steel: Write Club Edition

Fists of Steel: The snooze button edition.

Blatant Self Promotion: February

FISTS OF STEEL!

CMS

I guess this is why people have day-jobs, huh?

Toil

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