PeterMBall

Journal

Things I Would Be Blogging About, Were I Blogging this December

1) The rejuvenating power of The Birthday Party’s Release the Bats when you’re tired, pissed off, and generally unwilling to engage with things. 2) How unfeasibly cool it is that Angela Slatter had her books mentioned on Ellen Datlow’s list of book recommendations for XMas. 3) The somewhat tricky process of making the first installment of Flotsam, my series due for the Edge of Propinquity next year, work the way I want it to work. 4) Getting the chance to interview Dan Abnett for a friend’s podcast, only to have the technology fail us at a crucial moment and steal away the audio. 5) Plans for the blog in the new year, many of which have already been discarded as unworkable because, yo, I am weary of plans. After being lured back to the working world by the promise of paying rent and eating meals that consist of more than potatoes and Soylent Green, I’m finding the ideas of plans

PeterMBall 20/12/2010

Journal

The Festive Season

Someone wise and adroit once said that it’s better to not blog than to blog poorly, and after reviewing my to-do list for the rest of the year I’ve decided to take heed of that advice. The Spokesbear and I are going to take a partial sabbatical from the internet over December while I get some stuff done. I’ll be on e-mail and checking facebook and doing all the stuff online that I’m required to do for work, but there’s going to be no blogging taking place until the 1st of January. Links to cool stuff (such as the best of the year list over at Last Short Story) will take place over on twitter. See you all in 2011, and may the holiday season treat you well.

PeterMBall 01/12/2010

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Magic of Trent’s Book Corner

1) This amuses me. 2) It’s also posted because my parents read my blog and sometime in the next month they’re going to start the yearly dance of “what do you want for Christmas and I’m forced to give them a list of books and DVDs that are not easily available in their hometown of the Gold Coast with nothing but mall-spawn bookshops catering to tourist’s looking for a beach read. Now apparently I’m being unfair with that accusation, for they have a Border’s now, but after fifteen years as a reader in one of the least reader-friendly cities I’ve ever been in, I remain unaccountably bitter. In any case, when they ask this year, I’m going to tell them “All I want for Christmas is a copy of Managing Death,” for it should be widely available on release and Trent is an awesome dude. And ’cause the first book, Death Most Definite, was a cracking read. And ’cause the

PeterMBall 22/11/2010

Journal

Swancon 36

A few months ago I decided to do the sensible thing by my financial situation and give up any plans of going to Swancon 36 (aka Australia’s nat-con). It was the right decision back that – I was unemployed and broke and heavily in debt, and although there were all sorts of good reasons to go to Perth (Peeps! Ellen Datlow!) the money just wasn’t there. Admitting that fracking hurt too, ’cause occasionally I’d talk to Alisa over at Twelfth Planet Pressabout using Swancon as a rough launch date for Claw, and I do so love being around when a new book goes out into the world. Several things have changed since then. For starters there’s no chance that Claw will be out by Swancon, largely because the recent mess of dayjob and parents having heart surgery meant I just wasn’t able to meet the original deadline*. On the other hand, Swancon still has a chance to catch up with

PeterMBall 21/11/2010

News & Upcoming Events

Electric Velocipede

I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned this before, but there’s a new issue of Electric Velocipede on the horizon and I have a story in it. Apparently Electric Velocipede were handing out promotional postcards at World Fantasy that challenged people to match six opening lines with the authors who wrote them. You’re invited to follow the link and find out why this causes me some form of squee. There may well be some kind of contest associated with it, although there’s no closing date mentioned in the post and I’m a little behind the times, so it’s entirely possible said contest no longer applies. Or can’t be entered online. I can’t really say for sure from perusal of the post, but I’m all for embracing the mystery. After seeing the full table of contents I have to admit that I’m looking forward to the double-issue, largely ’cause I share a ToC with the esteemed L.L. Hannett and I’m always pleased

PeterMBall 20/11/2010

Works in Progress

On the Appeal of Easy Targets

So I’ve set myself some modest goals this week: 500 words a day of writing; three blog posts*; at least one day where I limit myself to two coffees**; buy one Christmas present so I don’t get stuck shopping during the evil December shopping crush. Thus far, I’ve failed horribly at all three, although I can at least make progress the first of my list by clicking publish. This is the curse of modest goals – it’s too easy to let them slide, figuring there will always be a moment later where you can get things done, but for the moment they’re a necessary evil because the immodest goals were just too damn intimidating for me. Monday was a rough day for writing; Tuesday was much improved, largely courtesy of a 3k night at write club, but today I’ve been letting the side down again, focusing more on planning than writing new words. Still time to rectify that before bed,

PeterMBall 17/11/2010

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

The Sunday Round-Up

So this week I managed to finish reading Georgette Heyer’s Cotillion, start reading Kirstyn McDermott’s Madigan Mine, watched the third season of The Big Bangtheory, and went down to the Gold Coast to spend some time with my dad while he makes his way through the three months of rehabilitation that follow open heart surgery. I worked a whole bunch and got to play with the company website. I tried to write fiction without any real success: 2,500 words total for eight days of work. I had a long fight with my local vendor of mobile phones after the phone they sold me under the promise that it would do everything my old phone did proved to be false, yet this wasn’t deemed sufficient to replace the phone for something else. I managed to lose track of what day it was twice, getting messages from people asking “dude, where are you?” while I sat there going “what? Come on, it’s only

PeterMBall 14/11/2010

Journal

Hello!

So, apparently I lied yesterday – I am back today. I didn’t mean to lie, or expect to be here, but after a day at the final Year of the Novel course at the Queensland Writer’s Cetnre there was a part of brain that clicked over and said wait, yes, I am meant to be writing, perhaps it’s time to reclaim that bit of my life again. And so I have critted work, and pondered problems with the novel-in-progress, and chatted with the awesome Angela Slatterabout when we can kick off write-club again and which day we can use so we can get some continuity going (we’ve traditionally used Fridays, Sundays and Thursdays, all of which have become untennable due to semi-regular scheduling conflicts). It’s been chaotic fortnight around these parts – it kicked off with the news of my dad’s heart attack on the 24th of October that saw me spend much of the week on the Gold Coast,

PeterMBall 06/11/2010

Journal

Hello my neglected blog, how are you? I’m still away, doing a mixture of taking-care-of-family type things and wtf-when-did-I-get-a-day-job type things. I wear a tie to work. It’s very strange. I’ll be back soon. Not today, and not tomorrow, but soon. Until then, I’m just going to point out that I’m listening to Guns and Roses this afternoon, and it’s all Jason Fischer’s fault. Yours, Peter

PeterMBall 05/11/2010

Journal

Updated

I’m temporarily back in Brisbane this morning, prepping for a job interview after lunch. My dad goes in for a double-bypass tomorrow morning, so I suspect I’ll be driving back down to the Gold Coast tonight. I’ve not been this familiar with the Gold Coast highway in years. He’s met with all sorts of specialists in the last few days, and the ultra-sound of his heart has shown that while the current episode wasn’t a heart attack, there’s been a minor attack at some point in the past. The current plan, barring acts of employment, is to come back to Brisbane on Monday night once we’ve got a firm idea of what’s going on post-surgery. In the mean time, should you miss me, might I suggest heading over to Shimmer where they’ve posted the reading I did of my story from issue 12, The Mike and Carly Story, Without the Gossip.

PeterMBall 27/10/2010

Journal

Bad News

I’m going to be scarce this week. Yesterday my father went to hospital with what we’re not technically calling a heart attack (he has blocked arteries, but the “heart episode” didn’t result in damage to the heart muscle), and we’re currently waiting to find out when the bypass surgery is going to happen. Presumably it’ll be some time this week, after the blood thinners they gave him when he was first admitted have started to wear off. All in all, none of this news is as bad as it could have been – my dad has been extraordinarily lucky given the circumstances, and open heart surgery has been around long enough that the bigger concern than “they’re cutting him open and messing with his ticker” is “how is all this going to interact with his Parkinson’s medication.” It helps that my sister is a radiographer with experience working with cardiac-style cases, so we have a fairly accurate barometer of how

PeterMBall 25/10/2010

Big Thoughts

This post contains swearing

So this is something of an addendumto yesterday’s post, and it’s written because every now and then I see people I really like get in trouble because they don’t yet grasp the realities of white male privilege until it’s too late. I had this conversation with a friend the last time this issue raised its head, but I don’t think I ever put it together as a complete post, so I figured I may as well have it handy. Be warned that I’m going to swear a lot. Be warned that you’re probably not going to like hearing it, especially because it flies in the face of the way we wish the internet could be. Call it the two-word rule you need to wrap your head around before you launch into a discussion of feminsim online as a white male. It goes a little something like this: Fuck civility. I say this as someone who’s a fan of civility, who

PeterMBall 21/10/2010

Author: PeterMBall

Things I Would Be Blogging About, Were I Blogging this December

The Festive Season

The Magic of Trent’s Book Corner

Swancon 36

Electric Velocipede

On the Appeal of Easy Targets

The Sunday Round-Up

Hello!

Updated

Bad News

This post contains swearing

Book Information?

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