Author: PeterMBall

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Angela Slatter’s Sourdough: Pre-order details

Okay peeps, for your edification I’m going to mention that Angela Slatter’s new short story collection, Sourdough and other stories, is avialble for pre-order from Tartarus Press. It’ll be a limited edition of 300 copies, and I heartily recommend it (I’ve read much of the collection, which is a themed series of linked story, and it moves beyond the realm of awesome and into the realm of quite extraordinary). “But Peter,” I hear you cry, “you already mentioned Angela’s short story collection was available for pre-order a few weeks ago.” “Nay,” I tell you, “a few weeks ago I mentioned that her OTHER short story collection, The Girl with No Hands, is available for pre-order from Ticonderoga Press. Sourdough is a completely seperate book, being put out by a boutique press that does glorious hardcovers full of win. Trust me, though. You cannot go wrong by doubling the ammount of Slatter works you’re planning to add to your bookshelf.” “What?”

Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Adventures in Cat-Sitting, a Play in One Act

Peter sits at the table, trying to work. He is grumpy and irritable after being woken two hours early by a deranged cat yowling at the bedroom door. The Cat jumps on the table and sits on the computer keyboard. Peter moves The Cat. Peter: What do you want, cat? The Cat: Feed me, mortal. Peter: Dude, I fed you ten minutes ago. You ate. There is no more food. The Cat: FEED ME. Peter: No. The Cat: I stare at you. Peter: Totally cool with me. The Cat:I stare with mighty stareness. Peter: Huh. The Cat: FEEL THE WEIGHT OF MY DISPLEASURE Peter: Got it. Trying to work. The Cat: I savage your toe. Peter: Fuck. Shit. Rack off, I was using that. The Cat: FEEEEEEEED ME! Peter: TRYING TO WORK. The Cat: Holy shit, there’s birds in the yard. Peter:They’re chickens. They’re there every day. You know this, because I pull you away from their pen every morning.

Journal

Bad Ideas and Cat Fights

Last night, because Jason Fischer is a bad influence, I wrote out the notes for a Blaxploitation-esque story set in the 70’s version of the Miriam Aster universe. I then put it away because I realised there’s absolutely no way of writing it without being horribly offensive or utterly driven by pastiche. Such are the dangers of not having any deadlines looming, major or minor. Fortunately there are days when I stop myself before doing stupid things and today seems to be one of them. The notes go deep into the “write this when you can afford to get punched in the face” file, at least until Jason lives up to his threat to kidnap me and go all Kathy Bates until I write the damn thing (if anyone hears about Jason acquiring a pet pig, please let me know). In other news, there are twenty-four days remaining before I am free of cats. Or, more specifically, the cat, since there

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

I so wanted this to be a better book than it is

So I’ve been trying to read Edgar Rice Burroughs A Prince of Mars for over a month now. It…ah…it isn’t going at all well. So not well, in fact, that I actually put together a photograph of the book, the Spokesbear and my frowny-face of extreme displeasure as an illustrative aid, but that plan was thwarted by the fact that I’m house-sitting and brought the wrong thingamywatsits* to connect the camera to the computer. Hell, I suspect reading this book is actually making me a little crazy and there is some form of retaliatory planetary romance pastiche in my writing future**. Were I a saner person this is the point where I’d cut my losses and give up on the book, acknowledging that Princess of Mars is so deeply ingrained in the cultural prejudices of it’s time with not enough cool stuff around the edges to ease me past the knee-jerk string of “for fuck’s sake” responses I get while

News & Upcoming Events

Bleed available for pre-order

So yesterday the various forms of mail brought in my contributor copies of the new Horn layout, my ninth rejection of the year, and the following news: Bleed by Peter M Ball Cover art by Dion Hamill, design by Amanda For ten years ex-cop Miriam Aster has been living with her one big mistake – agreeing to kill three men for the exiled Queen of Faerie. But when an old case comes back to haunt her it brings a spectre of the past with it, forcing Aster to ally herself with a stunt-woman and a magic cat in order to rescue a kidnapped TV star from the land of Faerie and stop the half-breed sorcerer who needs Aster’s blood. Ten years ago Miriam Aster learnt a simple lesson: when a faerie asks you to kill someone, the worst thing you can say is sure. Today she’s about to learn that worse things can happen when the past refuses to stay behind

Works in Progress

One day I’ll make things easy on myself…

Today I’m having a running conversation with my brain where I say “time to work now, buddy” and the brain says “dude, you’ve taken industrial strength antihistamines, why don’t you just sod off and let me sleep, yeah?” Fortunately I once spent three or four years living with a girlfriend who had cats, so I know exactly how well I can work while living on industrial strength antihistamines. The brain gets no free passes, there will be work. The real problem, of course, has nothing to do with the brain-clouding chemicals that are currently allowing me to cohabitate with two felines without, you know, dying. No, the real problem is that rewriting the opening of Black Candyis hard, and that I’ve made a hash of it several times prior to this. Part of it is the world-building, since I’m trying to jam together a bunch of concepts that don’t quite fit together, and the rest is a familiar problem. One

Works in Progress

July Plans

And lo, the edits are sent back to the editor and the novella once titled Cold Cases is going through the various transmogrifications it goes through to become a book titled Bleed instead. Various things contribute to the feeling of done-ness – seeing concept sketches for the cover art, finally settling on the new title, hearing that the ISBN-type stuff is being put into motion. There will still be work to go, presumably edits and proofs, but this book has officially evacuated the portion of my brain that requires tinkering and subconscious thought. It’s no longer a project. Which means it’s time to get started on what comes next: rewriting Black Candy. And since I’m house-sitting this month, taking care of the cats and chickens that belong to some friends who have dissappeared into the wilds of Europe, I’m going to try and pack the bulk of the rewrite into July. Once more into the breach and all that.

Works in Progress

Almost Done

I’ve been writing a sequel to Horn, one way or another, since February 6 of 2009. I suspect I’d started even earlier than that with ideas scribbled down in notebooks and such, but Feb 6 is the first time it migrated to a computer file that’s usually the start of my writing process. Since then I’ve voluntarily scrapped an entire novella draft, rewritten the plan for how I thought a series of Miriam Aster books should progress, and written a second novella to fit the new concept that was about 75% longer than projected. Some days I dispaired that I’d ever actually see the end of the process – what started as twenty-thousand words about Aster and a talking cat ended up in a very different place. Trying to get there scared the shit out of me more than once; I have a comfort zone as a writer, and this was well outside it. But it appears it’s very close to

Journal

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day –  and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps. 1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this). 2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which

News & Upcoming Events

It’s an Aster kind of day.

First, a public service announcement re-posted from the livejournal of my illustrious publisher: (The reprint of) Horn failed to be delivered today but I have rescheduled for tomorrow and they should then be out in the post to the preorders in tomorrow evening’s mail. If you’ve been holding off buying your copy of Horn til they were back in stock, as of tomorrow they will be and you can buy your copy here. Again, whilst stocks last – I expect to have copies for sale at Worldcon but there were quite a few reservations for this second printing as well. Which seems like as good a segue as we’re going to get to talk about the current state of the second Miriam Aster novella, Cold Cases. Today I was full of virtue. I rose early, I took my daily dose of penicillin, then I settled down at the computer with a cup of coffee and a Bob Dylan CD and

Journal

Chaos and Rejection

It’s entirely possible that I’ll spontaneously combust at some point today. Somehow it’s become an intersection of deadlines, doctor’s appointments, social engagements and other madness that all needs to be done *now*. Naturally, I have a plan for getting everything done. Just as naturally, it’s all going to hell the moment I hit the doctor’s surgery. While I totally dig my local surgery, they’re often overbooked and the waiting times are haphazard. On the plus side, I seem to have moved past the nightmares where the stitches in my head split open and I bleed over my bed. Now the only thing waking me up is the stitches hurting when it gets really cold around 4 in the morning. In other news: the yearly rejection count hit 7 today, but this is counterbalanced by having the first new story sent out in a long, long while.

Journal

Sleep

I went to bed around 9:30 last night and got up around 9:30 this morning. Partially this was a response to getting up around 5 in the morning to take my sister to the airport*, partially its a response to my inability to sleep for longer than an hour at a time since I had the cyst cut out. Near as I can tell, the twelve hours I spent in bed equated to about seven hours of fitful sleep. The rest was all tossing and turning and getting out of bed to make sure that my nightmare I’d just had about the stitches pulling open and starting to bleed really were just nightmares. Obviously, I am not a good patient. Me and bleeding have never been a good combination. And I really, really want to wash my hair. Now I have to go and make up for lost writing time. There is stuff that needs doing, and I’ve been slack