Category: News & Upcoming Events

The second Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thriller hit the shelves yesterday. Revised and revamped since the 2015 release, Frost is a sleeker and tighter short novel than it once was. If you’re on the fence about giving Keith a try, I’ll direct you to my favourite review of the first edition over on Goodreads: This second instalment in Peter Ball’s grubby Gold Coast urban fantasy series is like a perfect lesson in how to frame the middle part of a trilogy –Return of established characters? Check.–Introduction of new characters? Check.–Exploration of the status quo from book 1? Check.–Shake-up of that status quo? Check.–Exploration of the greater world/setting? Check.–Higher stakes and tension than the previous book? Check. If you enjoyed Exile, this is a terrific follow-up that does everything right. (Although I still wish the editing and proofreading was a bit tighter.) If you haven’t read Exile then go away, read it, come back and [[see start of paragraph]]. Review by Patrick O’Duffy You

Print copies of The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta landed in my mailbox today, and they’ve come up rather beautifully for a thirty-page chapbook. About half the very short print run are already spoken for, heading off to various friends and authors I’m courting for future projects who wanted to see how the chapbooks turned out. The other half are reserved for the handful of folks who might want a personalised print copy, and are willing to order direct from me. I’m not particularly high-tech about these things (at least, not yet). , so the process is as follows. To grab one, paypal me at PeterMBall@gmail.com. Amounts to paypal as follows: One signed copy, on a “give it to me next time we see each other” delivery model: $7.50 One signed copy, posted anywhere in Australia: $9.50  One signed copy, posted overseas: $15 Australian folks can order multiple copies by adding an additional $7.50 to the prices above. Overseas

I just did the Brain Jar Press newsletter and realised I’d put together four new releases across January: Exile, a new short story collection, a new chapbook in the Short Fiction Lab line, and the chapbook edition of The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta. Amid the chaos of January, some of these didn’t even get announced here on the blog, let alone get talked up on social media. Exile captured the lion’s share of my promotional energy, so I’m going to use this post to catch you all up on what’s being going on. THE LATEST: SHEDDING SKINS (Short Fiction Lab Chapbooks #5) A Brain Jar Press Short Fiction Lab chapbook story, Peter M. Ball’s Shedding Skin is a dark fantasy about snakes, old wounds, and isolation in the heat of the Queensland outback. Things haven’t been right with Mariah ever since the car accident, but Harley knows the problems were seeded long before they drove off the road. Things come

As you may have surmised from the posts of the past few days, EXILE is out today. It also ends my first real experiment with a planned, structured series of content heading into the launch cycle. It’s been an experience, and one that I’m glad to have attempted, but I’m glad to be reaching the point where I start talking about other things. For the moment, you can grab your copy at the ‘zon of your choice. AMAZON US: Ebook | Print AMAZON AUS: Ebook AMAZON UK: Ebook |Print Working on Keith Murphy’s adventures again, getting a chance to flense and rework the language, has been a fantastic experience. Now my brain is already hip-deep in the sequel, Frost, which is coming out in a few weeks time, and looking ahead to the third book, Crusade.

…and I’m slightly geeked out about getting Exile out there. The Admiral, of course, is reacting to my excitement with her customary savoir faire. That said, it’s possible she hasn’t yet made the correlation between book sales and the ability to buy her crunchy food. Keep this in mind when you decide where to put your book-buying dollars this week: every time you purchase a copy of Exile, the Admiral gets her crunchy food 🙂 One of the great things about prepping this book for release and talking it up online? Kathleen Jennings linked to her original reaction tweets when she read the series, complete with watercolour sketches she put together at the time. Which in turn led me back to her write-up about the book over on her blog: You may think I broke my Regency streak with these two, but the main character reads Persuasion on stakeouts. Myth-heavy hardboiled Gold Coast pre-(assorted)-apocalyptic fantasy. It resonates with the parts of my

The ebook files have all been uploaded and the print proofs have been approved, which means the re-release of Exile is on track for Wednesay. I talked about the secret emotions and work that hides behind the word “re-released” in relation to this book over on the twitters. I won’t repeat the entire thing here, but it starts with this tweet and everything is linked in an easy-to-follow thread: The short version, for those who prefer to avoid the twitter-beast, is that the re-release of Exile and its sequels involves revisiting work written just prior to being diagnosed with a sleep disorder, and therefore a chance to do the kind of rewrites and reshaping of the original text that a falling-asleep-at-the-keyboard Peter wasn’t able to do in 2013. For various personal reasons, I want this launch to go really well, so I’m investing a little more attention into it than my new releases normally get. For now, I’ll just mention

A year ago, around Xmas time, I released Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor and Black Dog: A Biography as reader magnets for Brain Jar Press. For those not immersed in indie pub terminology, reader magnet is short-hand for books/stories I give away for free, so as to entice readers into paying for other work/signing up for your newsletter. Nick Stephenson has an entire book about the strategy which you can download for free (and I’ll let you put two and two together about the reasons behind his choice). The two stories have served me well since then—Hornets Attack, in particular, has picked up a couple of hundred downloads on various sites—but Amazon has been a sticking point. Unlike every other site, the big river isn’t a fan of letting you upload a book and making it free straight off. They are willing to price-match with other stores, if a book is available for free elsewhere, but it’s at their

Preorders for One Last First Date Before The End of the World are now live on the usual retail sites, and its on sale at the shiny, dedicated fan price of .99 cents (US) for the next thirty days. What do you do when your date tells you Ragnarök starts next Tuesday? Logan expected his date with Stina Lorne to be a disaster, quickly ending after dinner when they acknowledged she was out of his league. Instead they went for a long drive, then a walk along a familiar beach. In fact, everything seems to be going better than Logan could have imagined when he asked her out last week. Sure, his date is convinced she’s the descendant of Fenrir, demon wolf of Asgard. And yeah, she’s talking about the apocalypse kicking off in the near future. Logan’s not sure that matters, yeah? After all, nobody’s perfect, and even the best relationships take work. One Last First Date Before The

I may be an Australian writer, but my sales here in Australia are usually on the low side compared to other parts of the world. Which is why I was surprised when I logged on to Amazon.com.au this morning and saw the current rankings for A White Cross Beside a Lonely Road: Of course, Amazon rankings are transitory and mysterious, unlikely to stick unless sales are consistent and other things come together in the dark depths of Bezos’ sales portal. In fact, I’ve slipped down a spot in the time it’s taken to write this blog post because the last sale was a few hours back. Still, look, here I am at number 16 and in some pretty good company on the Australian sites’ ghost story rankings. The ranks may be mysterious and transitory, but here’s a good rule of thumb in writing: if you wake up one morning and your short story is sitting in between Bird Box and