Val Vega makes an epic debut 🚀
17/03/2024
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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
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LATEST RELEASE Eclectic Projects 006
Eclectic Projects 006 features more original fiction and non-fiction from Aurealis and Ditmar-award-winning author Peter M. Ball. Features four original stories, two original articles, and one ongoing serial.
About Peter M. Ball
PETER M. BALL is an author, publisher, and RPG gamer whose love of speculative fiction emerged after exposure to The Hobbit, Star Wars, David Lynch’s Dune, and far too many games of Dungeons and Dragons before the age of 7. He’s spent the bulk of his life working as a creative writing tutor, with brief stints as a performance poet, gaming convention organiser, online content developer, non-profit arts manager, and d20 RPG publisher.
Peter’s three biggest passions are fiction, gaming, and honing the way aspiring writers think about the business and craft of writing, which led to a five-year period working for Queensland Writers Centre as manager of the Australian Writers Marketplace and convenor of the GenreCon writing conference. He is now pursuing a PhD in Writing at the University of Queensland, exploring the poetics of series fiction and their response to emerging publishing technologies.
He’s the author of the Miriam Aster series and the Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thrillers, three short story collections, and more stories, articles, poems, and RPG material than he’d care to count. He’s the brain-in-charge at Brain Jar Press, and resides in Brisbane, Australia, with his spouse and a very affectionate cat.
THE LATEST FROM THE BLOG
RECENT ESSAYS AND POSTS FROM THE ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Never Fall In Love With The Fey
04/03/2024
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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
Notebook Mojo
13/08/2023
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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
WRITING ADVICE
Over the years I’ve published a bunch of posts and essays designed to help aspiring writers. Here’s a selection you might find interesting:
Gaming is not Writing
Once again, I dance like a monkey for your amusement. This time around my friend Al asked via facebook: Why should writers never write RPG campaigns as stories, why on earth did you do just that, why isn’t it finished yet? Okay, we’re going to kick this one off with a list o’ reasons, some of which people are likely to disagree with. 1) EDITORS DON’T LIKE IT Let’s kick this off with the obvious – the best reason to avoid writing up RPG campaigns as stories is the fact that places that give you money for writing aren’t a big fan of things that are based on RPG campaigns. This warning from Strange Horizon’s List of Stories They See Too Often isn’t exactly uncommon, where they pretty much tell you to avoid anything where: Story is based in whole or part on a D&D game or world. a. A party of D&D characters (usually including a fighter, a magic-user, and a thief, one of whom is a half-elf and one a dwarf) enters a dungeon (or the wilderness, or a town, or a tavern) and fights monsters (usually including orcs). b. Story is the origin story of a D&D character, culminating in
26/09/2012
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Avocado, Toast, and What They Make Me Think About Writing
I had breakfast at my local cafe this morning. It’s a habit I’m cultivating this year, on Write Club days, after realising that breakfast at my local cafe makes me extraordinarily happy and it becomes affordable within my budget if I stop buying Coke Zero. Giving up Coke Zero for something that makes me extraordinary happy is an easy trade, and so, twice a week, I trot down to the Low Road Cafe and order their avocado on toast for breakfast. There are two things I love about the Low Road’s avocado breakfast. The first is that it’s a production. It’s thick slices of doorstop toast, avocado, three different types of nuts, little slices of radish and radish flowers. Lemon juice. Freshly chopped herbs laid over the whole thing like a winter blanket. The kind of food put together by a chef who isn’t regarding their vegetarian menu as an afterthought, and enjoys the process of making tasty things. Avocado on toast is usually one of those meals that cafes do well, ’cause it’s easy, but Low Road elevates it to the point of elegance. They catch you by surprise by defying your expectations. The second thing that I love: it’s
03/02/2016
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Behind The Scenes On A Cover Redesign
Last year I did a new cover for Alan Baxter’s Shadow Bites: A Horror Sampler, a free bundle of stories and novel excerpts for folks who’d like to get a taste of Alan’s work. It’s a project from a longer conversation Al and I were having about title development, the stuff we’ve both been doing in the indie publishing space, and the difference between the titles where development has been nigh perfect (The Roo) and the stuff that could do with a little spruce. Here’s the original and the refresh side-by-side for context. Original is on the left, my revamp is on the right. I won’t comment too much on the original, as it’s not my work and wasn’t specifically design with Al’s book in mind, but I will break down some of the reasons I pushed Alan to consider making a change. Mostly, these reasons have nothing to do with the cover design, and everything to do with a mismatch between the books goals and the design. For me, the starting point for covers isn’t “is this a good/pretty cover?” but “does this cover fit the title development for the title?”, which is a slightly knottier question that benefits
02/02/2022
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Hanging with the Spokesbear: Undead Press
Spokesbear: Undead Press. Peter: Really? Spokesbear: For reals, yo. Peter: Okay, really? Spokesbear: Are you objecting to the topic or the patter? Peter: Both, but mostly the latter. Spokesbear: Stop trying to hold me down, dog. Peter: Seriously, what the fuck’s with that? Spokesbear: Just trying it out for size. Peter: Stop it. Really. Spokesbear: Like you never fantasize about walking into a room and saying ‘what up, bitches?’ Peter: I do not. Spokesbear: … Peter: Okay, I do to, but that’s not the point. I never actually break it out in conversation ’cause I know it’s a bad idea. Spokesbear: Hater. Peter: … Spokesbear: Okay, I’ll stop, but you have to talk about the Undead Press thing. Peter: Fine. Spokesbear: Fine. Peter: FINE. Spokesbear: FINE. Peter: … Spokesbear: … Peter: … Spokesbear: … Peter: So, the Undead Press thing? Spokesbear: Yeah? Peter: Really hard for me to talk about without engaging in victim-blaming. Spokesbear: Sure, ’cause you’re an asshole. Peter: Yes, but not just ’cause of that. Everyone’s in a hurry to help out this poor woman who had her work massacred by Undead Press, to commiserate as to how badly she’s been screwed by the evil publisher who
23/05/2012
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Links and Things
1) Chris Green Distills the Clarion Wisdom I went to Clarion South with Chris two and a half years ago. He’s a smart man, very interested in things, and on something of a roll of late as far as publications and sales go. Over the last week Chris started distilling some of the major lessons we learned during the workshop into a series of very short, controlled blog posts. Given his terse nature, these are short and easy to digest, and they’re basically the high points of the workshop in collected form (and since he doesn’t believing in tagging posts, I’ll send you straight to the first entry and let you follow along from there). 2) Philip Pullman on How to Write a Book This amuses me in its accuracy. 3) Reviewage andPimpage – My comrade-in-writing Ben Francisco – and the first man to tell me “this should be a novella” – engages in some Horn Pimpage on my behalf – The Fix diggs my story Clockwork, Patchwork, and Ravens which appeared in Apex Magazine back in May – The Internet Review of Science Fiction describes On the Destruction of Copenhage… as “mundane surrealism.” 4) Rewriting as an Animated Giff A very short-but-interesting post from Elizabeth Bear
19/08/2009
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The Nine Business Mantras of A Cranky Writer
So, here’s the thing: I spend the vast majority of my daylight hours talking to aspiring writers about what they’d like to achieve and how they can get there. This is one of the things that comes with the territory when you work at a place like Queensland Writers Centre, and it’s pretty sweet gig. You get to meet up-and-coming writers as they’re getting their shit together and help them along the way; you get to meet older, established writers and glean what you can from their experience. You get to talk to the absolutely raw rookies, the people who have just decided I want to be a writer and want to know what they should do next. When I answer questions at work, I’m polite and enthusiastic and eager to give you the best answer I can. I do that ’cause that’s what work-Peter does. This post isn’t written by the guy that’s politely answers your queries if you call us at the centre. No, this post is written by the guy who actually does the hard yards of sitting down and writing stuff; the grumpy-as-shit professional who spends the other half of the day trying to earn some
21/07/2014
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