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Madcap Adventures and Distracting Hijinx

Still at Aussiecon 4

Today’s the last day of Aussiecon 4 and I’ll be kicking around the convention centre for most of the day, soaking up the remaining hours of the geek-nirvana that is the worldcon. I have also hit the part of the con where I’m surviving on about four hours of sleep a night, but that’s a good thing. Other good things: – I met Rob Shearman early in the con and he misheard my name. This, in and of itself, isn’t the stuff that squee is made of, but when I later bought a copy of his short story collection and he was doing the signing I was given the opportunity to tell him I was a Peter, not a Paul. Still not squee-worthy? Bare with me, for the next thing that happened was awesome. Rob Shearman glanced at my namebadge and was all “Wait, Peter M Ball? The unicorn porn guy? I really liked Horn” (actual wordage may be slightly

News & Upcoming Events

Portrait of an Author with a Shiny New Book

It’s the wee hours of the morning on the second day of Aussiecon 4 and I’ve had far to little sleep, so I’m going to limit myself to firing up the laptop webcam and posting this: New Book! Wooo! It Exists! Now I’m off to shower and prepare for another day of geeky awesomeness.

Journal

4 Days ’til Worldcon

And man, doesn’t that feel like an ominous thing to type in the title of the post. I’m in a vaguely half-asleep state this morning, largely because I started reading Seanan McGuire’s Rosemary and Rue just before going to bed last night and it’s one of those books where the temptation to read just one more chapter is terribly, terribly strong.  Were I a less lazy blogger there would be a whole post here about yesterday’s adventure to Pulp Fiction, whereupon my plan to buy just one or two books quickly fell apart. Fortunately, I am a lazy blogger today. That’s what Sunday’s a for. Today there is writing. And write-club. And bugging the inimitable Ben Francisco about co-writing a YA novel, ’cause there are some writerly shenanigans that work better when they’re shared with other people.

Journal

In which I am stupid

If you’ve never read the Persistence Pays Parasites entry of Cory Doctrow’s Locus column then I heartily recommend dropping over and taking a look. The short-version, for those without the time or attention span, runs something like this: Doctrow is a smart and internet savvy guy, but he got himself phished despite his high awareness of such scams ’cause they hit him when there was a short-lived crack in his defenses. Actually, let me quote the key message of the column, ’cause it’s worth repeating: Phishing isn’t (just) about finding a person who is technically naive. It’s about attacking the seemingly impregnable defenses of the technically sophisticated until you find a single, incredibly unlikely, short-lived crack in the wall. ‘Course, I still recommend going over and checking out the whole thing. It’s interesting stuff and it’ll make you rethink the way spam e-mail works (at least, if will if you’re like me and you assumed Spam merchanters were going after net-surfing

Works in Progress

Writing Space

And so I have hit the point where I need to tackle that debacle that is my writing desk, which has been looking like this since I got back from my cat-sitting adventure: The irony of this is that I rarely spend much time writing at said desk, even when it is cleared off. I can chug along quite happily for weeks, writing in bed and on the couch and at the computer set up on the computer desk. Cleaning off the desk is a mindset thing more than anything else – having the dedicated space where I can retreat where’s there’s no internet or television or, well, sleeping to be done is a large part of doing more than the bare minimum of writing. ________________________________________________ Current Writing Metrics Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 4 New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30 Rejections in 2010: 15/100 Black Candy Word Count (Finish Date: 31st August)

Journal

My Hate, I show it too you…

 Peter wakes up to find the Spokesbear sitting on his chest, staring him in the face. Spokesbear: Time to work. Peter: Fuck off. Spokesbear: You’re not sick anymore. Peter: I feel like someone’s taken a razor blade to the inside of my oesophagus. Spokesbear: Yes, but you can *stare at a screen without bleeding from the eyes*. That means it’s time to work. Peter: You’re mean. Spokesbear: It’s what you pay me for. Peter: I pay you? Spokesbear: Yes. Peter: You’re an anthropomorphised fraction of my own subconscious guilt, why do you get paid? The Spokesbear punches Peter in the throat with a padded paw. Spokesbear: That’s why. Next time you ask a stupid question, I’m going after a kneecap. Peter: I kill you. The Spokesbear makes a cute face. Peter: Okay, I don’t kill you. Spokesbear: I don’t do this for free, dude. Time to work. Peter: Sadist. Spokesbear: Wuss. Peter: Crazy bear. Spokesbear: Slacker. Peter: Tyrant. Spokesbear: Slug.

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

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

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

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

More recent reading

So yesterday I had a cyst the size of a walnut removed from my scalp, which served as the catalyst for the rather enthusiastic bandage job posted last night.  The combination of restless nerves, a long wait in the surgery, and the complete inability to sleep due to the bandages constricting my jaw meant I spent a lot of the day reading. Changeless, the follow-up to the Gail Carriger novel I blogged about on Tuesday, was a fun read that didn’t really have the zomgawesomesauce feel of Soulless. Which is not to say that it isn’t full of Steampunky goodness and a readable book, just that I missed the added frisson of enjoyment that came from the intertextual Austen-esque moments that made the first book so much fun. Austen-esque doesn’t work when you’ve got happy, sexually active couples in the opening pages. I found myself missing that. Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist, however, was the exact kind of comfort reading

Works in Progress

State of Play

Last night I braved the outside world and joined Trent Jamieson and Chris Lynch to talk about SF as part of the QUT Informational Professionals Alumni Chapter’s Bookclub, which was an enormous amount of fun given the books we were discussing (the fact that I’m a nerdy bibliophile who rather enjoys chatting about books didn’t hurt, nor did the fact that Trent and Chris are lovely blokes to share a panel with). Today I started tackling May’s to-do list from hell. It’s a long list, and its terrible, and there were at least two things on there with a deadline of “May 31st”. The first of these is done (short story submission, although given the length my stories are when I’m finishing them these days they may not deserve the title short); the second of these is daunting (going through the fourth rewrite of Cold Cases in preparation for May 31st, when I hand it back to TPP). The rest of the list has a little more

News & Upcoming Events

My Stuff Online This Week

Part One: Tubers in the Moonlight Ben Payne has launched his online zine, Moonlight Tuber, and the first issue (subtitled A Handsome Laundrette, A Box of Lovers, and Two Dozen Happy Sea Cows) is completely free and available for download. Somewhere within its virtual covers, said issue contains my story, The Peanut Guy, which is the tail end of the Warhol Sleeping/Avenue D vignette that started with one of my first publications, The Normal Guy, in Antipodean SF 102 back in 2006. The rest of the series, should you wish to track them down, appeared in Antipodean SF 107, Antipodean SF 117, Dog Versus Sandwich, Dark Recesses 8 (not available online anymore, but I’ve posted a copy here), and Dog Versus Sandwich again. Some of this is old work, and the very fact that it’s split up into various vignettes largely shows my discomfort when it comes to figuring out how prose worked prior to Clarion (these days, I’d probably