Tag: Booyah

Works in Progress

Shadows

So there’s a  shortlist for the 2010 Australian Shadows horror awards available online, which includes Bleed in the Long Fiction category alongside such brilliant works as Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands and Other Stories and Kirstyn McDermott’s Madigan Mine and a handful of books I haven’t yet come across but I’m sure are excellent ’cause, really, once you start with Madigan Mine and The Girl with No Hands I’m inclined to just trust the judges tastes – those books are freakin’ great. So it’s a happy sort of day, even if it feels a bit odd to be on the short list because Bleed isn’t really a horror story. The complete short-list looks something like this, and it’s full of names that I’m very happy to see on short-lists. Congratulations to all who made it. LONG FICTION Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott (Picador Australia) The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga Publications) Guardian of the Dead by

News & Upcoming Events

Blatant Self Promotion: February

Okay, since February is deveoted to the Gauntlet, I’m just going to cram a whole months worth of blatant self promotion into the one post. Strap yourselves in, ’cause it looks like February is a busy one: – Descended from Darkness volume II is out, collecting another twelve months of short fiction originally published in Apex Magazine (including my story To Dream of Stars: An Astronomer’s Lament). For a limited time you can pick this up with the first Descended from Darkness collection (which included my story Clockwork, Patchwork, and Ravens) for only $25US. – My story Briar Day is live over at the Moonlight Tuber site, as part of the line-up of the “Moonlight Tuber #2 – Captain Homonculous Dines with ‘That Irascible Mizzen Mast’ – Part Three” issue of the zine that’s available for online reading or as a downloadable PDF. I think this officially marks editor Ben Payne as the man whose acquired more of my short fiction

News & Upcoming Events

The Mike & Carly Story in Shimmer 12

So I’m spending some time away from the internet this week, trying to get some life stuff sorted out, but I figured I’d drop by to mention the following: Issue 12 of Shimmer magazine is out This is always a source of joy, largely ’cause Shimmer is one of the magazine I consistently subscribe too regardless of financial circumstances. And to quote from their webpage: Issue 12 contains wonders and marvels, from Peter M. Ball‘s punk-not-emo teenage werewolf story, to Josh Storey‘s gorgeous take on the tale of Orpheus, to Monica Byrne‘s story of stigmata in a colony on a distant planet. We’ve got an imaginative reinterpretations of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wizard of Oz, and a sweet little zombie love story. And more! We packed 9 stories into this issue. What they don’t actually mention in that excerpt is that Issue 12 also contains the inimitable Ben Francisco’s Crepuscular, which takes the concept of a firefly and

News & Upcoming Events

Reviews and Other Stuff

Today has been long and slightly odd and overburdened with irritating moments and it involves me cutting back on coffee (which is somewhat akin to saying “flee, mortals, for I will lay waste to your world”), so for obvious reasons there will not be much by way of bloggage this evening. So instead I’m going to point you towards Narelle Harris’s review of Bleed and another review of the same over on Averagely Inadequate. And if you remember the mysterious squee and snoopy-dance of acceptance that I was being very vague about just prior to Worldcon, there might be a clue as to what I was freaking out in the last paragraph of today’s post on Jonothan Strahan’s Coode Street blog.

News & Upcoming Events

L’esprit de L’escalier live at Apex Magazine

So the latest issue of Apex Magazine is now online and features my story L’esprit de L’escalier about a guy, and endless staircase, and the things you think about during the descent. There’s already some discussion about the story taking place over at I09 which has left me thinking, among other things, “wow, I really do need to read House of Leaves.” And since we’re talking Apex, I’m going to take the opportunity to re-post something that the Apex Chief Alien Jason Sizemore put up on their blog recently. It interests me for two reasons: firstly, because Apex has been pretty good to me as a writer. This is the third of my stories they’ve published, and the first two have managed to sneak onto the occasional recommended reading list and awards shortlist, but I was a fan of the magazine long before I was published there. I subscribed, back when they were a semi-pro hardcopy magazine, and I’ve signed up to

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

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

18 Days ’til Worldcon

– There’s a bit of this going on this morning, for I’ve had my second short story acceptance for the year. Details to  come once I’ve signed contracts and such, but it looks like this one might see publication sooner rather than later. – If you’re not following the Drive-By Interviewsover at Angela Slatter’s blog, well, you really should. – Ditto The Coode Street Podcastfeaturing Jonothan Stahan and Gary K. Wolfe. There’s something immeasurably pleasurable about getting to hear two very knowledgeable people talk about the history of SF, publishing, reviewing, and (perhaps most importantly) the BOOKS YOU DON’T NEED TO READ in order to understand out field. After listening to one of their earlier episodes, I feel myself utterly absolved of having to finish the rather dire Princess of Mars. – And, hell, lets throw out the rather fine fortnightly podcast from the Galactic Suburbia crew, for I’m a fan of that too. – Also, if you’re interested in scoring

Journal

Somewhere between Bletch and Booyah

So I followed my week of almost dying of cat allergies with a week of being mildly inconvenienced by a cold, which would have been fine were it not one of those strains of the common cold that makes your eyes blurry and sore every time you looked at a computer screen. Not being able to look at a computer screen is a fairly dire state of affairs in my world, especially when electronic proofs start appearing (one can type with one’s eyes closed, after all, but one cannot correct what one cannot read). On the plus side, I was apparently shortlisted for some Ditmar awards while I was away, which is kind of cool. Plus there’s a seemingly endless parade of friends on the short-list as well, which is always a good thing. ________________________________________________ Current Writing Metrics Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 2 New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30 Rejections in 2010: 14/100 Black Candy Word Count

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

News & Upcoming Events

Years Best SF 15

Kathryn Cramer’s just posted the TOC for the Year’s Best SF 15 (edited by Kathryn Cramer  and David Hartwell, available soon from HarperCollins). On the list of included works, amid stories by Bruce Sterling and Alistair Reynolds and Nancy Kress and Geoff Ryman and many other folks, is this: On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War Machines of the Merfolk. There might have been squee about that around these parts. The spokesbear gets excitable. You know how it is.

Works in Progress

One last outburst before we go to radio silence

My attempt to roll out the productivity and conquer The Fear hit a road-block yesterday – what seemed to be a minor computer problem (power jack coming loose from the laptop casing) has rolled out into a terrifying ordeal which will culminate in the absence of a computer in the house for 5-to-1o working days while the problem’s corrected. The computer goes in this morning, so…well, basically I’m quietly screwed after that. No word-processor, no e-mail, no basic tools of research. I can work with a pad and pen, but these are only good for the drafting rather than the actual finishing and submitting of work. This…complicates…that whole submit lots of things in February plan. Meanwhile, in more positive parts of internetland, the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009 has just been released. Horn got recommended in the novella section and my Strange Horizon’s story On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk is mentioned in the Short Story

Works in Progress

And lo, I could not think of a title

Mornin’ peeps. The laptop’s on battery power* at the moment so I’m racing against time to get a blog-post written before the computer yawns and says “sleepy now, going away.” Yesterday I wrote 381 words on a story, poked at another to see where it fell over**, cleared out 50-odd e-mails had been waiting for me to answer them since the beginning of January***, ate half a loaf of bread, took out the rubbish, pondered tactics for tonight’s Bloodbowl game****, and learned that one of my stories from last-year has been picked-up-for-a-reprint-that-I’m-not-sure-I-can-talk-about-yet-so-we’ll-leave-that-there. Among the various e-mails was a note from Andrew C Porter that basically went along the lines of linked you on my blog, and you might want to go check out the nice things Apex Submission’s Editor Maggie Jamison said in her interview. And so I went, and nice things were said, and Andrew’s blog proved to be fun and vaguely maddening with his insistence on posting Advanced Dungeon’s