ECLECTIC PROJECTS BLOG
Gaming

Tonight’s Hijinx

Tonight I’m off to see Scott Pilgrim Versus the World and hobnob with my DnD/Pathfinder Peeps for the first time in a month. Lo, it shall be an evening of hardcore nerdery, and I shall return all revitalised and ready to geek at the world. I should probably go through the module I’m running again, just in case, although it’s likely to be a futile exercise given that three-quarters of the party have perfected the art of using the guilt trip as an offensive weapon. Were I the kind of guy to ramble on about roleplaying games, which I am under ordinary circumstances, I would wax philosophical about the good old days when Charisma was a dump stat and we fireballed the kobolds prior to whacking them with a broadsword. Of course, before that can happen, there must be words. And stories must be sent out once more, to brave the perilous winter of the outside world. And I should probably listen to the Spokesbear when he screams “stop blogging and get to work, dumbass”, otherwise he’s going to pop one of the non-existent veins in his head. ________________________________________________ Current Writing Metrics Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 4 New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 10/30 Rejections in 2010: 20/100 Claw Word Count (Finish Date: 15th November)

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16/09/2010 No Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Just Sayin’

Should you find yourself in the market for a signed copy of Bleed and not be in a position to corner me in my natural habitat, it’s worth noting that Pulp Fiction Bookshop in Brisbane’s Anzac Square Arcade got me to sign a bunch of the stock when I was in there earlier today (which also included a few copies of Horn, should you be looking for one). This isn’t a regular occurrence for me (in fact, it’d be the very first time I’ve done it), so I have no idea how long they’ll have said signed copies in stock and such. But they have them. On sale, like. For you to buy. And I get to add one more reason to the long list of reasons I fricken’ heart the Pulp Fiction staff. Of course, should you not be in Brisbane, then this probably doesn’t help much. Sorry about that. Although I should probably mention that there are still unsigned copies of Bleed available from the Twelfth Planet Press store which remain perfectly readable despite the absence of my handwritten and nigh illegible scrawl.

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15/09/2010 1 Comment
Works in Progress

Thoughtful Writer Face

I have drunk the coffee and eaten the toast (with ginger marmalade yet, and lo it was delicious) and deployed the thoughtful writer face. All is in readiness and it’s time to work, dammit. Fear me, works of unfinished fiction, for I am mighty and today you will fall before me. Or, you know, something like that. I’ve been wearing my viking PJs* to bed this week, and they make me somewhat belligerent in the mornings. That said, I could truly use a day where one of the projects I’m working on achieves some kind of measurable progression. I’m working on a pair of drafts (1 short-story, 1 novella) where the endings are far more well-defined than the beginning, all of which is relatively unusual for me, so I’m spending a lot of time circling the stories and working out which way is the best result. This will continue until I get frustrated and just belt out a beginning. I used to be good at belting out beginnings – it was endings that confounded me – but that skill no longer seems to apply to the Aster novellas (due to back-story and set-up demands) or the current story (which is a perfectly good story , but makes too many easy choices and thus cannot be let out into the world until I find a way to make it *better*). * ’cause someone will inevitably ask: no, I will not post pictures of the PJs. I don’t have much by way of dignity,

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15/09/2010 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

5 Books

If you were to ask me for book recomendations right now – and yes, I know you aren’t, but lets just say you were – you’d probably get a list that runs something like this: The Thin Man, Dashiel Hammett: Screw The Maltese Falcon – if you’re only going to read one hardboiled detective story by Hammett then you really should start with this one. I picked it up on the back of watching Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist when it was mentioned that the title characters in the film were based on the relationship between Hammett’s Nick and Nora Charles in the film version of this book, and it’s not hard to see why they were taken with the couple. Nick and Nora Charles are fricken’ awesome – their banter, their affection for one another, their goddamn chemistry as a literary couple – and it’s refreshing to see a hardboiled investigator who is actually happy much of the time. The Jane Austen Book Club, Karen Joy Fowler: I keep talking to people who haven’t read this, even if they’re fans of Fowler’s other work. Apparently there’s some combination of the cover art and the movie that was made that warns people off, thinking it’ll be a very different book than it actually is. And I keep telling people “no, no, you’re wrong. It’s fricken’ awesome!” and occasionally they’ll listen to me and actually read the book and get in contact and say “yes, actually, you’re right, it is kind

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14/09/2010 No Comments
Works in Progress

Once more into the breach, dear friends…

We’re fighting the doldrums here in the word-mines this week, trying to bully my work ethic into something resembling its normal state after house-guests, cons and the furious rush of getting a new book into existence. Such lapses are not unexpected, but they are unacceptable, and so I’ve deployed the Spokesbear into his advisory position and sat down with my giant to-do list of doom to work out what needs to be done for the rest of September. And so, September gets declared a win if I achieve the following: – Write the first 25,000 words of Claw, the third Miriam Aster Novella (This is the only non-negotiable thing on my list at the moment, since it has a deadline of November 15th and I want plenty of time to whip it into shape) – Revise the first 25,000 words of Black Candy (I tried to get this finished this book before worldcon, but redrafting led me to realise I’d skipped the first act of the story so I wrote that from scratch instead). – Finish and Submit three new stories (at this point, it’s likely to be: Pickets, Memories and Tethers; the Untitled Egyptian Mummy Story; and The Gallows Magus and the Queen of the Winter Seas) – Write the first chapter of the untitled project I’m working on with Ben Francisco. – Finish the crit of a friends novel chapters I’ve been meaning to do for two months now. ________________________________________________ Current Writing Metrics Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words):

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13/09/2010 No Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Hi

Between the Worldcon aftermath and the recent story going up at Apex Magazine, it seems like there’s been a spike in the number of folks walking past this here blog to have a gander (which would be Australian for “have a look” not “have a male goose”). It’s left me all a-fluster, for if I’d known company was coming I would have put on a better shirt before posting today. And possibly some pants. And I would have made sure I was posting from my computer at home, which is shiny and easy to use, rather than the clunky Mac at my parents place. Nevertheless, make yourselves comfortable and allow me to offer you a hot beverage of your choice. Okay, so I guess I should make introductions. First up, this blog is maintained by this pair: The chap at the foreground is Fudge, better known around these parts as the Spokesbear of Doom, who is the taskmaster that keeps me working and sending new fiction out into the world. The chap in the back is me, Peter M. Ball, who does most of the typing  by virtue of being the one with opposable thumbs. For various reasons I have much less hair than I did when this photograph was taken, but I still forget to shave roughly as often. For reasons of my dignity, I should not be trusted with a paper bag. This probably explains all that really needs to be explained about the non-writerly parts of my

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10/09/2010 2 Comments
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 be a minion now that they’re a pro-level online market. But the second reason this interests me is simple: the internet is changing the way people read and consume, and all too often it’s easy to forget this. The internet increasingly makes us passive in our consumption – these days I rarely even go looking for specific websites, since the combination of Twitter, Facebook, and my RSS feed pushes more information at me on a daily basis than I can process. And as a reader of short fiction, I’m acutely

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09/09/2010 No Comments
Works in Progress

A Not Terribly Exciting Update

And lo, I am back. Going to buy groceries, then get some writing done (Note the new project du-jour in the Metrics below). ________________________________________________ Current Writing Metrics Consecutive Days Writing (500+ words): 0 New Short Stories Sent Into the Wild: 9/30 Rejections in 2010: 19/100 Claw Word Count (Finish Date: 15th November)

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07/09/2010 No Comments
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 different due to the vagaries of memory, but this was close). Rob then drew a picture of a Dalek on the inside cover of his book, and I was filled with nerdy joy. – I won the Best New Talent category at the Ditmar Awards. I also managed to miss the ceremony, so there were several confusing conversations with people afterwards where they tried to explain what’d happened and I was all like, “wait, what? You’re kidding, right?” – Bleed is out, and apparently selling well. People actually game to

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06/09/2010 1 Comment
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.

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03/09/2010 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

1 Day ’til Worldcon

And in an hours time I’m off to the airport. I’m a bundle of nerves this morning, but I’ve been singing this song for the last half-hour: And tomorrow there is Worldcon.

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01/09/2010 1 Comment
News & Upcoming Events

2 Days ‘Til Worldcon

And by this time tomorrow I’ll be happily ensconced in our Melbourne digs, surrounded by a bunch of my writerly peeps. This promises to be awesome – hail to the peeps. My publisher’s twitter stream also informs me that they’ll be bringing the last of their Horn stocks to Worldcon. I have no idea how many books this may be, but should they run out of stock at the con it means the second print run has completely sold through. This is pretty good news, unless you happen to be at worldcon, in which case I may find myself clutching people by the lapels and asking “do *you* own a copy of Horn yet? Do ya? You should totally buy one!” in a slightly manic voice. I shall try to retrain myself, really I shall, but I make no promises. I was barely able to contain myself when the goal was “convince lots of people to buy copies of Bleed, for it is new and shiny and avialble for the first time at Worldcon”. While I’m usually pretty good at restraining my default level of writerly craziness in public, something may well come loose in my head when I finally see both books sitting next to each other in the dealer’s room. See you in Melbourne, should you be coming along.

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31/08/2010 No Comments

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