Journal

Feelin’ just a little bit sleepy

The short answer to where I’ve been for the last week: sleeping. The slightly longer answer goes something like this: Last week there was the return of the tooth pain and the right-hand side of my face swelled up like I was using my cheek as a storage pocket for a golf ball. Bugger, says I, that’s not really normal, and so I hie myself off to the dentist in order to do something about it.  The dentist takes one look and agrees with me – definitely not normal. Turned out I had myself an acute dental abscess – which largely translates as cavity infection that has spread into other nerves. His first impulse is to pull the infected tooth out, but since I take moderately good care of my teeth (despite what this post may suggest) the decision is made to try and save it, and so I get my first-ever root canal. Oddly, this wasn’t the bad part.

PeterMBall 16/03/2010
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Whip It and Writing

1) Whip It I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog post-reviewy thing about Whip It for about two weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not going to happen. Not because I think it’s a bad film – it’s utterly charming in its ability to recognise that something can be simultaneously camp as hell and the most important thing in the whole damn world – but because it fits into the same space as contemporary art where I find my critical vocabulary isn’t really up to the task of expressing what I’m thinking about after seeing the film. My short, haphazard take on the film goes something like this: it’s endearing. Specifically, the kind of awkward-coming-of-age endearing you find in Taylor Swift film-clip, only Whip It comes without the puritanical undercurrent that usually causes me to froth at the mouth when encountering Swift’s oeuvre (and thus, Whip It comes closer to having actual substance). The film

PeterMBall 08/03/2010
Works in Progress

Chairman of the Bored

My process, an overview: start a new story; write eight hundred words; start another new story; write three hundred words; think “fuck, I really do need to finish a novel”; make revision notes for Black Candy; realise Black Candy is horribly flawed and wonder if starting a new novel will be easier; write a hundred words; hate them; write another hundred words; hate them too; pick up a finished novel and read the opening paragraph; think “the new novel I’m writing is complete pants. I’ll start a new one.”; write 100 words; delete one hundred words; work on black Candy; start a blog post about Whip It;  delete it; start a blog post about how much I hate writing; delete it; work on the second short-story I started; work on the first short-story I started; work on Black Candy; start a new novel; research boredom on Wikipedia; find the following quite comforting and accurate – Boredom has been defined by C.

PeterMBall 03/03/2010
Works in Progress

This Weeks Project

It took me most of February to get there, but I finally climbed back on the submission horse and sent out short stories last night. Night quite the February I’d planned for back at the beginning, but given the distractions of dead computers, illness, parental birthdays and toothaches I’m settling for getting 25% of the way towards my submission goal and carrying the rest over to the month of March. This week I’m getting even more basic and going for straight wordcount goals. Between now and the 7th of March I’m aiming at the following: In other news, the most excellent peep Jason Fischer is co-editing an upcoming issue of Midnight Echo and he’s looking for cross-genre SF/Horror works. And I’m almost out of coffee, so that’s it for me this morning.

PeterMBall 01/03/2010
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

‘Course, after this, I’m going in search of the Ramones…

Tonight, this song is the only thing between me and apathetic nihilism. Which kinda begs the question of what I used to do in the days before youtube. I suspect I just went straight to the Smiths CDs and drank.

PeterMBall 28/02/2010
Journal

Bleh

February has become the month we do not talk about, so I won’t. Embrace the mystery. What I will point out, somewhat belatedly, is the impressive scale of the recent Australian SF Snapshot which collected 90 or so interviews from members of the Australian Spec Fic scene (my interview would be over yonder). Now I’m going to go clean the house, answer two weeks of e-mail, and do my best to rejoin the rest of the human race by some point late this evening.

PeterMBall 26/02/2010
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.

PeterMBall 13/02/2010
Adventures in Lifestyle Hacking

One of the reasons I like the future

Being a single bloke who lives alone, I have a certain blindspot when it comes to shopping. Actually, I have several, but the one I speak of here primarily kicks in when browsing through the area marked “fruit and vegetables.”  I have my staples – there’s usually a spanish onion or two in the house, plus some potato and sweet potato if I’m splashing out- but I generally stick with a few vegetables and rarely touch the fruit at all. If ever there were a guy who steps forth to challenge the statement that “man cannot live on curry and pizza alone,” it’d probably be me. I’ve mostly arrived at this situation through habit, laziness, and the tendency towards belt-tightening when one lives alone and doesn’t get to share around the general costs of living. I’m also aware that it’s not a good state of affairs, especially since I’m taking the easy route of take-away food far more often than

PeterMBall 12/02/2010
Journal

Only Thursday

‘Tis a Thursday, today. Somehow this fact managed to elude me until I rocked up for the Friday launch of my friend Chris Lynch’s Tangled Bank anthology, which wasn’t on for obvious reason. I really shouldn’t be trusted to run my own schedule. That said, the momentary mortification hasn’t really done much to dilute the fact that this is a week of awesomeness among my friends. There’s Chris’s launch tomorrow, the official announcement that Angela Slatter will be doing a short-story anthology with Ticonderoga Publications, due for release at Wordcon in September, and we’re counting down the days until Jason Fischer’s zombie novella After the World: Gravesend hits newsagents on Monday. On top of this there was discounted ginger marmalade on sale at the grocery story today (score!), my laptop repaired and came in towards the lower end of the projected costs (double-score!), and I’ve managed to start watching a  TV series on DVD without spiraling into the twenty-four episode

PeterMBall 11/02/2010
Works in Progress

Don’t look at me, I didn’t buy him the eyeliner…

So last week I started working on a story about a man with a birdcage full or sparrows instead in of a heart and the question of what happens when you swap out the sparrows for something else. It ends badly (because it’s one of my stories and they almost always end badly), and there is heartbreak (’cause, again, I’m writing it…), and last night I finally hit the end of the draft and said “oh, well, that’s done.” It’s not a terribly good story yet, and may never be, but there is rewriting to correct that problem should I decide it has the seed of a good story in there. The important thing is that it’s done, because that’s how The Fear is combated – you crush it beneath the weight of endlessly finished drafts until it gives up and goes away. And because I was the model of writerly virtue yesterday, I’m going to go collect mail this morning.

PeterMBall 09/02/2010
Works in Progress

Spirit: willing

I got the writing moving again over the weekend. Not full, productive workdays where I get my 1,000 words down, but enough to feel like I’m actually doing something. Today’s list of things to do consists of words: words; e-mail; tracking down groceries. I will achieve all of these. Everything else is superfluous. This will not, of course, prevent me from wasting time on the internets. Current Project: Getting Back to Basics Number of Stories Submitted in February: 0 of 8 Rejections Accrued in 2010: 0 Consecutive Productive Writing Days: 0 Days without coke and other soft-drinks: 2 Days without chocolate: 5 Today the Spokesbear is: sleeping in.

PeterMBall 08/02/2010
Journal

Rumors of my absence may have been exagerated

It turns out that spending two-to-three weeks writing by hand just wasn’t on the list of things I was willing to do. Fortunately this roughly coincided with the realisation that I could pick up a very cheap desktop (to replace the machine that died last September) and write it off as a business expense. It’s not as ideal as no computer problems at all – I’ve spent the last two days uploading the various programs and back-up files onto the new machine rather than working – but it has fringe benefits (hello, photoshop. I’ve missed you). It’s a stinking hot, evil day outside my office so I’ve retreated into the air-conditioning with a pile of Primus CD and a large vat of coffee. The coffee because my sleep patterns are shot right now (going to bed at eleven, getting to sleep around 4 am). The Primus because I watched a lot of Robot Chicken in a row and it’s Les

PeterMBall 05/02/2010