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Eight Topics I’m Obsessed With At the Moment

The things I am most obsessed about tend to influence the content on this blog in strange ways. I never set out to blog about them specifically, but they colour every interaction I have with other people, and it is frequently a question or idea that someone else puts out there that sparks a moment of confluence and, lo, a blog post appears. With that in mind, I figured I’d put this out there: a list of the current obsessions that are guiding my work over the next few months. The list is constantly evolving – some are long-term obsessions that lie at the very heart of my identity, while others are brief flings – but they all shape my method of engaging with the world in strange ways. 1) ART AND COMMERCE We’ve spent centuries telling people that art isn’t commerce and that’s filtered down into every aspect of the way we talk about art, writing, and creativity. For someone who intermittently teaches writing, in addition to blogging about it, this presents an enormous problem: the amount of stuff you need to undo, before you can talk about smart ways of building a career in the arts, is incredibly large and deeply ingrained. 2) BUSINESS PLANS FOR WRITERS An obsession that works in concert with the first. One of the great things about the explosion of indie publishing on the internet is the rise of a group of writers who talk about the business of what they do. This occasionally gets

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20/11/2015 4 Comments
News & Upcoming Events

Released: The Flotsam Omnibus

Currently available from: Apocalypse Ink Productions | Amazon | DriveThruFiction Note: The hardback signed limited edition of this book is only available on the AIP website. AND NOW WE ARE DONE Four years ago, I wrote a web-serial for a small magazine. Two years ago, I started working on that story in novella form, rebuilding it brick by brick, dragging in all the lessons I learned from writing the serial. Today, I hit the end of the journey: The Flotsam Omnibus officially exists as a thing, compiling all three novellas in the series plus another two stories set in the same universe. There are demons, there are hit men, and there are things from behind space and time. And, because I could not help myself, there’s a spot of pro-wrestling in one of the stories. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that there’s a limited edition hard-cover of this thing (only available directly from the publisher) in addition to the usual trade paperback and ebook versions. I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that I wrote a trilogy, which wasn’t entirely intentional, but seems to have worked out okay. I do not have to wrap my head around the awesomness of Mark Ferrari’s cover, because I have been using it as a home screen for the last six months and it just keeps being awesome.  

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19/11/2015 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Give unto me your podcast recommendations

One of the things I really miss about living in the same city as my friend Allan? He’s exceptionally interested in things. All sorts of things. And he accumulates people and ideas and interests as naturally as most people breath, which means he’s often the infection vector for all sorts of interesting things. Case in point: It happened. I became a pod person. SPECIFICALLY: THE ALLUSIONIST PODCAST Al put this on over the weekend and initially I was…well, ambivalent. I have flirted with podcasts in the past, but I haven’t actually listened to one regularly since I was unemployed and stuck at home 24-7 way back in 2010. People would occasionally tell me about great stuff that was out there and I’d nod, and think perhaps I should check it out, and never really get around to it. But the weekend started with Allan pointing out all sorts of stuff he was listening too, and it all sounded great. Then he suggested an episode of the Allusionist as a starting point. It’s a podcast about language and etymology, which is kinda like catnip given my interests, and host Helen Zaltzman is phenomenally easy to listen to. I lasted exactly one episode before I was bugging Al about how he kept track of things, then broke down and loaded a podcast app onto the tablet so I can follow this and a handful of others. The Allusionist, though, it’s a series I’d recommend to any writer out there. I’m still working my way through the series,

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18/11/2015 10 Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

The Sleep Thing, Blogging, And Writing Without a Net

The sleep thing. The apnea. The bad habit my body has developed of asphyxiating me a couple of dozen times an hour, while my body drifts into a REM state. I’ve called it all sorts of things over the last nine months, but it always opens up a quiet moment of panic inside me. It lies at the heart of a very specific debate I have, regarding social media and being a writer. Because I do not know where the line is, when it comes to discussing it. It came up a few times, over the weekend, and figuring out when I’d crossed over into the territory where I’d become the guy banging on about something everyone else was done with got difficult even when the non-verbal queues were present. I do, after all, have a tendency to bang on about things when I’m trying to figure them out. Usually, long after everyone else is wishing I’d shut up. And that presents some issues when it comes to blogging. This post is…well, not necessarily soliciting feedback, but it’s definitely thinking out loud. A large chunk of my Melbourne trip was spent pondering the blog, and why I’m doing it, and what I’m hoping to achieve in 2016. The sleep thing is on my mind because I can’t quite pin down how it plays into my habit of talking about writing here. And, oh hell, is it on my mind a lot. I’m still trying to figure it out. For me,

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17/11/2015 4 Comments
Journal

All The Things That Excite Me This Week

This is going to be a lazy week on the writing front. For one thing, today is my last day in Melbourne. I have caught up with friends and played a good number of board games and guest-starred as Ronan the Accuser in Patrick O’Duffy’s Annihilation campaign, which means I’m still running on the endorphin high of rolling a shitload of d12s and wielding the Universal Weapon in defence of the cosmos. Later today, there will be a flight home. A few hours sleep. Then: a return to the day job.. For another thing, The Flotsam Omnibus gets released in two days. Pre-orders for the ebook version are already live, if you’re the kind of personality who absolutely cannot wait. You can pay for that bad-boy now and it will be automatically delivered to the reading device of your choice on release. Fuck people who complain about the lack of jet packs and flying cars. The future is doing just fine, for my money. But my week gets kind of wonky when I have a new book out. I get…interested. Hungry for data. And so I will be obsessively googling my name in see if people are buying it and how they like the extra stories and where it falls on the Amazon rankings and, shit, just generally just feeding the neediest, ugliest part of my writer ego. I will also be updating the publications page on the site, since it’s at least a year out of date. This…embarrasses me.

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16/11/2015 No Comments
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Here In Melbourne

I am in another city. Theoretically, on holidays, but in practice not so much. I’ll be spending today with Kevin Powe discussing the stuff that needs doing on the Altered project. We’ll spend a bunch of time talking shop, ’cause that’s what tends to happen when Kevin and I get together. He’s spent the past few years building up a great reputation as a Voice Actor, and it’s always fascinating to hear about the way things have progressed for him. I’ll spend the rest of my time hanging out with my friend Allan, who moved to Melbourne and quickly swapped careers from carpentry to producing high-end props for cosplayers and fans of all things geek. And again, I imagine we’ll talk shop at some point. I can’t even begin to conceptualise how Allan does what he does – my relationship with tools is rather like my relationship with being handed a live snake – but I can recognise the feelings associated with making your living in a creative space and there is always something to be learned when discussing the business issues that come with being in a creative field. I like talking to creative people. I like talking about their process. Some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned, as a writer, come from paying attention to the way artists and actors and, hell, even pro-wrestlers, talk about their experiences and their art. I like talking about the way they handle their business, too, ’cause this is not a conversation you can

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13/11/2015 1 Comment
News & Upcoming Events

One Hardcover, With Bonus Feline

The limited edition Flotsam Omnibus hardcovers are officially a thing that exists in the world. Apocalypse Ink posted an image of them on the twitters, complete with bonus cat: The limited edition hardback of THE FLOTSAM Trilogy by @Petermball has arrived and it’s gorgeous! pic.twitter.com/9qHDTyYDf0 — Apocalypse Ink (@ApocalypseInk) November 11, 2015 Release date is November 18, which is so tantalizingly close, people. If you need me, I’ll be over here, wiping the drool off my chin. And feeling the sting of shame that comes from finally posting cat pics to my blog in a blatant attempt to pander to the internet…

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12/11/2015 No Comments
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Humor, Intimacy, and Master of None

I’m jumping on a plane to Melbourne later today, so today’s post is short and sweet.If you’ve got netflix, then do this one thing. Go Watch Master of None. I’ll admit, I started off kinda eh on the show. The first episode was good, but it didn’t have that zing that made me want to sit and mainline the entire series in one go. Disappointing, ‘cause Aziz Ansari is smart and funny, and I had some high hopes, but…yeah. No biggie. There’s no shortage of stuff on Netflix. Except, at this point, I’ve mainlined so much stuff on Netflix that the stuff that the obvious choices have basically been winnowed down to a handful of options. So, a little over twenty-four hours later, I fired up the second episode and… Yeah. There it was. The zing. Except it quickly moved beyond that. It moved into the terrain I refer to as Holy Fuck. Screw the zing – this show is so damn good it doesn’t need it. Master of None quietly goes about making big points without making a big deal about it, quietly slipping in incredibly smart jokes when you’re not paying attention. In fact, it does the thing that smart comedy absolutely needs: it trusts you to get it. When it develops big, meta jokes, it absolutely trusts you to get them and completely fails to give a shit if you don’t. This is incredibly rare, when it comes to sit-coms. The last time I saw something like it

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12/11/2015 No Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

The End of the Notebook Experiment

Last week I set aside my first draft notebooks and fired up my writing computer for the first time in two months, kicking off the first chapter of a project that’s living in my head as Untitled Space-Bro! Space-Marine Novel for about two years now. I’ll be honest: this surprised me. I was pretty sure I’d given my heart to notebooks, promised myself to them for the foreseeable future. There was something innately pleasurable about the process of opening up a blank page and scribbling in it with pen. I adored the portability of the notebooks, the fact that I could head off and write while tramping around the streets of Brisbane. Instead, I’m sitting them aside. Because I am fickle and heartless. And because a few things changed my mind. ONE: I CRUNCHED SOME DATA I often get irritated when writers use the word experiment to describe their approach to an aspect of the craft/business of writing. Too often it’s used to imply I just want to try this thing without putting too much thought into it, rather than I’ve got a hypothesis based on existing data that I’d like to test in a somewhat rigorous manner. I went into the notebook experiment with a hypothesis I intended to test, based on experiences to that point: that I would probably end up writing more, using notebooks, than I would with a computer. The first month was good. The second month, leading into GenreCon…well, when I actually sat down and

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11/11/2015 1 Comment
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

Focus on the Mountain, Not the Map

So Neil Gaiman has this speech, a keynote address he delivered in 2012. You may be familiar with it – almost everyone is, at this stage of the internet, ‘cause that shit has been linked to and reprinted more times than the goddamn bible at this stage of its career. Peeps will repeat the words Make Good Art like a goddamn mantra. I don’t mind that. As mantra goes, make good art is pretty bloody aces. But for my money, the most valuable part of the speech isn’t the bits that get repeated over and over. It’s not the catchy phrases about making good art when your cat dies or your wife leaves you It’s not the sequence where he lays out his beliefs that there are no rules in art, which creative types lap up like the fun-loving anarchist spirits we all want to be. The most valuable part of the speech is this: Sometimes the way to do what you hope to do will be clear cut, and sometimes  it will be almost impossible to decide whether or not you are doing the correct thing, because you’ll have to balance your goals and hopes with feeding yourself, paying debts, finding work, settling for what you can get. Something that worked for me was imagining that where I wanted to be – an author, primarily of fiction, making good books, making good comics and supporting myself through my words – was a mountain. A distant mountain. My goal. And

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10/11/2015 7 Comments
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Holy Crap Balls, This Is Incredible

INCREDIBLE THING 1: ANGELA SLATTER WON A MOTHER-FUCKING WORLD FANTASY AWARD Technically not incredible, by the strictest of definitions, as anyone who is surprised by Angela Slatter winning major awards hasn’t been paying attention for the last few years. But she’s also one of the hardest working writers I know, hustles like a champion, and writes brilliant books. One of them, The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings, just took home the World Fantasy Award for Best Collection. I am, officially, as disappointed as it is possible to be that I wasn’t able to make it to World Fantasy this year. It’s a weird thing when friends get news this good and you’re not able to immediate communicate the feeling of holy fuck, you’re awesome, congratulations. INCREDIBLE THING 2: DAVID WITTEVEEN’S GENRECON RECAP I know, I know, I said I was done with GenreCon posts. But David Witteveen put together the STORIFY OF DOOM tracking his tweets over the GenreCon weekend and it is brilliant. He’s got great sound-bytes and take-away moments from every panel he attended, along with a series of photographs from across the weekend. Well worth a read, if you’re interested in seeing what GenreCon’s all about. And David is well worth following, if you’re a newer writer interested in seeing what good post-con follow-up looks like when you’re developing a network. ‘Cause, from what I’ve seen, he’s been absolutely killing it.

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09/11/2015 1 Comment
News & Upcoming Events

An Addendum To Yesterday’s Post

Two quick addendum’s to yesterday’s post. ONE: NEW STORY AT DAILY SF My latest story, The Place Beyond the Brambles, deals with bees and mysteries and missing love, and it just went live over on the Daily Science Fiction website. When last I saw you, my sweet, my love, you were shrunk to the size of Grandma’s thimble and plucked from the porch by the bees of the forest. We heard your cries, your wild shrieks of delight, as they carried you to the place beyond the southern brambles. Listened, after, to the silence that followed, to the empty fields and the dark shadows beneath the trees where no bee remained to hum its evening song. You’ve been gone now a five-month, and grandma does not remember you, nor does Jordy or Cousin Ferdinand or our dear, sweet Claudette. Whatever magic was used to shrink you, to make your final exit possible, has stolen your memories from those you once deemed close as family. I don’t write many short stories as I once did, so if you’ve been hanging out for a new, bite-sized piece of fiction from yours truly, get yourself over to the Daily SF. TWO: BEST OF APEX MAGAZINE, VOLUME 1 Apex have just announced the table of contents for the first volume of the Best of Apex Magazine, collecting the best stories from the first 79 issues of the magazine. It’s a pretty phenomenal listing, all things considered, with one last story due to be included

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07/11/2015 No Comments

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