Category: Journal
Journal

Still Alive

Today was a very good day. I didn’t really sleep a lot last night, because today was also my first day at the new dayjob, and that’s the kind of thing that makes me restless and afflicted with the kind of nervous insomnia that means you sleep without really sleeping. I rose before seven AM for the first time in a week, shaved off the remnants of my most-unmanly-neckbeard, got dressed in an outfit that did not involve ties or dress pants, then caught an early train into the Cultural Precinct on the Brisbane River. I arrived far earlier than I needed to, so I stopped at the cafe beneath the State Library and drank coffee while reading and idling away the spare half-hour. All in all, this proved to be a remarkably pleasant and civilized way to start the working day. Then, around nine o’clock, I went and started work (I’m still struggling with that, really. Having a good

PeterMBall 28/06/2011
Journal

I’m out of the blogging habit…

So: 1) I quit the dreaded dayjob and worked out my notice. I was officially done at 1:30 last Friday, and that moment has been one of the better moments of my year. I would say no words can describe how much I disliked that job, but that would be a patent lie. Of course words can describe it; describing things with words is what I do, after all. Unfortunately the words I’d use to describe the experience aren’t particularly useful in polite company, or fair to the company in question who were more frustrating to deal with than maliciously determined to make my life miserable, so I elect to say nothing in public. 2) I am behind on email. Well, behind on everything really – you should see the state of my kitchen – but email and blogging are my default means of communicating with the world, and so it’s usually worth mentioning when I’m behind on such things

PeterMBall 21/06/2011
Journal

Two things, with a final statement (Actually, three things, I’m just forgetful)

Yesterday I went to the PO Box and discovered three copies of the latest One Book, Many Brisbanes anthologies waiting for me. Naturally, my first response was sweet, free books, cause books that arrive in my PO Box are always free books by virtue of the fact that I’ve already paid for them and forgotten about it. It’s one of the more pleasant aspects of ordering books via the internet, especially if you have the same inclinations towards pre-ordering things that I do. Except this time they actually were free books, I think, presumably because I was tangentially involved in the workshop put on for the finalists in the One Book, Many Brisbane’s competition, where, basically, I showed up and talked about writing for an hour or so with Cat Sparks and an editor for Overland whose name currently eludes me Every now and then writers like to talk about how writing is a remarkably poor career choice, or at

PeterMBall 03/06/2011
Journal

So it appears this is one of those weeks where I have very little worth saying, which naturally results in spending less time online saying things. Instead I have been marking student assignments for the UQ dayjob, which is sadly reaching its end after tonight’s class and tomorrow’s class are done with, leaving me with nothing but the marking on the student’s final assignments. I suspect I will continue to be quiet for the next week or two for marking eats time like no-ones business (both the actual activity of marking and the procrastination as you try to avoid it). # On the topic of things that are not marking-related, I recommend checking out the Conquilt currently being auctioned as a fundraiser for the  Continuum SF Convention in Melbourne. I’m not sure I can really explain the Conquilt in sufficient detail to capture it’s awesomeness, since descriptions largely come down to “it’s a quilt made up of fabric signed by writers

PeterMBall 02/06/2011
Journal

Monday Morning: A Summary

Today I’m doing that thing where I stare without really looking at things, and it’s entirely possible that there are portions of my brain that have dozed off figuring that the rest of my brain will pick up the slack. Unfortunately no-one told the rest of my brain that, so I’m focusing on things in very short bursts, for as long as my concentration holds, and then I go back to whatever I’m doing when I’m staring into space. Which is mostly thinking about going back to bed or daydreaming about lunch.

PeterMBall 30/05/2011
Journal

Walking and Book Buying and Peanut Butter & Sweet Potato Soup

Yesterday I caught a train out to West End, walked to my friendly local independent bookstore, unexpected caught up with Trent Jamieson while he was working there, bought a copy of the new Michael Cunningham novel alongside a few other books (Hell’s Angels, A Fairwell to Arms), walked from West End to Anzac Square Arcade in Brisbane city, bought more books from Pulp Fiction – my favourite bookstore in the world, bar none – and then caught a train home whereupon I collapsed on the couch and watched old episodes of NCIS until I fell asleep. And really, that was yesterday, and we call it a win. Exercise and books are an unbeatable combination. ‘Course today I’ll be dead on my feet at the dayjobs, forcing myself to stay awake, but these are small problems and entirely worth it. # My friend Laura Goodin is an American ex-pat living out in the Australian wilderness (well, Woolongong), writing stories and plays and, if I

PeterMBall 26/05/2011
Journal

Tenters & Zucchini & Reasons to Shop for Books This Afternoon

This morning I went to start the blog with the phrase “waiting on tenterhooks,” which is one of those expressions that’s been around for a while without me ever really understanding where it actually came from. And so there was google, and this rather succinct discussion of the phrase where I discovered the tenterhook was a series of hooks on a wooden frame used in  making woolen cloth, specifically in the bit where the  freshly woven  fabric was stretched out to dry after being cleaned in a fulling mill. The tenter was the frame and the hooks went around the outside, and it had the side-effect of straightening the weave. We’re not much with the tenters these days, but I found myself looking at the description and though, well, yes, life feels exactly like that at the moment. There have been doings and goings-on in regards to dayjobbery and we have hit the bit where I wait, quietly, filling in the hours

PeterMBall 25/05/2011
Journal

Still in Sleep Zombie Mode

Say Zucchini, and Mean It went out to Daily SF subscribers yesterday, which generally means it’ll be up on their website for the rest of the world to see some time tomorrow. There’s some comments over on wall of the Daily SF fanpage in facebookland, which seem to indicate people have enjoyed the story. Some people seem to enjoy the title too, which makes me glad since I once contemplated changing the title, and I can now be somewhat pleased with myself that I did not succumb to the temptation. # Day two of the random insomnia, which Wikipedia tells me is actually Transient Insomnia, which is the kind of thing that amuses me in my current state of sleep deprivation. It makes me think that soon my insomnia will wander off and become someone else’s insomnia, which isn’t really pleasant for them, but at least we’re sharing and neither of us has to put up with it full-time. Last

PeterMBall 18/05/2011
Journal

Posts of a Random Sleep-Zombie

Very random attack of insomnia last night, especially since there wasn’t any of the usual triggers that set off my sleeplessness. In the old days I used to welcome such things, since I could just wander off and do other things and sleep in the day afterwards, but I am now a working man with a dayjob that starts in the wee hours, and insomnia has become a thing that I no longer care fore. Things I should post about today, and would do so in more detail were I not yawning: – Jason Fischer’s short story collection, Everything is a Graveyard, scheduled for release by Ticonderoga Publications in October 2013. The collection’s slated to revolve around Jason’s post-apocalyptic and zombie-themed work, which is the kind of news that makes me extremely happy, if only because it’d be damn handy to have all those stories in the one place. – The May issue of the Edge of Propinquity is up,

PeterMBall 17/05/2011
Journal

Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun

It’s Monday morning here, but due to the vagaries of international timezones I suspect there will not be much of Monday left by the time Say Zucchini, and Mean It arrives in my in-box. Such are the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world, I suspect. Tonight I shall make the most un-Moroccan Moroccan chicken imaginable, given that it will consist primarily of pumpkin soup with chickpeas and bits of chicken in it, spread over a layer of couscous. The couscous, by and large, is probably going to be the best bit. Possibly also the only bit that qualifies as Moroccan. It will, at least, be healthy un-Moroccan chicken, if the Australian Heart Foundation website is to be believed, and that’s probably a good thing after the week of pizza that occurred when I was last chasing a deadline. # There’s a rather nice review of both Horn and Bleed over on the Living in SIN blog,

PeterMBall 16/05/2011
Journal

Saturday Morning

It’s been a cold morning here. I pulled a spare blanket onto the bed last night and woke up this morning feeling toasty warm and, more importantly, not several hours earlier than my alarm. The latter has happened a few times this week, and I suspect that I’ve found the culprit. I rather enjoy sleeping in a warm bed, but that requires the bed staying warm and temperatures in my flat tend to shift several degrees over the course of a few hours. It’s been a pleasurable kind of Saturday. Last night I ducked out to do some late night laundry, getting home on the cusp of midnight, and this morning I finished reading Dreams Underfood Underfoot before getting up and eating breakfast and drinking too much coffee while skyping friends I don’t really get to talk too often enough. We spoke of books and writing and hopping vampires and eventually got onto the topic of Eurovision, which only one of us

PeterMBall 14/05/2011
Journal

So yesterday there was dayjobbery and tutoring and writing, oh my, with a side of doing the page proofs for Say Zucchini, and Mean It so I can mail them back to the folks at Daily SF and fix the various muddle-headed things I’ve done in the story. Usually there’s something painful about the proofing process, mixing, as it does,   a multitude of how-could-I-be-so-stupid typos and syntax errors with the larger, more consuming fear that the story itself isn’t any good because so-much-time-has-passed-since-you-submitted-it-and-you’ve-become-a-better-writer-than-you-were-and-would-do-things-so-very-differently-now. The latter part didn’t really happen this time around. I’m still fond the story and think it does all the things I wanted it to do, and the bits I’d do differently I probably wouldn’t do that much better, so they don’t bother me quite so much. I’m not sure whether this bodes ill for the story or not, once it’s out in the world, but I guess we’ll see next week when it’s sent out

PeterMBall 13/05/2011