News & Upcoming Events Archives - Page 4 of 45

Brain Jar News: Little Labyrinth Pre-Orders

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events September 14, 2021Brain Jar Press, Brain Jar Releases

WE’RE BACK, BABY!

Brain Jar Press has been quiet for a few months now, courtesy of some ill-timed computer issues back in May that turned into ill-timed internet issues in June (publishing is weird – the problems of May don’t manifest until August, at the earliest). But now? Guess what?

We’re BACK with a new book from SEAN FRICKEN’ WILLIAMS that you can go PRE-ORDER!

Here’s the pitch:

Matter transporters, dead worlds, and ghostly encounters. Parallel worlds, time-travel, and dangers that lurk in the shadows.
Little Labyrinths brings together 17 vignettes and microfictions from one of Australia’s premier authors of science fiction and fantasy. Collected together for the first time, these brief tales and startling asides cover territory that is playful, experimental, and infused with speculative wonder. Once dubbed Australia’s Lord of Genre Fiction, Williams’ work will remind you of the strange, exciting, and mysterious pleasures that come from losing yourself in the smallest stories.

The really interesting thing about editing this book was the way it contrasted with our first microfiction collection, Angela Slatter’s Red New Day. Both books share an interest in getting in and delivering a series of kick-ass stories in under a thousand words, but Angela typically uses the format as a gateway to terrify. The stories are as much about what’s not said, and the looming threat of the larger story waiting to swoop in and destroy lives, as it is about what’s on the page.

In contrast, Sean usually takes a familiar genre trope and plays with it, dismantling the exterior to show you the engine underneath and how it could be used to fire off in a different direction (I would say it’s the place where a man whose written 50 novels shows up to have fun and experiment a little, but Sean’s never been afraid of trying new genres or pulling of feats like writing an entire novel where a character speaks in Gary Numan lyrics).

Now Shipping: Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events September 2, 2021

Brain Jar Press is now shipping print editions of my short story collection, Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet. The book contains twelve science fiction stories, including my sci-fi dragon western Dying Young and the Aurealis Award winning cyberpunk fairytale Clockwork, Patchwork, and Raven. It also features two stories, 52 Pick-Up and and Inside An Egg, Inside A Duck, that are original to the collection.

Customers who pre-ordered already have their books. Copies have been showing up on Twitter.

This wonder arrived this afternoon. Thank you @BrainJarPress snd @Petermball pic.twitter.com/Q08xzSgEJj
— Trent Jamieson (@trentonomicon) August 25, 2021

Some books are events — launched and celebrated, pushed hard to find their readership — but increasingly I fall back on the default of making books available. The launch is a product of an older sales environment, where you needed all the attention on a book right now, before the sales window closed and a mass of new releases swept yours off the shelf.

Launches are fun, and they celebrate the author, but increasingly a writer’s career will be built out a deep backlist of releases that can sell over time. Very few of my books sell a huge number on the week they’re released, but most of them sell steadily over a number of years. Not Quite The End Of the World Just Yet has been ticking along in ebook since 2018, quietly becoming one of Brain Jar’s best-selling titles in the handful of formats it was available.

The print edition has less “new book” energy because of that, because it’s mostly a new option and format.

Not Quite The End Of The World is available now in Print and Ebook via Brain Jar Press or Your Favourite Bookstore

Lockdown Projects

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events August 5, 2021

Over the weekend Brisbane became the third Australian state capital to lock down because of a Delta-variation outbreak of Covid-19, and we’ve already hit our first extension because the contact tracing did not go well. Some folks are cheerfully making plans for after the current deadline expires, while others are merrily settling in for a much longer wait before things open up again.

Not that a lockdown means much when you’re running a publishing company from your couch. I’ve rescheduled a bunch of important-but-not-urgent meetings, and tried to think of ways I could turn the lockdown into an opportunity. Weeks like this are typically bad times to be announcing and releasing new books — any time attention is on the news, I’ve struggled to move the needle on sales — but that means it’s a great time to be working on some “when I get time for it” projects.

Such as, for example, the print release of Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet.

The USA has technically had a print version of this for a year or two now, albeit one that was only available through Amazon’s print on demand service. That print version has — inexplicably — outsold the ebook edition by considerable quantity, and was probably the profitable book I’ve ever done until Brain Jar 2.0 unleashed a bunch of new Angela Slatter titles unto the world.

This is a new edition, though. I’ve cleaned up a few things, re-done the layout, and played with the cover a little. Not enough that you’d be getting anything new if you’ve already bought a copy, but it’s definitely the prettier edition compared to the Amazon one.

The official release date is set for August 30 if you order it through most bookstores, but you can get it discounted (and possibly early, COVID shipping willing) if you order direct from Brian Jar Press this month.

Order From Brain Jar

An interesting side-effect of the latest lockdowns and turmoils seems to be the resurgence of blogs as proper blogs again, with various writers and editors I followed in days of old posting journal entries and random thoughts for the first time in years. Many of them are citing a frustration with social media and a desire for more control over the spaces in which they engage as the reason, and I can see the logic behind their choice. It does my heart good to see the equivalent of short missives from friends and colleagues every time I log into my RSS reader (and it is, surprisingly, a damn good reason to check my RSS feed instead of Facebook. Half the reason I signed up to the book of face in the first place was because it made following people’s blogs a little easier… and they’ve removed that function a few years back, and it’s been less fun ever since).

There’s some interesting rumbles that Google may bring back an easy RSS reader in future editions of Chrome, which would be a welcome return. I’d like to see a little blog renaissance somewhere down the line, and there’s something to be said for a service that just shows you the things you’ve subscribed too, in the order they were posted, without messing with your timeline or weighting everything according to what they think you’ll engage with.