News & Upcoming Events

The latest news regarding my writing, work with the Australian Writer’s Marketplace, and any upcoming events or workshops I’m involved in.

I drink from the keg of glory

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events

A year ago, around Xmas time, I released Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor and Black Dog: A Biography as reader magnets for Brain Jar Press.

For those not immersed in indie pub terminology, reader magnet is short-hand for books/stories I give away for free, so as to entice readers into paying for other work/signing up for your newsletter. Nick Stephenson has an entire book about the strategy which you can download for free (and I’ll let you put two and two together about the reasons behind his choice).

The two stories have served me well since then—Hornets Attack, in particular, has picked up a couple of hundred downloads on various sites—but Amazon has been a sticking point. Unlike every other site, the big river isn’t a fan of letting you upload a book and making it free straight off.

They are willing to price-match with other stores, if a book is available for free elsewhere, but it’s at their discretion and you largely have to ask for it to happen. For a long while, that wasn’t happening with the two stories above. I’d point an suggest bringing the Amazon price in line with everyone else, and they wouldn’t budge. Not a big deal, but it made for an awkwardness—it’s hard to do a “hey, free stories!” post when you have to add a caveat about Amazon being the exception.

Fortunately, the latest request seems to have paid off (or the ‘zon’s price-match algorithm finally seems to have kicked in). After a year, both stories are now, finally, available for free via Amazon stores and apps.

To borrow a quote or two from the West Wing:

Josh Lyman: Victory is mine, victory is mine. Great day in the morning, people, victory is mine.

Donna Moss: Morning, Josh.

Josh Lyman: I drink from the keg of glory, Donna. Bring me the finest muffins and bagels in all the land.

Donna Moss: It’s going to be an unbearable day.

EXILE pre-orders!

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events ,

And lo, my urban fantasy thrillers about an occult hit-man running home to the Gold Coast in order to duck the start of Ragnarok will hit digital shelves once more in January 2020.

Keith Murphy is back, yo, in a shiny new edition you can pre-order now.

Keith Murphy’s coming home to a city full of demons. What’s following on his heels is much worse. 

Ever since he left the Gold Coast, Keith Murphy’s been the triggerman for the sorcerer-assassin Danny Roark. Then they screwed up a job and all hell broke loose, unleashing a vengeful cult of necromancers eager to take down the hit man who gunned down their leader and reclaim their master’s soul from the bullet around Keith’s neck. Roark was already running when Keith made it the rendezvous, and the old man left Keith three simple instructions: go home, lie low, and wait for me to call.

Easier said than done.

The Gold Coast is full of old friends and even older enemies, and nobody is happy to see Keith back on his old turf. He’s got to cut a deal with the local demons and survive an ex-girlfriend who turned to the dark side, all while trying to duck the agents of the Raven Cult using magic to track Keith down and cut off his head.

Roark’s always handled the weird stuff, leaving Keith to focus on guns and tactics. Now the old man’s gone and Keith’s running solo—and he’s got to figure out how to use what he knows to survive the hell that’s coming.

If you ever wanted to see Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or Max Allan Collins’ Quarry taking on demons, sorcerers, and magic, you won’t be able to put down the Keith Murphy series.

Ebook available for preorder from Amazon (AUS | US | UK); paperbacks will be added on Release Day, January 29.

Longtime readers will remember the first release of Exile, which came out through Apocalypse Ink Press back in 2014 and built upon a project originally written for the Edge of Propinquity ‘zine. I had a ton of fun revisiting the project and doing little tweaks, in addition to refining the branding to focus on some of the non-fantasy influences. In my head, this series was always Quarry meets Harry Dresden, or John Wick crossed with Constantine.

The second book in the original Flotsam cycle, Frost, is scheduled for release in February 2020, with the final book, Crusade, following in March.

OUT NOW: One Last First Date Before The End Of The World

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events ,

What do you do when your date tells you Ragnarök starts next Tuesday?

Logan expected his date with Stina Lorne to be a disaster, quickly ending after dinner when they acknowledged she was out of his league. Instead they went for a long drive, then a walk along a familiar beach. In fact, everything seems to be going better than Logan could have imagined when he asked her out last week.

Sure, his date is convinced she’s the descendant of Fenrir, demon wolf of Asgard. And yeah, she’s talking about the apocalypse kicking off in the near future. Logan’s not sure that matters, yeah? After all, nobody’s perfect, and even the best relationships take work.

One Last First Date Before The End Of The World is the fourth release in the Short Fiction Lab series from Brain Jar Press. This experiment has been filed under: mythic fantasy, first dates, the day before the apocalypse, and slipstream romance stories.  

Available now in Kindle (Aus | UK | USA), Kobo, and other great bookstores.

This release is on sale for the remainder of the week, giving you the opportunity to pick it up for 99 cents US. Come Sunday, it’ll be joining the rest of the Short Fiction Lab line at $2.99.

And with that, I’m off to drink coffee and write new words.