News & Upcoming Events Archives - Page 9 of 45

SHORT FICTION LAB #4 Preorders Live

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events August 12, 2019

Preorders for One Last First Date Before The End of the World are now live on the usual retail sites, and its on sale at the shiny, dedicated fan price of .99 cents (US) for the next thirty days.

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—home to stand-alone short story experiments in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and fabulist literature. This experiment has been filed under: mythic fantasy, first dates, the day before the apocalypse, and slipstream romance stories.

Pre-Order your story from Amazon, Kobo, or Apple Books to get it delivered automatically on August 31.

#15, Woo! Or, The Last Day to Pick Up Short Fiction Lab #3 on Sale

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events August 8, 2019

I may be an Australian writer, but my sales here in Australia are usually on the low side compared to other parts of the world. Which is why I was surprised when I logged on to Amazon.com.au this morning and saw the current rankings for A White Cross Beside a Lonely Road:

Of course, Amazon rankings are transitory and mysterious, unlikely to stick unless sales are consistent and other things come together in the dark depths of Bezos’ sales portal. In fact, I’ve slipped down a spot in the time it’s taken to write this blog post because the last sale was a few hours back. Still, look, here I am at number 16 and in some pretty good company on the Australian sites’ ghost story rankings.

The ranks may be mysterious and transitory, but here’s a good rule of thumb in writing: if you wake up one morning and your short story is sitting in between Bird Box and The Exorcist on any kind of best-seller list, you take the ego boost and roll with it.

Then, of course, you move on to writing the next thing.

A White Cross Beside a Lonely Road is on sale until midnight tonight, after which it will go from the early bird fan pricing of .99 cents Us ($1.29 for Australians) to the normal $2.99 price tag for Short Fiction Lab releases.

If you’re up for helping me achieve a little local Ghost Story supremacy, and maybe tip it into the top ten, you could go pick up a copy on the cheap at the Australian Amazon Store some time before the sale ends.

Release Day: A White Cross Beside a Lonely Road (Short Fiction Lab #3)

PETERMBALL News & Upcoming Events August 1, 2019

A ten-hour drive, a relationship on the rocks, and a ghost waiting for company on a lonely stretch of road.

The last thing Alex wants is a trip home with his boyfriend in tow, but when Brendan insists on coming there’s nothing for it but a ten hour drive and the dread of what might happen when they reach their destination.

There is nothing about the idea of being trapped in car with his lover that Alex is looking forward too, but a haunted stretch of lonely road is about to make him question everything he knows about his relationship and his life.

A White Cross Beside A Lonely Road is the third short story in the Short Fiction Lab series from Brain Jar Press—home to stand-alone short story experiments in fantasy, science fiction, horror, and fabulist literature. This experiment has been filed under: ghost stories, outback fantasy, supernatural encounters, and Australian weirdness.

The third Short Fiction Lab release is now out in the world, and available from the usual suspects via this handy Books2Read Link: books2read.com/u/47EM6E

The story will be on sale for .99 cents US until August 8th, so I’d encourage you to pick it up early.

This is very much a story built out of two writing workshops. I wrote the first draft back in 2007, while I was at Clarion South. At the time it was a relatively straightforward ghost story about isolated roads, relationships going wrong, and taking corners too fast. It worked okay, but it never really felt like it had something to say beyond “look, ghost! Spooky!”

Twelve years later I signed up for Neil Gaiman’s Masterclass online, and figured this would be a good story to use as a test-run for the exercises in his story development class. After twelve years of tinkering with what happened in the story and how it was told, I put my focus back on what it was actually about, which turned out to be less about ghosts and more about expectations, “adulting,” and being trapped between two worlds.

If you pick up the story and enjoy it, you could do me a huge favour by leaving some stars or a review on the platform of your choice.

And now I’m off to work on the next Short Fiction Lab #4, so I can get this series back on track.