Category: Status

There’s a work philosophy in Dan Charnas’ Work Clean which boils down to “slow down in order to speed up.” The mistakes you make by trying to get things done fast often end up costing you time in the long run, because things will end up needing to be redone or you’ll have to double-handle things somewhere along the way. It’s a good philosophy, and one that I’m thinking about a lot as I go back and fix the various mistakes of earlier this week, which include setting up print copies of a book using the wrong type of paper and needing to adjust all the cover layouts once we discovered the mistake. I’m also thinking about it with regard to rough drafts this week. February through March is typically the stretch of the year where my normal writing process stops working for a bit, since my ramshackle “make it up as I go along” approach tends to rely on

In March, I’m going to be a gust on the Pratchat: The Terry Pratchett Bookclub Podcast hosted by Ben McKenzie and Elizabeth Flux. Here’s some details from their recent announcement: For our March episode, we’re going where Pratchat has never gone before: into Pratchett’s nonfiction! Author, publisher and roleplayer Peter M. Ball joins us for a collection of Pratchett’s scribblings about genre, fandom and Neil Gaiman. The specific pieces are “Kevins”, “Wyrd Ideas”, “Let There Be Dragons” and “Notes From A Successful Fantasy Author”, plus “Neil Gaiman: Amazing Master Conjuror” and Neil’s foreword to the book in which all of these were collected, 2014’s A Slip of the Keyboard. You’ll find all of those (except the foreword) in the book’s first section, “A Scribbling Intruder”. Send us your questions about them via email to chat@pratchatpodcast.com, or on social media using the hashtag #Pratchat65. From the announcement for this month’s episode I have a lot of thoughts about this collection, and these entries in particular, as you might

We’re one week out from the release of Matthew R. Davis Bites Eyes over at Brain Jar Press, ergo this week is going to be a little more promo focused than others. There’s a bunch of Brain Jar projects in the hopper at the moment, slowly advancing as I figure out how to balance the various tasks now I’m back in a more-or-less freelance state. Matthew’s book excites me because it’s one of our first releases with an author I didn’t know personally when their work appeared in the submission queue. ON THE TO DO LIST TODAY PETER M. BALL INBOX: 33 BRAIN JAR INBOX: 23 BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 15 Very minimal movement on the email front this week, as I’m still trying to get back on top of things after being out for a week. Basically aiming to keep my head above water until I’ve cleared the backlog.

I didn’t feel sick for much of the last week, but my contact time with the keyboard dropped from 40+ hours a week to a little under 10. The week consisted of doing what needed to be done — getting my spouse to work, meeting with mentees who’d booked meetings — then collapsing in a heap and racking up an extra eight or nine hours of sleep. Odds are, I’d picked up some dread sleeping lurgy, although the RATs suggest it wasn’t the obvious culprit. Either way, I’m now behind on all the things and my Omnifocus list is screaming a daily alarm about balls dropped. NEW WORK The early reader version of the short story I’m Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf went live over on Patreon yesterday. Final version will appear in an issue of Eclectic Projects in the second half of the year. It’s a story inspired by the Mark of Cain’s cover of Degenerate Boy, made

NEW WORK Three things I love in science fiction: giant robots, punk rock teens, and hostile colony planets. So it’s probably no surprise my SF novelette, ONE LAST SEASON, combines all three. Maya is a technically gifted kid on the ice planet Javal, the daughter of a punk afficionado and a passionate terraforming activist. When Maya’s dad pawns the one thing her dead mother left her—a battered Fender Stratocaster worth thousands of credits—Maya’s only hope of getting it back is winning first price in Javal’s racing mecha racing circuit. It should be easy: Maya’s built her own mech out of spare parts and rewritten code, and her best friend Alex is one of the hottest mecha pilots on the planet. Pity Alex’s kleptocratic family has their own ideas about the races, and their friendship will be tested when they race their own high-end mech in this year’s circuit. Maya and her mech Cee-Bee-Gee-Bee might be good enough to beat any

It’s a season of change, in many ways. Two weeks ago, I lost my job, which began an immediate search for what comes next. Obviously, part of the answer is “writing” and “Brain Jar Press”, both of which got short shrift while I was dallying with full-time employment (for the first time) over the last twelve months. Neither writing nor publishing is enough to sustain us on its own, but it’s looking like I can assemble a Frankenstein’s Monster of a solution from various part-time and contract gigs that have come my way over the last few weeks. More recently, Elon Musk took over Twitter, which seems to have triggered a mass exodus of users and much thinking about what comes next. For all Twitter has been a pretty terrible place for the last few years, far less fun than it was in its heyday, it held traction as the one place where conversation spread in a way other social

LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. THE QUICK-AND-DIRTY NEWS Printers have shipped out first print run of Joanne Anderton’s Inanimates, which should arrive around mid-week. First COVID vaccination jab yesterday, which means I’m aching like hell today. I’m searching for a new day job, which has thrown life into chaos. Our cat had an emergency vet visit, which means… I’m open for freelance cover design gigs, and have a few pre-made covers for sale at a discount. CURRENT INBOX: 65 (Officially in drop everything and fix it phase, because anything over 30 usually means I’m ignoring important stuff that will come back to bite me later) WORKING ON Layouts and cover designs for a Corella Press project Writing so many selection criteria Edits and cover design for January and February releases from Brain Jar (currently behind because of cat drama) A very secret project I’ll talk more about in November. Writing a zombie-infested D&D fantasy novella which may or may not be terrible. Contracts,

LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. THE QUICK-AND-DIRTY NEWS Just launched the print editions of Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet. Preparing to launch pre-orders for a chapbook collection of microfiction from Sean Williams — stay tuned for details next week CURRENT INBOX: 38 (Gah!) WORKING ON Finishing Median Survival Time, a science fiction novella produced for my PhD thesis. Two chapters left to go on the current draft, and it’s an emotional project to finish. It was first derailed by my father’s death in March 2019, and there hasn’t been much “normal” time to get back on track since then. Final page proofs of the Exile print release, scheduled for the end of this month. Working the title development process for a series of fairy tale retellings Brian Jar Press will be releasing in 2022. Covers exist in rough form and rough layouts are progressing, which means I’m up to writing the cover synopsis for each. Catching up on

LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. THE QUICK-AND-DIRTY UPDATES Just finished up ten straight days of marking assignments, and I’m rebuilding my writing routines. Pivoting into a month of fairly intense deadlines—I’ll be slow to respond to emails, comments, and messages. My brain is full of pirates, comics, and space mercenaries. If you read 11 years of Warren Ellis blog posts in the space of ten days it’ll do weird things to your brain.   CURRENT INBOX: 14 (plus 4 outstanding emails I still really need to send) WORKING ON Editing Crusade (Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thriller #3) Finalising contracts that crashed into marking deadlines Writing a sci-fi novella for my thesis, Disposable Bodies. Drafting a short story in the Black Magic, Black Sails universe Thinking out loud with an ongoing series of blog posts about comic books and fiction publishing. Uploading the Brain Jar backlist to the BundleRabbit system and Google Books THINKING ABOUT Rebuilding daily routines and bringing my focus on short-term writing goals.

LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. RIGHT NOW I’M FEELING Pent up and restless, generating ideas faster than my writing process can keep up. About 55% of optimal. Satisfied that I’ve had more good writing days than bad over the last week. CURRENT INBOX: 11 (plus 3 outstanding emails I need to send) WORKING ON Hacking together a Now page system I can actually maintain. Writing a Black Sails, Black Magic novelette Drafting a serial about bunny head gunmen to run on the blog through the Pandemic lockdown. Editing Crusade (Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thriller #3) Recruiting established writers for a line of non-fiction chapbooks about writing Establishing online homes for Brian Jar Press as an entity seperate to Peter M. Ball Multiple sets of contracts that need to be finalised. Developing a new mindset around blogging and online engagement, designed to recapture some of the shit that’s gone missing since social media became the dominant appraoch. THINKING ABOUT Structuring a prose-based