Status

Status: 21 Feb 2023

PETERMBALL Status ,

My dad passed away in 2019. Today would have been his birthday. The stretch from Feb 21 to March 19, the anniversary of his death, is one of the rocky parts of my year. Started writing a new short story yesterday, tackling an idea I’ve wanted to write for nearly a decade now.

ON THE TO DO LIST TODAY

  1. Add 700+ words to my current work in progress
  2. Upload Eclectic Projects 002 to distributor sites.
  3. Edit the essay for Eclectic Projects 003 (holdover from yesterday).
  4. Deliver a mentee session this afternoon.
  5. Head off to dinner with the fam, who are similarly sad today.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 43

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 24

BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 15

Expect minimal movement on all of these this week.

CURRENTLY WATCHING: CARNIVAL ROW, SEASON TWO

Four years after season one, Amazon Prime has brought back their steampunk fey noir series Carnival Row to finish the story. It’s pretty much certain we’re not getting a third season at this stage, which makes me furious because it’s one of the more ambitious fantasy works on screen in terms of world building.

I didn’t expect to care about the show this much. The opening episodes of 2019’s first season weren’t the strongest, courtesy of their sheer amount of detail they were trying to put on the screen and other creative choices: the character names originally felt absurd; Orlando Bloom also felt like the oddest choice for the hard-as-nails, gravel-voiced police inspector who takes the role of central protagonist; the early episodes use gratuitous sex like they’re recreating the first season of Game of Thrones.

None of that suggested an ambitious world or story, but as they laid the story out and fleshed out the details, I find myself entranced by the little things and their resolute determination that viewers would keep up instead of having every little thing explained to them. They’ve definitely found their feet with the early episodes of season two, in all the right ways. Bloom’s Rycroft Philostrate has slowly, steadily nudged away all thoughts and memories of Legolas, and I do hope someone picks on the fact he can play a hard edged protagonist capable of visceral, physical violence after this.

Status: 20 Feb 2023

PETERMBALL Status

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

  1. Brainstorm and write 700+ words on a novelette for an upcoming Eclectic Projects issue.
  2. Enter the long-overdue copy edit notes on Eclectic Projects 002.
  3. Edit the essay for Eclectic Projects 003.
  4. Prep for this week’s mentee sessions.
  5. Deliver a mentee session this afternoon.

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.

Status: 19 Feb 2023

PETERMBALL Status

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 popular back in late nineties Australia when it appeared on the soundtrack of Idiot Box. I wrote a good chunk of this story back in 2009, left it to sit fallow for the rest of a decade, and wrote the second half while half-delirious from exhaustion this week, and it gets another file out of my seemingly endless folder of half-finished stories.

ON THE TO-DO LIST TODAY

  1. Head out to play in our weekly Pulp Cthulhu game!
  2. Write 700+ words on the next Eclectic Projects short story.
  3. Enter the long-overdue copy edit notes on Eclectic Projects 002.
  4. Edit the essay for Eclectic Projects 003.
  5. Run an overdue weekly review.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 35

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 23

BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 15

READING

Read R.F. Kuang’s The Poppy War this week, picked up on the strength of a seemingly endless stream of folks who post about it on Booktok and its presence as a Prime Read. It starts incredibly strong, but it the momentum seemed to flag as I hit the second act and I wasn’t sure if that was the writing, concentration issues stemming from this week’s ongoing exhaustion, or just a general ennui around 600 page epic fantasy volumes. I probably would have kept reading if the second book had been available as a Prime read download, but I wasn’t committed enough to buy the second book.

Started on Fonda Lee’s Jade City right after closing the file on Kuang’s book, and holy shit, it’s good.