Writing advice is never a one-size-fits-all thing. Context and philosophy is everything, yet there’s a tendency for both the givers and receivers of advice to assume a bon mot of wisdom applies without questioning the resources, genre, goals, and ideology behind it. I’ve built a career out of helping writers figure out their craft and […]
I’m currently writing a short essay on TikTok and Instagram Reels for my Patreon, which has meant I’m playing around with both platforms. I’m over at @PeterMBall on both, having a bit of fun and talking about books/writing, but I did want to share one creation here because… well, cat. And it amuses me way […]
The narrative poetics of comic books are driven by the stories relationship with the physical page. Everything must be in a particular page-count, with each scene allotted a certain number of panels and pages, and certain narrative beats work better at the bottom right of a two-page spread just before we flip the page. Prose […]
Yesterday Brain Jar Press released the sixth Writer Chap, Headstrong Girl, from the powerhouse of Australian genre, Kim Wilkins (aka Kimberly Freeman). It brings a close to season one, which was a test case for what seemed like an improbable and weird idea back in the middle of 20202. But this isn’t a pitch for […]
While the traditional side of the publishing industry is bracing itself for disruptions in the supply chain, the conversation over on the indie publishing side is all about how to prepare for the coming email marketing apocalypse. For those who don’t pay attention to such things, the low-down goes something like this: Apple has been […]
I recently opened the “unfinished drafts” section of my blog and discovered that I had 52 unfinished posts in various states of completion. Some of these resulted from dumping a quick idea using the WordPress app on my phone, little more than three of four words to be fleshed out later. Some are just a […]
So I’ve started publishing books again, after an unintentional hiatus. The weirdest thing about publishing is this: you don’t pay for your mistakes in real-time. Stopped writing because of a serious illness? The books and stories you’ve already sold will keep appearing for another six months to two years, after which there will be a […]
Greetings, Lost and Lonely Blog Readers. It has, as they say, been a while. It’s the curse of having a lingering affection for an older, largely superceded form of online communication, plus the sheer pant-shitting terror of trying to launch a successful publishing company in the midst of global chaos. A good deal of the […]
Ah, the holiday season is almost upon us. All the signs are there: Brisbane is turning into a sweltering slow cooker of humidity; Netflix swarms viewers with terrible Christmas movies (and, frankly, the temptation to watch them all is oddly overwhelming); NaNoWriMo is in full swing; and the sales of Brian Jar books evaporate into […]
For the past few years I’ve been running a more-or-less weekly newsletter that goes out to a couple of hundred loyal readers. What started out as an exercise in promoting new books and updating folks about projects gradually evolved into a weekly missive where I stashed write-ups about publishing, writing, technology, creative processes, culture, and […]
In my planning, this year is broken up into phases. Periods of time when all my focus bends towards a particular milestone, then pivots to spin off in a new direction once radically new focus is needed. For instance, the first stages of the year were all about preparing for my Thesis Review meeting, where […]
In the immortal words of the Ramones, there’s less than twenty-twenty-twenty-four hours to go before Exile hits shelves, and it’s currently got the strongest pre-orders of any book Brain Jar press has released. Ebooks can be pre-ordered via Amazon, and print books can be ordered at all good bookstores. Today, I’m posting the first chapter […]
