Category: Works in Progress

So, I am in a bunker at the moment, working on some things. One of them is this: A photo posted by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on May 10, 2016 at 7:32pm PDT Which is both a document where I can proof, flesh out, and generally fix up some old blog posts for the site, and a PD project for work after it was pointed out that we’re primarily recommending one method of creating ebooks and it might be handy to have a few other methods up our sleeve for people who aren’t a fan of the first. Also a response to re-reading Die Empty, the follow-up to Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative, and embracing his suggestion to focus on incremental accumulation of new skill-sets as part of your daily plan. Which means there is a definite trend, when I read Henry’s work: the first two reads are basically, this seems interesting, but disappointing, while the third or forth is the

I’m off to Contact 2016 this morning. I expect I will see a large number of the folks who are usually reading this blog over there, at the Hotel Jen, but for the rest of you, a blog post. I am writing a story at the moment. Technically, I am rewriting a story, because the first draft already exists in a notebook that I’ve been carrying around for the last month. Originally I thought this would be more akin to editing, but it’s not. The story that goes into computer is mostly akin to the hand-written draft in terms of structure – everything else gets changed. Don’t get me wrong: editorial processes are useful, at this point. I’ve been working my way through all the planning suggestions in Charlotte Nash’s How to Edit a Novel, which provides an incredibly useful process for editing work, but my handwritten drafts are very spare and very messy and very, very wrong. And so I am

My notebook habit has resulted in a certain level of proliferation in recent weeks. I tend to leave the house with the notebook containing my novel-length work in progress, one for short stories, a bullet journal I’m using to run my life, a notebook I used for taking notes when reading throughout the week, and a planning notebook that’s used for brainstorming elements of the novel. Oh, and a blank 128 page notebook that I assumed I’d packed for a reason, except it proved to be blank when I pulled it out and opened it up to reacquaint myself with its contents. It is a terrible thing to be a writer and give yourself permission to indulge in your notebook fetish, but it has hit the point where I need to cut back. And so I wondered down to my local Officeworks yesterday afternoon and invested in a larger notebook than the standard a5-sized beasts in my notebook wodge. The

The short story archives on my computer tend to be a wild, lawless kind of place. My approach to writing short fiction usually involves hammering out a whole bunch of words and then leaving things to sit for a while, usually about three-quarters finished. Then, when I’m possessed of a certain kind of mood, I go back and revisit things. Occasionally I discover stories I’d forgotten about. Case in point, the piece posted below, which got written with the best intentions of submitting it to (I think) a flash fiction contest based around elections. It never did find its way to the original place I wanted to send it, and it’s not really got the legs to become a full-fledged story that I’ll shop around (especially since I stole many of the conceits I really liked for Love Is the Roar of a Chainsaw, Cutting Flesh in the Night, including the basic structure of the title). But there are still bits of this story I’m

It’s Christmas. Hopefully you’re celebrating it in the manner that pleases you best. For me, that’s a quick trip across town for breakfast with my immediate family, followed by the annual viewing of Die Hard, followed by getting home early enough to fit in a little extra writing and tidy my apartment a big. It’s also an excuse to break this story out of the mothballs and give it another airing. It was one of the first things I ever had published as a short-story writer back in 2007. It’s…seasonably appropriate. For varying meanings of the word “appropriate.” THE YEAR THE ZOMBIES CAME FOR CHRISTMAS It was Katie that remembered the puppy, trapped in its cardboard box without any air-holes. The fact that we’d forgotten to punch any in came to her at 2 AM, a surge of panic that sent her upright in our bed. “It’s cardboard,” I said. “It’s not like the damn thing will suffocate. We’ll make

I am writing a book about space marines, ’cause I like stories where high-marine types are sent into remote locations and get torn apart by monsters. Aliens. Starship Troopers. Doom. Predator. That kind of shit is my jam, yo. It sings the sweet songs of my youth too my inner child, and those songs go pew! pew! pew! When I hit the third chapter, I’ve got a scene that’s…problematic. Lots of military types gathered together for a briefing, learning the details of the remote planet where they’re destined to be torn to shreds. This is a scene that has the potential to be…dull. Very dull. Lots of info-dumpy shit and not a lot of conflict. So, this week I’m searching out movies and books that do this kind of thing exceptionally well. Things I can study and learn from, in terms of their techniques. Star Wars, for example. Star Wars is the first briefing scene to burn itself into my psyche, ’cause it’s got the

I posted this image to instagram a little earlier today: So close… A photo posted by Peter M Ball (@petermball) on Sep 29, 2015 at 2:54pm PDT That’s the notebook I started writing a new novel in, back on August 17, in which I’ve now filled 223 of its 240 pages and begun the process of hurtling myself at the midpoint of the story. There’s a scene or two left to write, in which the worst thing that could happen to our protagonists actually happens, and then I start a new notebook and start figuring out the second half of the novel. It looks all civilized, when it’s posted in isolation, but the instagram feed also contains photographs of what I’ve lovingly started calling “The Wodge” – at any given point I’m usually carrying around a half-dozen notebooks of various sizes, with various projects in in them. One contains the novel in progress, one or two contain novellete-length projects, one for short stories,

When I first pitched the Flotsam series to Edge of Propinquity, long before it was ever transmuted into a novella trilogy, part of the appeal of doing twelve stories about the Gold Coast was getting the chance to work with my sister. You see, Edge of Propinquity accompanied all shot-stories with photographs, and at the time my sister was developing her chops as a semi-professional photographer, so I figured getting to work together to document bits of the Gold Coast would be kinda fun. In the end, it probably ended up being more stress than fun, and a lot of that’s on my head as the guy who was late getting the stories together. This occasionally meant I’d simply work from images Sally already had in inventory, or we’d put together a more general image rather than putting together something specifically reflective of the story. Occasionally, we’d get really lucky: there was a family holiday at the start of the year

So, June 30th. We’re about to slide into the second half of the year, which I’m kinda looking forward too, ’cause Exile is currently scheduled to come out towards the end of July. More details on that in a couple of weeks, once there’s details to talk about, but I’m looking forward to it. Better yet, tomorrow I’m scheduled to turn over Frost to the folks at Apocalypse Ink. It’s a strange kind of thing, hitting deadlines in the US. There’s a seventeen-hour time difference Brisbane and the parts of the USA where I’m mailing the file, which means the first of July becomes a really, really long day if it needs to be. In a strange, unsettling departure for this series of novellas, I don’t actually need it to be a long day. Frost is more-or-less ready to go, so all I have to do is give it a final read through and attach it to the email. Two books

I worked on the first chapter of Frost this morning. Managed to drag 270 new words out of my brain over the course of two and a bit writing hours. Not the most auspicious start to my new writing routine, especially since it was followed with missing my train in to work. This means I shall have to do some drafting work this evening, which is okay. That’s the whole point of front-loading my writing into a morning shift, rather than scrabbling for time in the evenings. Also…new story. A new story that’s a sequel, and the middle of a trilogy. These things are always slow to start for me, ’cause you’ve got to strike the balance between something that works as an ongoing story and something that’ll engage a brand new reader. Six weeks to go before the book is due. 29,730 words left to write.