I just did the Brain Jar Press newsletter and realised I’d put together four new releases across January: Exile, a new short story collection, a new chapbook in the Short Fiction Lab line, and the chapbook edition of The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta.
Amid the chaos of January, some of these didn’t even get announced here on the blog, let alone get talked up on social media. Exile captured the lion’s share of my promotional energy, so I’m going to use this post to catch you all up on what’s being going on.
THE LATEST: SHEDDING SKINS (Short Fiction Lab Chapbooks #5)
A Brain Jar Press Short Fiction Lab chapbook story, Peter M. Ball’s Shedding Skin is a dark fantasy about snakes, old wounds, and isolation in the heat of the Queensland outback.
Things haven’t been right with Mariah ever since the car accident, but Harley knows the problems were seeded long before they drove off the road. Things come to a head when they retreat to an old house in the outback to spend time together, far away from the bustle and watching eyes of worried friends and family.
But things watch from the shadows beneath the house too, and Harley’s own reservations come to a head when they discover a snake in their midst…
This one snuck out under the wire, launching on January 31st while I diligently focused everyone’s attention on Exile. Like all Short Fiction Lab releases, it started with an experiment—in this case, running an old, unpublished story through one of the AI-powered proofing and line-editing tools (Grammarly, ProWritingAid, et al) that get advertised to writers every time they go on the internet.
I didn’t expect much, going in. The online advertising made these sound like a souped up version of spellcheck, and spellcheck is only marginally useful. By the time I ran this story through their reports, I laid down a couple of hundred bucks for a lifetime subscription to the software.
For all that it looks like spellcheck, what sold me was the algorithm’s ability to pick up on stuff I struggle to see when editing works: hidden verbs, repeated phrases that might jar the reader, and overly complex sentences lacking concrete details. It’s the stuff you tend to get picked up in a good line edit, and while the suggestions for fixing the issues aren’t great, I’ve been through the editing process enough times to cover a lot of ground myself if things are flagged for me.
I go into this in a lot more detail in the Author’s Note, as I’m want to do in Short Fiction Lab releases. For those who are really curious, there’s a bonus link in the end of this release where you can download the pre-AI edit story and compare how big a difference the software (and around 14 years of writing fiction) made on my writing.
Grab it in EBOOK or PRINT
THE BIG RELEASE: EXILE (Keith Murphy Urban Fantasy Thrillers #1)
Keith Murphy’s coming home to a city full of demons. What’s following on his heels is much worse.
Ever since he left the Gold Coast, Keith Murphy’s been the triggerman for the sorcerer-assassin Danny Roark. Then they screwed up a job and all hell broke loose, unleashing a vengeful cult of necromancers eager to take down the hit man who gunned down their leader and reclaim their master’s soul from the bullet around Keith’s neck. Roark was already running when Keith made it the rendezvous, and the old man left Keith three simple instructions: go home, lie low, and wait for me to call.Easier said than done.
If you ever wanted to see Lee Child’s Jack Reacher or Max Allen Collins’ Quarry taking on demons, sorcerers, and magic, you won’t be able to put down the Keith Murphy series.
Released on Wednesday and already the biggest launch Brian Jar Press has ever had, courtesy of some strong pre-orders. If you scroll back through a week of posts you’ll find a whole lot of me talking about it, so I won’t belabour the point here, but it’s book one of a trilogy that will be rolling out across the next two months (and if it continues to sell well, there could be more a little later this year).
It breaks tradition with a lot of Brain Jar Press releases by launching into Kindle Unlimited, giving folks subscribed to the program a chance to download it for free. It’s a data-gathering mission for the PhD, testing some of the ideas I’m talking about with regards to access, release schedules, and seriality. But it’s also a damed good book, thoroughly scrubbed down and tightened up before it was relaunched into the world.
Grab the ebook exclusively from Amazon (US|UK|AUS) or in print at your favourite bookstore.
THE POORLY TIMED RELEASE: THESE STRANGE & MAGIC THINGS:
For fans of the weird and enchanting, Peter M Ball returns for a third collection of speculative fiction stories that dance along the borders between horror, fantasy, and science fiction. These Strange and Magic Things brings together fifteen tales that showcase why he’s among the finest writers of the strange and fantastic working in Australia right now.
With fifteen stories to enchant and thrill you, These Strange and Magic Things spins magic, horror, and pop culture together into an unforgettable collection of tales featuring rogue jinn, uncanny rock bands, magic bees, flying crocodiles, laundromat ghosts, haunted coins, cyberpunk gangs, and lost loves.
This collection came out in the early stages of January, when the bulk of my attention (along with the rest of Australia) was focused on the devastating bushfires annihilating large chunks of the country. The period where I’d normally talk it up online was given over to the Authors for Fireys auction and my attention shifted to Exile right after, so it’s largely one of those books folks don’t find unless they stumble across it.
It happens like that sometimes. Your book comes out while major things are going on in the world, and it doesn’t do quite so well as anyone expected.
Available in EBOOK or PRINT
THE EXPERIMENT: THE SEVENTEEN EXECUTIONS OF SIGNORE DON VASHTA (Short Chaps)
Sixteen executions have failed. The seventeenth is about to begin.
Beal devoted his life to the study of eliminating convicted felons, but the notorious Don Vashta is the greatest challenge any executioner can face: an immortal criminal who always rises from the dead to sin again.
A short story chapbook about a job that turns into a friendship, and a friendship that becomes an obsession.
A few weeks back, I put together a short story chapbook for my partner based on a release she was rather fond of. It turned out to be a really beautiful object in and of itself–a thirty-page booklet that reminded me of buying single-issue comic books.
It got me thinking about possibilities, and different approaches to publishing. Ebooks have large demolished the idea that a “book” needs to be 100,000 words to be worthy of release, but is there the potential to do the same with Print on Demand technology.
Doing the first chapbook gave me a taste for the format, and this is my first attempt at doing a release withs some intent behind it. While I normally limit short stories to Amazon’s print-on-demand catalogue, this one has been released through Ingram’s distribution, which means it’ll show up in bookstore search engines (and sites like Book Depository, which sell it at a tidy discount).
