Status: 24 Feb 2023

PETERMBALL Status ,

Every Saturday, I post a new fantasy, science fiction, or horror story to Patreon. These are usually in ARC form—early iterations of the stories that will eventually find their way into the Eclectic Projects magazine series—although the changes between the Patreon version and the published version are minimal outside a few notable exceptions.

I’ve just prepared this week’s story and set it up to go live at 10 AM tomorrow, Queensland Time. It won’t appear in the monthly magazine until October. You can join the Patreon and get the weekly stories for as little as a buck a month (my concession to the fact that everything is awful, and money is tight right now).

I figure the first year of doing this is really just a test to see if I can do it. I don’t think of myself as a fast writer and I’d fallen into the bad habit of leaving things unfinished over the last decade, so I wanted to push myself and create a project where I had to put new writing into the world. I honestly figured I’d make it about three months and fold, but we’re now 36 story posts into the project and even on the worst weeks (like this one) I’ve got an original story done and ready for consumption.

But thirty-six stories means it’s also time to consider the future of the project. I committed myself to a year of stories—and twelve issues of the magazine—in the spirit of truly testing myself, but whether I’ll do another year largely depends on the state of the Patreon subscriptions and sales of the magazines. If you’re inclined to check them out, consider hitting up Patreon or grabbing one of issues below.

ON THE DOCKET

Progressed a bunch of design projects yesterday, then re-thought my approach to projects and time blocking to account for the way my life has changed. I also started my annual re-read of Dan Charnas’ Work Clean, which is very soothing when things get busy.

This morning was all about tomorrow’s Patreon story and prep for today’s mentorship meeting, but this afternoon will be devoted to chores and Brain Jar Work. There’s a contract to be written, page proofs to finish, and two or three books that we’re almost ready to announce if I can just keep them moving forward. Also a print proof to sign off on, and some new print runs to be ordered.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 45

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 16

BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 15

Status: 23 Feb 2023

PETERMBALL 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 having lots of thinking time and writing time to iterate work in various formats and pick up mistakes. I don’t have the spoons for that at present, given the various other stressors that kick in, but it always makes me twitchy about not working fast enough. My anxiety brain keeps pushing me to write all the words right fucking now, so I’m reminding myself that slow doesn’t mean that I’m doing it wrong…

ON THE DOCKET

There are no meetings or mentorship sessions today—a rarity at the moment—so I’m I’m about to knuckle down in the long stretch of uninterrupted time to get some freelance design gigs cleared. Today’s all about interior layouts for a book and mailing off cover samples that have been sitting on my desktop for longer than they should have been.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 37

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 14

BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 15

Expect minimal movement on all of these this week.

The Dice Goblin Gains A New Dice Bag

PETERMBALL Gaming

My dad wore a tie to work almost every day of his adult life, and still had a vast collection when he passed away in 2019. My mum asked if I’d be interested in them, but a) I wear a tie for job interviews approximately once every three or four years, and b) I don’t have a lot of storage in my flat. Ergo, I took an old Phantom tie my father loved (for sentimental reasons) and passed on the rest.

Rather than give the ties to goodwill, my mum partnered with a crafty friend to give the surplus new life. They transformed some into cushions, which my sister and I received as Christmas gifts, but there was still plenty of tie fabric left over. My sister elected to get another cushion, but I have about as much need for cushions as I have a need for neckties, so I passed on that as well.

Instead, we had a quick brainstorm about possible transformations that would fit into my life. “What would be really useful,” I said, “would be a dice bag for all my gaming dice. The pencil case I’ve been using for the last few years has never really fit them all.”

I didn’t think about it much after that. Then, last month, Allan of pop culture artifact generators Type40 kicked off a weekly. Pulp Cthulhu campaign and I was reaching for dice every Sunday. The limits of my set-up were being tested, regularly, and coming up short, and I’d started searching for various replacements online.

Thankfully, I hadn’t pulled the trigger on buying one, because the first words out of mum’s mouth when we gathered for dad’s memorial birthday dinner were “I’ve got your dice bags for you.”

There’s two of them, which means I can split my dice collection into a d10-intensive Call of Cthulhu bag and a more general DnD bag. It may mean buying a few extra rounds of dice to bulk things out (oh no!), but it’s nice to be carrying a little piece of my dad along to every game.