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News & Upcoming Events

Save Money on The Birdcage Heart This Weekend (& some project updates)

The Birdcage Heart and Other Strange Tales is on sale over at Kobo.com this weekend, ostensibly part of their US based November Price Drop sale but the discount is extended to all other territories. It usually sells for $4.99, but Australians can pick it up for half that until Sunday. With the money you save, you could nip out and pick up a copy of Alan Baxter’s new horror novel, Devouring Dark, which is not on sale but is newly released into the world and seems likely to scare me shitless by the time I finish it. We snuck off to the book’s Brisbane launch this week, where Alan and Angela Slatter were in conversation, and snapped a few shots of Al in full raconteur mode. Meanwhile, I’ve spent most of my waking hours this week doing redrafts on Warhol Sleeping. About 30% of this involves updating old scenes that were part of the original draft, written back in 2001, and

PeterMBall 16/11/2018
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? The Warhol Sleeping redraft continues

PeterMBall 11/11/2018
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? There’s five major projects on

PeterMBall 04/11/2018
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

New Project Week & Three Card Monte Drafting

With the Warhol Sleeping draft in the bag, I get to start a new project this week. It’s not a NaNoWriMo project, despite being started on November 1, because my current process is spectacularly ill-suited to doing NaNo. In fact, it’s one of those batshit crazy approaches that works for me in my current situation, but would make me shake my head if someone suggested it in a writing class. Basically, I’m trying to stay ahead of my anxiety and tendency to fret by treating drafting as a game of three card monte: three projects, three hours of writing time each day, and a timer that reminds me to swap between them at the end of every hour. The whole thing is focused on short, sustained bursts of focus on multiple projects, rather than three hours of trying to batter my head against a single book. No word count goals, just a specific amount of time staying focused on each

PeterMBall 02/11/2018
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

What d20 Publishing Taught Me About My Next Fiction Project

Earlier today, I added about 3,500 words of new content to the Warhol Sleeping draft, finishing up the scenes that needed fleshing out and adding in the interstitial content and “deleted scenes” content that will get added to the final product. The novella draft is officially done. Now the real work begins, exporting it from Scrivener and starting the process of doing real editorial work instead of patching up the weaker scenes.  Setting up the cover and the marketing copy, working out some pre-release promo, then working out whether the date I’ve earmarked for release is actually a feasible timeframe to get everything done.  It should be. I dedicated the first year of Brain Jar to short story collections, largely so I could get an idea of how the various systems and tools I’d need were going to work. Now I’ve got them down, which means I can start playing a little more. And Warhol Sleeping is very much a

PeterMBall 31/10/2018
Works in Progress

Breaking Patterns

I spent some quality time in the nearest food court this morning, drinking terrible coffee and fleshing out the draft for the next Brain Jar Press novella: Warhol Sleeping.  In theory, the food court is a terrible place to work. The shopping centre it’s located in is undergoing renovation, so there’s an incredible amount of construction work going on in the vicinity. The coffee shop is hideously expensive, the local shoppers frequently intrusive, and the food options surprisingly limited. There’s also a two-hour cap on parking, which means I’m always watching the clock while I’m there.  In practice, it remains a useful place to work for two reasons: there’s no Wifi to distract me, and it breaks me away from the usual habits that have built up around the house.  The food court forces me to be intentional about what I’m doing with my time, instead of falling into routines. After a few days where my focus has been off,

PeterMBall 30/10/2018
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I finished the draft of

PeterMBall 28/10/2018
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? I finished my work week

PeterMBall 21/10/2018
Sunday Circle

The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?

The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them). After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all. Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here). MY CHECK-IN What am I working on this week? Last week got derailed by

PeterMBall 14/10/2018
Gaming

SMAX #173: Panic on Earth-Adrift

I was a GM before I was an writer, which means I occasionally awful affliction that many gamers suffer from where I get all Let me tell you about my game. I’m also a GM who’s had a few recurring items on my to-do lis like run better sessions, do better prep, and test drive rules from the upcoming Cortex Prime set that may do things better than the Marvel Cortex rules. Since I’ve been running a superhero campaign on Thursdays for…gods, years now…I figure I may as well combine the above with that note on my to-do list that says write regular blog posts and start thinking about ongoing series of posts.  With that in mind, I’m going to experiment with doing post-game reports here on the blog–giving myself a chance to reflect on what’s worked, and what doesn’t. Think through my thoughts about superhero gaming outside of the every-hundred-sessions-or-so list post (which, weirdly, continue to be the most read posts on this site).

PeterMBall 13/09/2018
Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

We All Have The Same 24 Hours To Get Writing Done, But Those Hours Aren’t Created Equal

Recently, I made the decision to stop working from home. I don’t write there, I don’t produce blog posts there, and I do my best to avoid spending time on the PC answering email or doing writing-based social media. I barely even take notes in my bullet journal, or break out a notebook for planning. This decision was largely made because I share a one-bedroom apartment with my partner. A very small one-bedroom apartment, split between two people who were used to living alone. And two people who have had their fare share of mental health challenges, with their respective coping mechanisms built around time alone. This had consequences: working from home meant my partner felt bad about taking a day off work when sick or in need of a break, because it meant disrupting my work routine. Working from home also meant there was no clear delineation between me-at-work, and me-at-home, so there was never a sense that I was

PeterMBall 13/08/2018
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Dancing Brolgas, Steel Balls, and Beating Hearts of the Universe

Today I spent a lot of time walking around the city, alternating between finding quiet places to write and popping into bookstores and art galleries to check out the notebooks they had on sale. I spent longer than intended in the Brisbane gallery because I had to check my bag before I could go to their bookstore, so I figured I may as well take a look around. I spent some quality time staring at Judy Watson’s Sacred Ground, Beating Heart, which is one of those art-works that’s done a disservice when you look at reproductions because it looses some of the texture and depth that makes it intriguing when seem up-close (stare at it long enough, and it’s almost like staring into the night sky – it’s got the same kind of depths). Another chunk of time was spent in front of Sydney Long’s Spirit of the Plains, which is basically the illustration for some kind of Australian magic realist

PeterMBall 09/07/2018

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