Tag: All Things Aster
Works in Progress

July Plans

And lo, the edits are sent back to the editor and the novella once titled Cold Cases is going through the various transmogrifications it goes through to become a book titled Bleed instead. Various things contribute to the feeling of done-ness – seeing concept sketches for the cover art, finally settling on the new title, hearing that the ISBN-type stuff is being put into motion. There will still be work to go, presumably edits and proofs, but this book has officially evacuated the portion of my brain that requires tinkering and subconscious thought. It’s no longer a project. Which means it’s time to get started on what comes next: rewriting Black Candy. And since I’m house-sitting this month, taking care of the cats and chickens that belong to some friends who have dissappeared into the wilds of Europe, I’m going to try and pack the bulk of the rewrite into July. Once more into the breach and all that.

PeterMBall 05/07/2010
Works in Progress

Almost Done

I’ve been writing a sequel to Horn, one way or another, since February 6 of 2009. I suspect I’d started even earlier than that with ideas scribbled down in notebooks and such, but Feb 6 is the first time it migrated to a computer file that’s usually the start of my writing process. Since then I’ve voluntarily scrapped an entire novella draft, rewritten the plan for how I thought a series of Miriam Aster books should progress, and written a second novella to fit the new concept that was about 75% longer than projected. Some days I dispaired that I’d ever actually see the end of the process – what started as twenty-thousand words about Aster and a talking cat ended up in a very different place. Trying to get there scared the shit out of me more than once; I have a comfort zone as a writer, and this was well outside it. But it appears it’s very close to

PeterMBall 01/07/2010
Journal

Things that Happened While I Was Otherwise Distracted

I’ve been distracted of late – either by trying to get the latest version of Cold Cases ready or hole-in-my-head drama depending of the day –  and I somehow managed to miss a whole heap of stuff happening around the traps. 1) The latest edition of the Terra Incognita Podcast is up, featuring me reading my story Black Dog: A Biography that came out in the Interfictions II anthology last year. Unlike most of the previous podcasts of my work this one actually involved me recording the reading myself, an experience that forced me to realise exactly how inarticulate I am in the verbal form (seriously; apparently I drop the consonants out of words and rely on vowel sounds and inflections to get things right, and we do not speak of how many times I had to restart things in order to avoid this). 2) Angela Slatter’s Brisneyland by Night is the feature story over at the Twelth Planet Podcast at the moment, which

PeterMBall 22/06/2010
News & Upcoming Events

It’s an Aster kind of day.

First, a public service announcement re-posted from the livejournal of my illustrious publisher: (The reprint of) Horn failed to be delivered today but I have rescheduled for tomorrow and they should then be out in the post to the preorders in tomorrow evening’s mail. If you’ve been holding off buying your copy of Horn til they were back in stock, as of tomorrow they will be and you can buy your copy here. Again, whilst stocks last – I expect to have copies for sale at Worldcon but there were quite a few reservations for this second printing as well. Which seems like as good a segue as we’re going to get to talk about the current state of the second Miriam Aster novella, Cold Cases. Today I was full of virtue. I rose early, I took my daily dose of penicillin, then I settled down at the computer with a cup of coffee and a Bob Dylan CD and

PeterMBall 15/06/2010
Works in Progress

Deathmarch, Day Ten

And lo, what a difference a few days makes. Today I have run out of steam on the deathmarch. My eyes hurt, my brain hurts, I’m altogether skittish about going near the keyboard. The very act of writing a blogpost seems daunting, since it’s the thing between me and getting back to work. If I don’t blog, I don’t march. If I don’t march, I don’t have to face the fact that the next stage of rewriting is upon us. If that happens, I don’t have to solve the next plot-problem. This death march is all about solving plot problems, figuring out how to make the novella work on a really basic level. It’s not one of my strong points. It makes me stubborn. I hate having to figure out what needs to be done next. The only upside is that I’ve finally realised that this is what I’m doing when I find myself flailing about, so I can at

PeterMBall 28/04/2010
News & Upcoming Events

Twelfth Planet Press Mother’s Day Sale

The folks over at Twelfth Planet Press have just upgraded their webstore and they’re celebrating with Mother’s Day Sale where you can pick up two or more books for a nice, cheap, wallet-friendly price prior to May 7th. There is some bad news for those of you thinking you know, my mother really digs noir stories with a squicky unicorn filling* and looking for a copy of Horn as a result – it’s out of stock at the moment, and while I don’t know the particulars of when the reprint will happen I’m pretty sure it won’t be in time to show your appreciation for the maternal figure/s in your life on mothers day itself. Of course, you can pre-order yourself a copy of the second printing and pick up a copy of either the Siren Beat/Roadkill double (which delivers Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Hobart noir novelette with a tentacle-squick filling and Robert Shearman’s novelette of desperately uncomfortable, captivating weirdness in one

PeterMBall 24/04/2010
Works in Progress

Novella Deathmarch, Day Four

Today the novella did good things. Less of the Death side of the equation and more of the March. The sub-conscious writing muscles have remembered how to work and the story starts chugging along under its own steam. I can look of the current draft and see the shape of the book it’s going to be when it’s done, which is something I hadn’t managed prior to starting the deathmarch. The voice started settling down. I remembered how to take stuff out of a rewrite, especially when it belongs in another scene. All is well with the world. The real measure that the Deathmarch is working, though, comes when I can look forward to the next writing project without immediately running off to work on it instead. When I’m avoiding a project, I’m all about the distraction. Today I’m all about the focus, and hopefully I can start transitioning to normal sleeping patterns instead of maintaining the manic manic working-to-five-in-the-morning approach

PeterMBall 22/04/2010
Works in Progress

Chaos, Chili-Carrot Cake, & The Twelve Day Deathmarch

On Friday I sat in the middle of messy apartment, contemplating the messy state of affairs, thinking a series of messy thoughts. And after a while I thought, well, enough of that then, it’s kind of a drag, and instituted a plan to cut through the chaos and get stuff done. I spent Saturday and today cleaning rooms, ordering bookshelves, and taking care of long-neglected tasks. Not enough that I’ve instituted order across the flat, but enough to give me a foothold. That was phase one. Phase two requires me to finish the rewrites on Cold Cases*. I have twelve days. That’s a chapter’s worth of rewrites per day, about two-and-half to three thousand words. If I succeed, I will allow myself to have a guilt-free weekend of not-writing in May**. I’ve prepared for this task by making a weeks worth of meals in advance, stocking up on coffee, and dancing around the house to Goldfrapp***. To aid me in

PeterMBall 18/04/2010
Writing Advice - Craft & Process

Cold Cases: Thinking Out Loud

Okay, to start with, Michael Moorcock talks about the genesis of the Dorian Hawkmoon books over at the Tor site. I mean, seriously, why are you still here? Also, Twelfth Planet Press has released the guidelines for their forthcoming Speakeasy anthology full of urban fantasy stories set in the 1920s.  I totally dig the idea of this anthology, but I’ll admit that all of my initial ideas will be bloody hard to pare down to short story lengths (unless, of course, I finally break down and write the 1920’s zombie story set in Tahiti I’ve been threatening to write for four years now, but Alisa at TPP is quite adamant in her hatred of zombies so it’s probably not the best starting point). ♦ Okay, fair warning, the following entry is rambling and scattered while I think through a specific problem related to the project du jour. If you have no real interest in writers thinking out loud, I suggest going

PeterMBall 26/03/2010
Journal

A frustrated Spokesbear is dangerous

I’m drinking my second cup of coffee of the morning, revelling in the fact that I’ve been awake for nearly three hours now and I don’t yet feel the need to take a nap. Huzzah for reaching the end of the medication, although the celebrations are tempered by the fact that I head into the dentist for stage two of my root canal this afternoon. I know nothing about the art of dentistry, but the implication after my last visit was essentially “if the infection’s still there, we’ll have to remove the tooth instead.” I’m okay with removing the tooth, to be honest, as long as it doesn’t come with another round on medication. Experience says I have a predilection towards sloth that shouldn’t be encouraged and I have phobias about returning to the slacker mindset that dominated my early twenties. Or, to return to my new years resolution: don’t fuck it up, dumb-ass. I’ll take a week of jaw pain

PeterMBall 24/03/2010
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Whip It and Writing

1) Whip It I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog post-reviewy thing about Whip It for about two weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not going to happen. Not because I think it’s a bad film – it’s utterly charming in its ability to recognise that something can be simultaneously camp as hell and the most important thing in the whole damn world – but because it fits into the same space as contemporary art where I find my critical vocabulary isn’t really up to the task of expressing what I’m thinking about after seeing the film. My short, haphazard take on the film goes something like this: it’s endearing. Specifically, the kind of awkward-coming-of-age endearing you find in Taylor Swift film-clip, only Whip It comes without the puritanical undercurrent that usually causes me to froth at the mouth when encountering Swift’s oeuvre (and thus, Whip It comes closer to having actual substance). The film

PeterMBall 08/03/2010
Works in Progress

One last outburst before we go to radio silence

My attempt to roll out the productivity and conquer The Fear hit a road-block yesterday – what seemed to be a minor computer problem (power jack coming loose from the laptop casing) has rolled out into a terrifying ordeal which will culminate in the absence of a computer in the house for 5-to-1o working days while the problem’s corrected. The computer goes in this morning, so…well, basically I’m quietly screwed after that. No word-processor, no e-mail, no basic tools of research. I can work with a pad and pen, but these are only good for the drafting rather than the actual finishing and submitting of work. This…complicates…that whole submit lots of things in February plan. Meanwhile, in more positive parts of internetland, the Locus Recommended Reading List for 2009 has just been released. Horn got recommended in the novella section and my Strange Horizon’s story On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the War-Machines of the Merfolk is mentioned in the Short Story

PeterMBall 03/02/2010

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