Tag: Bleed (aka the novella formerly known as Cold Cases)
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
Journal

My to-do list

At some point today I’m planning on making cupcakes, which means I have to clean the mixing bowl, which means I have to eat the salad currently sitting in the mixing bowl as it occupies a shelf of my fridge. And I frickin’ hate salad. There is no reasonable excuse for lettuce. At some point today I’m going to continue going through the Cold Cases draft, engaging in all the chapter-by-chapter tinkering that needs to be done before I hand the manuscript over. I am still unsure of this book, but that doesn’t bother me too much. I am unsure of everything I write that’s longer than 1000 words. At some point today I’m going to vacuum the seemingly endless carpet of shed hair that covers the floor of my house. On the plus side, that’s not going to be a problem for the next few months. There is some pretty simple math that gets done when your lazy, your

PeterMBall 31/05/2010
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
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
News & Upcoming Events

So, like, officially speaking…

If you haven’t dropped by the Twelfth Planet Press livejournal today, odds are you’ve missed this: Book Announcement: Sequel to Horn, due out April 2010 Twelfth Planet Press is proud to announce the acquisition of the sequel to Horn from Peter M Ball. Under the working title of Cold Cases, Miriam Aster works to solve an old file but her painful past refuses to stay buried. Book 2 in the Aster Series will be launched at Swancon, in April 2010. So it’s all official-like: the follow-up to Horn is on its way and sometime in the New Year I’m going to have to get cracking on Novella 3 in the series.

PeterMBall 26/11/2009
Journal

QWC Blog Tour of Queensland

And lo, I have finished the long march from empty page to submitted manuscript and a copy of Cold Cases is now winging its way to the publishers via the miracle of the internets. And well-timed it is, all things considered, since it gives me a few free moments to take part in the QWC Blog Tour of Queensland and answer some quick questions from the fine folks at the Queensland Writers Centre Where do your words come from? I borrow most of them from the dictionary. For some reason this whole writing lark works better when other people recognise the words you’re using and understand what they mean. Of course, my dictionary’s kind of old, so it’s missing words like D’oh and jiggy. Those I borrow from television shows and trust readers keep up. Where did you grow up and where do you live now? My parents were teachers, so I spent my childhood moving. We basically went between northern Queensland

PeterMBall 19/11/2009
Works in Progress

This is what I do in the absence of cats

Still off putting the finishing touches on the Cold Cases draft before I hand it over to Twelfth Planet Press. I should be back on Friday, being my usual blathering self, but until then have a picture of the Spokesbear doing his part: And now I’m back to the manuscript, for the spokesbear is a harsh taskmaster.

PeterMBall 18/11/2009
Works in Progress

Words, words, words (With bonus Angela Slatter Interview)

Before I begin, let me direct you to this: Marshal Payne’s Super-Sekrit Clubhouse has a new interview with my Write Club peep Angela Slatter, which should give you a pretty good insight into why I usually use words like “awesome” and “inimitable” when discussing both her and her writing. Angela remains one of those folks who fuses talent, hardworking dilligance and bucket-loads of smarts in her approach to writing (although she’ll refute the latter with Simpson’s referenes, giving half a chance). She speaks wisdom and her writing is good – so go read about her now, while she’s still an ’emerging writer’, and then  you can join me in the nodding and looking smug when people start talking about how this awesome new ’emerged’ writer in the years to come. And if you don’t, well, I’ll mock you -with a very mocking mock – because that’s the kind of guy I am. Okay, back to the entry. Or, to put it

PeterMBall 06/11/2009

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