Horn – Page 3 – Peter M. Ball

Works in Progress

Four-Point Fly-by Post

Today is a little chaotic, so I give you the following post in four-point structure. 1) More Horn-spotting over on Jeff VanderMeer’s blog today, this time in the form of a Horn review. 2) My parents have currently made it from Turkey to Singapore, currently scheduled to land in Brisbane sometime tonight. Went over and saw my sister this morning, whose generally closer to my extended family than I am and pretty exhausted after spending much of the evening at the hospital. She’s not sure whether my uncle will hold on until my parents get back, but she managed to contact my mother via phone during one of his moments of lucidity last night. 3) In what may be one of the weirdest articles I’ve seen in some time, “Zimmer frame gang ‘tortures adviser’ who lost $4 million.” 4) Against all odds I managed to fight through the lethargy and waiting to get something done yesterday, even if it wasn’t

PeterMBall 25/06/2009

Works in Progress

More Wordcounting

So last night, in a fit of mild insomnia, I busted out a bunch of words and managed to make Yesterday a productive day. Then I engaged in the sport that girliejones has dubbed Horn-spotting. Then my internets went wonky, so I went back to bed. Anyway, for the record: I’m tempted to try and hit 50k today, although given that it’s almost lunchtime and I’m yet to write anything (and the house needs cleaning prior to an inspection tomorrow) that may be a tad too ambitious.

PeterMBall 24/06/2009

News & Upcoming Events

Horn Review at Coolshite

Another review of Horn is live, this time courtesy Coolshite.net and the mildly notorious Dirk Flinthart. This excerpt, incidentally, may be my favourite thing anyone is ever going to say about my writing, ever: Peter M. Ball has got it right. This book is smart, funny, nasty, and wicked as hell. He gets the noir-ish tone spot on, delivers with action a-plenty, kick-ass characters, intelligent plotting, and good, clean evocative writing. Best of all, he takes a turgidly overused fantasy trope out behind the backyard toilet and puts a dum-dum bullet through its brain, after which he whips out his tackle and pisses all over the steaming corpse.

PeterMBall 19/06/2009

Works in Progress

Horn Review

It appears we have the first review of Horn live on the internets, courtesy of awritergoesonajourney.com. Meanwhile I’m peeling myself off the couch after three straight days of Veronica Mars DVDs and trying to figure out how to get back to work. My current to-do list: Black Candy draft, Clawredraft, third Miriam Aster novella draft (since I now have a plot for it), short story redrafting, marking of student assignments. I suspect what I really need to do is the latter, since it’s going to have the most psychic drag associated with it, but I do so hate the marking process…

PeterMBall 16/06/2009

Journal

Home Again

I am back in Brisvegas after a long, eventful and very rewarding Natcon. Horn is officially launched, meaning it’s now out in the world being read. Now I’m going to bed and sleep for a few weeks. See you all when I recover.

PeterMBall 09/06/2009

News & Upcoming Events

Things I need to do in Adelaide

1) Eat a pie floater. Maybe two, if I survive the first one. 2) Eat a frog cake. Oddly, the pie floater does not fill me with fear, but this little sugared treat does. Insidious looking things, I tell’s ya. Insidious. 3) Launch Horn on Sunday (5pm) 4) Pick up a bunch of Horn pre-orders for family & friends who aren’t attending the con. 5) Remember the names for the beer sizes in SA (you have pints, right guys? right?). Find a pub that has Cooper’s Stout on tap. 6) Slap Jason with a big steel gauntlet of iron resolve until he starts working on his novel. 7) Take part in the Urban Fantasy, High Fantasy, and Magic Realism panel on Saturday morning. If you’re trying to track me down at any point during the con, that’s your rough guide for finding me. All offers to help me go find pies and black beer will be gratefully accepted 🙂

PeterMBall 03/06/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Friday Youtubery

Today we have The Unicorns singing I Was Born a Unicorn. Tangentially driven though it may be, I’m sure y’all are smart enough to be making the connection as to why I’ve been humming this song all week.

PeterMBall 29/05/2009

News & Upcoming Events

Horn now available for Prepurchase

The latest news out of the Twefth Planet Press camp is that Horn is off to the printers and available for prepurchase – you can now reserve a copy and pick it up at Conjecture in Adelaide or have it posted to you.

PeterMBall 25/05/2009

News & Upcoming Events

Today’s Post Courtesy of…

Data-Point the First: The latest issue of Apex Magazine is out, which includes my story Clockwork, Patchwork and Ravens. Go forth, read, and while you’re there consider picking up some of the fine works of fiction Apex Publishing has out (I’m currently stroking the cover of Open Your Eyes, which showed up in yesterday’s post and gets coveted like a covety thing because I haven’t yet had time to read it). Data-Point the Second: Edits for Horn rolled in last night, which means I’m going to be AWOL for a few days longer (baring posts where I show up and pimp stuff, like this one, but I figure you’ll forgive me my exhibitionist tendencies by now). Data-Point the Third: The blog silence up to this point has been generously provided by a head cold and a mild fever that kept me awake. Avoided the blog because I figured endless posts of I’m sick weren’t that interesting (and I sufficiently grumpy

PeterMBall 06/05/2009

News & Upcoming Events

Horn Launch

I don’t know where you will be on June 7th of this year, around 5 pm or so, but there’s a very good chance that you can find me here. To quote from the Conjecture blog: Horn by Peter M Ball Book 2 in the Twelfth Planet Press Novella Series There’s a dead girl in a dumpster and a unicorn on the loose – and no-one knows how bad that combination can get better than Miriam Aster. What starts as a consulting job for city homicide quickly becomes a tangled knot of unexpected questions, and working out the link between the dead girl and the unicorn will draw Aster back her back into the world of the exiled fey she thought she’d left behind ten years ago. All in all, Miriam Aster isn’t happy. The last time she worked a case like this it cost her a badge, a partner, and her life. This time things are going to get

PeterMBall 30/04/2009

Works in Progress

Claw Progress

Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 10,475 Words Done in Previous 24-hour Period: 1,931 Deadline: April 30th Chapter five is done. Which means I’m now settling into a comfortable rhythm of a chapter per night, more or less, with tinkering time and short-story writing occurring in the mornings. In theory, if my plan is to be trusted as a guide (it shouldn’t), I am now halfway through the novella. While I’m running lower than the anticipated wordcount at this point, I’m not too stressed about that – I’m thinking the next draft will see the story balloon out dramatically, requiring a third draft to cut things back. I am freaking out a little about the pacing of things though, since by this point in Horn there had been much death and destruction, while by this point in Claw there is only scratch marks, minor-character death, snark, and romance subplots which are not inherently doomed from the outset.

PeterMBall 21/04/2009

Works in Progress

Claw Update

Claw Draft Projected Total: 25000 Total Words to Date: 6315 Words Done in Previous 24-hour Period:1,673 Deadline: April 30th Last night made for an awesome burst of writing – finished chapter three, worked out some more things that were bugging me about the first two chapters*, and promptly took the daylight hours of Sunday off in the name of cleaning, playing a few hours of D&D, and preparing to go back to work tomorrow. Fortunately the part of me that’s damn happy about doing a minimum of 2000 words a day for the last four days albeit not all on this project) is making noises about how it’d be nice to keep that going. *to whit: when writing a hard-bitten character, or at least when writing this particular protagonist, having them start off in the dark trying to work out what’s happening is the wrong choice. Having an investigator start with an idea of whats going on, then subverting it in a way

PeterMBall 19/04/2009

Tag: Horn

Four-Point Fly-by Post

More Wordcounting

Horn Review at Coolshite

Horn Review

Home Again

Things I need to do in Adelaide

Friday Youtubery

Horn now available for Prepurchase

Today’s Post Courtesy of…

Horn Launch

Claw Progress

Claw Update

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