The Catch-up Post

My brain is full of much-ness today. As in there is much I want to blog about, but little time and space in which to achieve this, so things kind of bump up against each other and nothing gets written. As always, I blame the thesis – in some ways it feels like I’ve been talking about it for so long that the opportunity to talk about something else triggers this rush of “oh, and that…” (I shall stop that train of thought there, I think, lest I start rambling; rambling is the symptom of a brain full of much-ness).

Okay, lets focus on the news in short form:

  • On the writing front, some good news – I sold a story, Clockwork, Patchwork and Raven, to Apex Online. This was the source of much huzzah around the writing the desk, as one might imagine.
  • Also on the writing front – the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology is available now. It’s one of the debut anthologies from Ricasso Press which has had a long and windy road to follow in order to reach publication (Ricasso were the source of my favorite acceptance letter ever, as I blogged about back when they first accepted The Dragonkeeper’s Wife for the anthology back in April of 2007). I’ve barely had time to flick through my copy, but it looks like fun.
  • The workshop which changed my life as a writer, Clarion South, has had a run of bad luck this year (cancelled tutors, finding a new venue on short notice) and they’re in need of donations to help them continue running. I’ll probably do a longer post on this in the future, but until then I’ll link over to the donations page for those who are already willing to sling a few bucks their way.
  • The ever-awesome Ben Francisco hit town, proving his status as a writer-geek of honor by spending much of his Brisbane vacation critting stories and putting together the a plan for finishing the piece we collaborated on back in Clarion two years ago.
  • I also got the opportunity to go see Amanda-Fucking-Palmer on Sunday night – I may still be coming down from the experience. I see many bands, artists and writers who are feasibly awesome, but Amanda Palmer continues to be one of those artists who strikes me as being unfeasibly awesome and capable of inviting people in to what she’s doing as an artist (as evidenced by the fact that the show ended with her playing a ukulele and singing Creep, sans-microphone, while everyone in the audience sang along).

28 Days of Thesis Updates: Day Twelve

Minimal writing yesterday (50 or so words), but that was intentional. While I’m still behind, I now feel like a rational human being who lives in a nice flat in which things are clean, rather than an angst-written PhD student who lives in a hovel in which dishes pile up in the sink.

Some random stuff, not really thesis-related, from the last few days:

–  New review of Dreaming Again in Locus (Jan ’09), courtesy of Gardner Dozois; I actually scored a short mention among the discussion: Straightforward fantasy (as opposed to horror, although sometimes the line is hard to draw) is best represented by “Twilight in Caeli-Amur” by Rjurik Davidson, “The Last Great House of Isla Tortuga” by Peter A. Ball (another zombie story, but a considerably more subtle and elegant one), and “Manannan’s Children” By Russel Blackford…

–  The Fantasy Magazine best story of 2008 poll/comment contest is still running – have you voted yet? They’ve named the top five stories in the lead after a week of voting, which includes the remarkable Watermark by Clarion peep Michael Greenhut. (On the Finding of Photographs of My Former Loves isn’t, but it’s such a strange and introspective little story that I would have been surprised if it was – I heartily endorse voting for Michael; his story is damned good). Also on Fantasy week, a non-fiction article from yet another Clarion peep, Ben Francisco, on the portrayal of 2009 in popular SF media.

–  Downloaded and read the latest issue of Kobold Quarterly; they had book reviews in there, including a quite spiffy review of Margo Lanagan’s Tender Morsels, which resulted in a moment of pure wtfbbq? level of cognitive dissonance followed by a pang of pure adoration for Wolfgang Bauer and his crew for reminding me of why I continued to subscribe to what’s (ostensibly) a d20/DnD gaming magazine despite the fact that I’ve played but a handful of DnD games in the last year or so (and run only two session). Kobold Quarterly continues to be class act, and saddens me that fantasy fiction and DnD have become so separated in my head over the years that this is actually something I feel surprised to see.

–  If you ask how the PhD is going and I twitch, it’s probably because I’m trying to think up some suitable lie that will make me feel better more than anything else.

The Ground Floor

So here’s the short-version: My names Peter M. Ball and I’m writer of speculative fiction, a gamer, a lover of good food, and a wrestling fan. I talk about my works in progress, use public word counts, and pimp my publications (and those of my friends, and those I just plain like a lot) with moderate enthusiasm. Throw in some references to popular culture, an undercurrent of arts-theory, a deep love of gothic films/literature and punk rock, and you’ve probably got a good idea of where the blog is going to go from here on in.

Right now you have stumbled over this site while we’re in set-up mode (or you’re in the future and you’ve backtracked here to see the beginning, in which case you may be interested in the livejournal that served as my web-presence prior to December 2008).

At its heart, this website is about promoting my writing. A partial list of what I’ve done in the past is available in my bibliography, but right now I’m excited about the following stories coming in the future:

  • The Clockwork Goat and the Smokestack Magi in Shimmer’s Clockwork Jungle book issue
  • On the Destruction of Copenhagen by the Warmachines of the Merfolk in Strange Horizons
  • The Dragonkeeper’s Wife in the Black Dragon, White Dragon anthology from Ricasso Press
  • And a yet to be titled novella that’s yet to be announced