query – Peter M. Ball

Works in Progress

The internet knows everything, and so I ask…

I was at work today, innocently doing my job, when one of my co-workers turned around asked “have you ever come across a transgender zombie story?” At which point I allowed that a) I had not, b) google wasn’t inclined to find me one, and c) I adore my new dayjob more than any other dayjob I’ve ever had. Still, it’s a vexing kind of question to be unable to answer in the affirmative. I fired off the question to a couple of friends in the hopes that they’ve heard something, then figured I’d ask the question here just in case someone had come across such a thing. Transgender zombies and/or protagonists appear to be fair game, so far as such things go, so if you’ve come across such a thing in your readings please drop by the comments and let me know. In short: help me, Obi-net-kenobi, you’re my only hope. # I’d be linking you to Catherynne Valentes not-quite-review of

PeterMBall 28/07/2011

Journal

418

This is my four hundred and eighteenth post to this blog, which I guess means we’re on the downhill slope towards five hundred blog entries (whereupon I probably turn into a pumpkin). The last few days have settled into a comfortable kind of routine – I get home from the dayjob, I don’t turn on the internet, I read a book until five o’clock or so, then I eat dinner and force myself to write 1000 words before I go to sleep. My brain’s resisting the latter – last night I wrote the first five hundred words with ease, then scrambled for the last four hundred or so for hours before admitting defeat and collapsing into bed. Tonight there is teaching, which means I’ll have to forgo the reading, and the 1000 words will be an even bigger challenge. It needs to be done, because at this point 1000 words a day is pretty much the line between me and

PeterMBall 24/03/2011

Journal

Swancon 36

A few months ago I decided to do the sensible thing by my financial situation and give up any plans of going to Swancon 36 (aka Australia’s nat-con). It was the right decision back that – I was unemployed and broke and heavily in debt, and although there were all sorts of good reasons to go to Perth (Peeps! Ellen Datlow!) the money just wasn’t there. Admitting that fracking hurt too, ’cause occasionally I’d talk to Alisa over at Twelfth Planet Pressabout using Swancon as a rough launch date for Claw, and I do so love being around when a new book goes out into the world. Several things have changed since then. For starters there’s no chance that Claw will be out by Swancon, largely because the recent mess of dayjob and parents having heart surgery meant I just wasn’t able to meet the original deadline*. On the other hand, Swancon still has a chance to catch up with

PeterMBall 21/11/2010

Writing Advice - Business & the Writing Life

This is a community service announcement

Stop what you’re doing, right now, and go back up your computer. Not just saving your on a zip drive, but actually backing your files up and keeping them somewhere far away from your PC. I usually say this once a year in October to commemorate the computer crash of 06 that complete wiped out about seven years of work, including a bunch of stories and the PhD thesis I’d been working. Like most people, I thought I was safe because everything was backed up on my zip drive. Unfortunately, said zip drive was plugged into my computer at the time, so the power surge that wiped my PC out took the back-ups with me. It was, needless to say, a very bad day. I cried for a while. Eventually I started throwing things. This warning comes early this year because I just lost my second PC in three years. It just went “nope, done with this,” and stopped working

PeterMBall 28/08/2009

Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Otters and a Call for Book Recommendations

Let me put today in context for you: I’m laughing at puns. Otter puns. And Jason Fischer is nowhere nearby, which is kind of strange given that about 90% of the punnery that takes place in my world can be traced back to him in some form or another. And I *never* laugh at the puns. Well, hardly ever. I just thought I should mention that, given that a few people have signed up for the blog feed following some fairly serious discussion of feminism and such in other venues last week and they should probably warned. *Sometimes* I bust out the heavy duty cultural theory that tends to burble along in the background of my consciousness, but most of the time it’s all otter jokes and pro-wrestling references. I tend to think both mindsets equally valid and interconnected, really. On the otter hand (hee!) I’m also spending my morning thinking about the moment that came when Girliejones first announced Female

PeterMBall 10/08/2009

Works in Progress

The Day-to-Day Glamour of writing…

I’ve spent the last twenty-four hours in a line-edit quandary: should the word Frisbee be capitalised? Theoretically it probably should – Frisbee is a registered trademark of Wham-O toys – but I’m pretty sure that I’m not actually using Frisbee to refer to an actual Frisbee, instead using it as a common term for what should technically be called a flying disc (I didn’t even know it was a trademarked term prior to this, but there you go – apparently there’s even been a bit of a barney between Wham-O and other folks about this). Since I really do need to be making a call on sending this back sometime soon, I’ve just spent the last hour capitalising and de-capitalising the F’s when they appear in the story. Consider this a desperate plea for help if you want to weigh in on either side of the argument.

PeterMBall 19/02/2009

Tag: query

The internet knows everything, and so I ask…

418

Swancon 36

This is a community service announcement

Otters and a Call for Book Recommendations

The Day-to-Day Glamour of writing…

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