Works in Progress
Not Prophetic
Writing in a bathtub is far more uncomfortable than you’d think.
PeterMBall
23/02/2012
Tag: Random Observations
Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption
Twenty-Six Hours of Melancholy
A Sweet and Pensive Sadness When I was in my second year of university we studied Hotel Sorrento, a play by the Australian playwright Hannie Rayson that was later turned into a film. One of the themes running through the play – one of many – was an exploration of melancholy, and two lines in particular remained with me some fifteen years after I first read it. The first was a female character asserting that men do not feel melancholy, that it’s a particularly female emotion. The second was the definition: a sweet and pensive sadness. A sweet and pensive sadness. I mean, fuck, how do you go past that, eh? It’s a beautifully expressed idea when you hear it at nineteen, and I was immediately smitten. I don’t remember how it happened, or where it happened, but I fell and I fell hard, in a very, melancholy, fuck yeah, that’s the stuff for me kind of way. I still
PeterMBall
24/10/2011
Works in Progress
I went to Pulp Fiction (Brisbane’s Finest Specialty Crime & SF bookstore) and bought new books earlier this week and I’ve managed to forget that until six minutes ago, when I rummaged through my bag and unearthed copies of Charlie Huston’s Sleepless and the Zombies Vs Unicorns anthology and the latest Gail Carriger novel and…well, it was the kind of shopping trip that involved mass consumption, so it’s rather nice to forget about the books and unearth them once more. And there is, as always, a paper bag. And I have, as always, used the paper bag as a hat; there is no wastepaper baset in the study, so wearing the paper-bag-hat ensures the bag gets thrown out next time I’m walking past a bin. But yes, I forgot I bought books. It’s been that kind of week. On Monday I went up to Rockhampton for the day job, meeting with people and seeing places that are part of the project
PeterMBall
23/07/2011
Journal
Two things, with a final statement (Actually, three things, I’m just forgetful)
Yesterday I went to the PO Box and discovered three copies of the latest One Book, Many Brisbanes anthologies waiting for me. Naturally, my first response was sweet, free books, cause books that arrive in my PO Box are always free books by virtue of the fact that I’ve already paid for them and forgotten about it. It’s one of the more pleasant aspects of ordering books via the internet, especially if you have the same inclinations towards pre-ordering things that I do. Except this time they actually were free books, I think, presumably because I was tangentially involved in the workshop put on for the finalists in the One Book, Many Brisbane’s competition, where, basically, I showed up and talked about writing for an hour or so with Cat Sparks and an editor for Overland whose name currently eludes me Every now and then writers like to talk about how writing is a remarkably poor career choice, or at
PeterMBall
03/06/2011
Journal
Un-Moroccan Chicken and Un Lun Dun
It’s Monday morning here, but due to the vagaries of international timezones I suspect there will not be much of Monday left by the time Say Zucchini, and Mean It arrives in my in-box. Such are the drawbacks of living on the other side of the world, I suspect. Tonight I shall make the most un-Moroccan Moroccan chicken imaginable, given that it will consist primarily of pumpkin soup with chickpeas and bits of chicken in it, spread over a layer of couscous. The couscous, by and large, is probably going to be the best bit. Possibly also the only bit that qualifies as Moroccan. It will, at least, be healthy un-Moroccan chicken, if the Australian Heart Foundation website is to be believed, and that’s probably a good thing after the week of pizza that occurred when I was last chasing a deadline. # There’s a rather nice review of both Horn and Bleed over on the Living in SIN blog,
PeterMBall
16/05/2011
Works in Progress
So yesterday there was dayjobbery and tutoring and writing, oh my, with a side of doing the page proofs for Say Zucchini, and Mean It so I can mail them back to the folks at Daily SF and fix the various muddle-headed things I’ve done in the story. Usually there’s something painful about the proofing process, mixing, as it does, a multitude of how-could-I-be-so-stupid typos and syntax errors with the larger, more consuming fear that the story itself isn’t any good because so-much-time-has-passed-since-you-submitted-it-and-you’ve-become-a-better-writer-than-you-were-and-would-do-things-so-very-differently-now. The latter part didn’t really happen this time around. I’m still fond the story and think it does all the things I wanted it to do, and the bits I’d do differently I probably wouldn’t do that much better, so they don’t bother me quite so much. I’m not sure whether this bodes ill for the story or not, once it’s out in the world, but I guess we’ll see next week when it’s sent out
PeterMBall
13/05/2011
Works in Progress
Billboards, Peaches, & WIP Excerpts
This morning I once again started the day with music and dancing, although I substituted PJ Harvey for Peaches The Teaches of Peaches album, which is a slightly different mood to start the day with and one that’s much more likely to irritate your neighbors. Yesterday I had a phone call from my father which started along the lines of “yes, well, I can see how PJ Harvey would wake you up in the morning.” Apparently he googles bands when I mention them on my blog, just to get some idea of what I’m listening too. So, for my dad and anyone else following my music taste online, I’m going to recommend *not* googling Peaches while at work. I mean, you can if you want, but I’m taking no responsibility when you find yourself singing Fuck the Pain Away beneath your breath while other people are in earshot. Should you not wish to take my warning, I recommend Youtube. The clip
PeterMBall
12/05/2011
Works in Progress
Longing, Essays, Wordcounts, and Dancing to PJ Harvey
This morning I got up and, lacking sufficient motivation to get ready for the dayjob, put PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me on the stereo so I could dance around the house to the track 50′ Queenie while still in my pajamas. There are certainly worse ways to start your day, even if it does mean you’re five minutes late for work and the chaos that entails. Here’s hoping your day started just as well (and if it didn’t, I can recommend dancing to PJ Harvey to start your day tomorrow). # I mentioned this on twitter when I first read it, but I’m posting a link here because its just that good. If you have any interest at all in fantasy, writing, fairy tales, or just general awesomeness, please go take a look at Catherine Valente’s Confessions of a Fairytale Addict over on Tor.com. There are many writers of fiction who double as excellent writers of essays, and Valente is easily
PeterMBall
11/05/2011
Gaming
Emotion, Attachment and Video Games
So one of the things that happened at Swancon was this: I found myself double-booked on Friday night and sided with the Gentleman’s Etymological Society event rather than the Emotion, Attachment, and Video Games panel. This wasn’t really intentional – originally they’d been scheduled to go one after the other – but such things happens in cons and decisions must be made. I do, however, have several pages of notes I put together in preparation for the panel I didn’t make it too, and since I’m a waste-not, want-not kind of guy, I figured I’d torture the rest of you with a more formalized write-up of the argument I would have made. Turns out I had rather a lot of material once I started writing things up, so it’s probably going to happen in three or four posts over the next couple of days. Consider yourselves warned. Emotion, Attachment, and Video Games Part One: The Confession of a Computer Game Tragic I live in fear
PeterMBall
27/04/2011
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
This probably wont be my new author photo
Somehow people neglected to mention that I was having a truly dire bad hair day yesterday. I managed to ignore it myself, right up until I got home from tutorials, caught sight of my reflection, and thought “hmmm, that’s not a look I want to continue with, is it?” For a while now I’ve been aware that I’m hitting the decision point where I either shave my head again, or settle in for the process of growing my hair out. These are, by and large, the only real options with my hair – genetics have essentially eliminated all other possibilities due to a weird series of cowlicks and a tendency towards ringlets. I used to think it came from my mother’s side of the family, largely because my dad has maintained the same hairstyle since I was, like, four, but after his brief experimentation with forgoing the regular haircut earlier this year I learned that it may well have been the
PeterMBall
11/03/2011
Journal
‘Tis a busy type of day today, so I’m going to just ramble on about things for the breif period I’ll be home between the first dayjob and the second. Plus there are several workmen helpfully digging up the road out the front of my house, ostensibly to lay down something or other involving pipes large enough to crawl through, which inevitably means my power or my internet or my phone line will go out at some point in the very near future. # On the list of conversations I never expected to have with my father, the one that starts with do you have any Warhammer 40k novels I could borrow? is pretty damn high on the list. I also never expected the answer to be yes, but you can’t borrow them right now, but you can have the short story anthologies if you like. Yet, somehow, we had that conversation yesterday, and my copies of Tales of the Heresy and
PeterMBall
10/03/2011
