University Days

Once upon a time, many years ago, Peter M. Ball worked as a creative writing lecturer/tutor and studied for a PhD he never got around to finishing. Posts associated with this phase of his career are gathered together under this heading.

Shadows

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , , , ,

So there’s a  shortlist for the 2010 Australian Shadows horror awards available online, which includes Bleed in the Long Fiction category alongside such brilliant works as Angela Slatter’s The Girl With No Hands and Other Stories and Kirstyn McDermott’s Madigan Mine and a handful of books I haven’t yet come across but I’m sure are excellent ’cause, really, once you start with Madigan Mine and The Girl with No Hands I’m inclined to just trust the judges tastes – those books are freakin’ great.

So it’s a happy sort of day, even if it feels a bit odd to be on the short list because Bleed isn’t really a horror story.

The complete short-list looks something like this, and it’s full of names that I’m very happy to see on short-lists. Congratulations to all who made it.

LONG FICTION

  • Madigan Mine by Kirstyn McDermott (Picador Australia)
  • The Girl With No Hands by Angela Slatter (Ticonderoga Publications)
  • Guardian of the Dead by Karen Healy (Allen & Unwin)
  • Under Stones by Bob Franklin (Affirm Press)
  • Bleed by Peter M. Ball (Twelfth Planet Press)

EDITED PUBLICATION

  • Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears, edited by Angela Challis & Marty Young (Brimstone Press)
  • Scenes From The Second Storey, edited by Amanda Pillar & Pete Kempshall (Morrigan Books)
  • Dark Pages 1, edited by Brenton Tomlinson (Blade Red Press)
  • Scary Kisses, edited by Liz Gryzb (Ticonderoga Publications)
  • Midnight Echo #4, edited by Lee Battersby (AHWA)

SHORT FICTION

  • “Bread and Circuses” by Felicity Dowker (Scary Kisses)
  • “Brisneyland by Night” by Angela Slatter (Sprawl)
  • “She Said” by Kirstyn McDermott (Scenes from the Second Storey)
  • “All The Clowns In Clowntown” by Andrew J. McKiernan (Macabre: A Journey through Australia’s Darkest Fears)
  • “Dream Machine” by David Conyers (Scenes from the Second Storey)

The winners of the Australian Shadows Award will be announced on 15 April 2011.

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Next week I start tutoring for one of the University of Queensland’s writing subjects. It’ll be the first time I’ll have stepped into a university for about two years, and the nerves have already set in. I can tell because I keep having nightmares and waking up in the middle of the night, unsure of what’s going on but unable to get back to sleep.

This isn’t unusual. I always have nightmares the week before I start teaching. Occasionally they involve teaching Hamlet being performed by Gnolls, and being unable to explain exactly why this is brilliantly post-modern to a group of students. Thankfully, they  goes away once the classes actually start.

i guess that i could get crazy now baby

PETERMBALL Works in Progress , , , ,

I’ve spent most of the afternoon rushing around the house, MC5’s Kick Out the Jams buzzing through my head. I imagine it’s going to be something of a theme song during April – it’s certainly what I plan on listening to every morning this week (although I’ll probably cheat and cycle through the innumerable cover versions out there for variety). I’ve been looking forward to April since the start of the year – one way or another, it’s been the month where I get to try and reclaim my groove as a writer of fiction rather than theory.

The current plan for the coming month:

Do a whole mess of rewrites that have been piling up, then get the stories submitted
The problem with coordinating thesis writing and everything else isn’t finding the time to get drafts done – it’s finding the time to do the polishes and redrafting that transform those first drafts into something worthwhile. Over the last five months I’ve stacked up about six stories in this state, just waiting for me to revise and submit them.

Finish Claw…
Because there’s lots of stuff happening on Horn at the moment, so it makes sense to try and finish the next Miriam Aster novella while I’m all excited. Besides, it’s talking cats, a hard-boiled detective, a burned out actress from an eighties SF cop drama, and a oozing puddle of cat foetii in embryonic fluid – every time I look at the notes I sit there thinking “My god, I want to write this now,” so it’ll be nice to actually, you know, be able to do that.

Finish the next chapter in the thesis
Because work needs to continue, even if I’ve got the space to do other writing now.

The things you forget

PETERMBALL Journal , , ,

First real day of classes today, which basically meant I spent seven hours running around like a mad rabbit trying to explain things without a break. Am now thoroughly exhausted and good for nothing, but feeling that warm accomplished glow that comes from returning to work.

But, oh god, I forgot exactly how tiring first year classes are.

I shall do very little tonight that is not television, reading, and picking up a meal from Subway.