Peter M. Ball's Blog, page 31
July 17, 2019
Cover Stories
I logged to Amazon this morning to see how pre-orders were going for A White Cross On A Lonely Road. The nice thing about the dashboard they offer is the way it lines up a whole lot of books you’ve published in a row. If you’ve made a decision to adopt a standardised layout, that means you get a neat little visual when you log in.
I’m still working through some of the older releases, bringing them into line with the standardised approach, and I’ll admit that I’ve gone back-and-forth between this and trying for a more genre appropriate cover for certain kinds of work.
Today, though, was the first time I looked at them as a whole and felt satisfied with the effect. The approach is very much an approach that is designed to work with my relatively limited graphic design skills and keep the production side of things fast, but theres just enough scope to try new things and tweak the design as I go and while they may not always scream “fantasy story’ or “horror story” or “science fiction,” I’m pretty pleased with the way it makes it clear that you’re looking at something Brain Jar has published.
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Available NowThe next stage is setting up something similar for print editions. The You Don’t Want To Be Published hardcopy is very much the prototype for a similar approach to back cover copy, but this could be the place where I start looking for a bit of differentiation between my fiction and non-fiction work.
July 16, 2019
In Which I Shall Sell You On Things That Are Not the Next Brain Jar Press Pre-Order
So I’m gearing up to release the next Short Fiction Lab release in two weeks, and the pre-orders are going out with a 99 cent price-tag in the US.
Naturally, this meant today started with me dropping a Macklemore Thrift Shop reference while writing up the promo for the newsletter, because that song always gets in my head every time I price something at 99 cents. Given that song was everywhere in 2012 you probably don’t need a refresher, but here’s a link in case you were very young, trapped in Antarctica for a few years, or you’re just feeling nostalgic.
Going down the youtube hole obviously led me to the Post Modern Jukebox cover, which deploys Thrift Shop in a swing jazz style and is just all-around fantastic. You can go listen to it here, and I recommend you do.
Which, of course, now means I’m reading Kelly Link’s The Faerie Handbag because it’s the greatest thrift-shop-based fantasy story going.
And while I should be trying to sell you on picking up a pre-order copy of Short Fiction Lab 3: A White Cross Beside A Lonely Road, I’m just going to quietly point out you can read (or re-read) The Faerie Handbag over on Kelly’s website for free.
I mean, I’d still dig it if you went and pre-ordered my story and all. It’s a road trip, and a ghost story, and a story about things falling apart when you’re expected to adult without clear guidelines for what that looks like.
But it’s still two weeks until Short Fiction Lab 3 drops on July 31. It’s a terrible source of immediate gratification.
In the choice between waiting and getting your short fiction on here and now, always go for the now.
July 15, 2019
Dress Shop Dog
A new dress shop has opened down by our local pizza place, and yesterday I noticed a giant ball of carefully manicured fur hanging out by the entrance while stopping in to pick up dinner. I found myself wondering why a dress shop needs a dog, and the answers I came up with will probably be the seed of a new story down the line.
The photo really doesn’t do justice to the epic, real-life fuzziness, but it’s hard to get a good shot when you’re hungry and the pepperoni is calling you.
We’re in week five or six of caring for sick pets here at Camp Brain Jar, transferring our attention from the first sick guinea pig to the second, who is having things much worse than his younger brother.
The stress is starting to take its toll–I spent a good chunk of my day having the self-care-isn’t-easy-and-it-isn’t-just-indulgence talk with myself, trying to shake off the increasingly-negative headspace that’s settling in. Doing my best to ward off the temptation to do things that are mildly fulfilling and easy, rather than legitimately-good-work and requiring effort.
I’d be tempted to drop a quote from Stephen Pressfield’s The War of Art about shadow careers and real work here, but I fear the book is in storage and its got that weird mix of 50% helpful advice about mindset, 50% bug-fuck crazy magical thinking about art curing cancer that makes me ish-ish about recommending it.
July 13, 2019
The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?
The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).
After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.
Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).
MY CHECK-IN
What am I working on this week?
I’m still searching for a regular writing rhythm at the moment–one of our guinea pigs is still sick and in need of care/vet visits on a semi-regular basis. This means I’m keeping my ambitions relatively contained: catching up on my thesis draft, which is about two thousand words behind where it should be, and getting a new Short Fiction Lab instalment uploaded for a release later this month.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Elspeth Probyn’s Blush: Faces of Shame is a book I’ve recommended a few times before, but I revisited it towards the middle of the week when I realised I was reluctant to resume thesis writing. It’s got absolutely nothing to do with my thesis topic, but Probyn is one of those academic writers who doesn’t sound like an academic–it’s very much a research story that weaves between the personal and the critical, anchoring concepts and epiphanies against meaningful moments in life rather than leaving them as abstract concepts.
The result is a book that is undeniably academic, but fascinating outside of the small field of people for whom this is a topic of research interest. In short, it’s a vision of academic writing worth aspiring too, even if it’s level of ambition is damned difficult to achieve.
What action do I need to take?
I’m about halfway through my current Quarterly Plan, but the areas of focus I’ve set up for the next month aren’t a good fit for the way life has played out. I need to do a revisit and update some of the projects listed there–either because they’re now redundant or no longer viable with discretionary cash getting directed to vet bills for the next stretch.
This has knock-on effects, as I tend to get lax with monthly, weekly, and daily plans when the quarterly document isn’t trustworthy, so I’d like to go in and adjust. My current rule is that I can’t add new things to the list before the quarterly plan comes due, but I can definitely cut the stuff that no longer needs to be there, delay some of the stuff that is no longer possible, and adjust the stuff that needs to play out in a slightly different way.
July 11, 2019
Telling Ghost Stories About Late Capitalism
I’m putting the finishing touches on a new Short Fiction Lab release this week, going through the story draft and making last minute tweaks and squinting at the title from different directions to make sure it’s right. The cover for this one is already done, so it will be a pretty quick production process one I’m satisfied with the story text and the author’s note.
The new story is actually a very old one, in some respects. It’s a ghost story, of a sort, involving lonely roads and two people who may not be in love anymore, and what happens when a road trip goes all kinds of wrong. I wrote a very early draft of it back in 2007, but it never seemed to fit together right.
Over the years I’ve pulled it out and tinkered with it dozens of times, taking it in different directions. This version…well, it started by going back to the very first draft I ever wrote and rebuilding it from scratch. Teasing out metaphors I’d only hinted at, bulwarking the central parallel I was drawing between being stuck in a relationship going wrong and being caught between life and death.
July 10, 2019
Romance at MWF & Habit Hacking
I was catching up on twitter and noticed my friend Kate Cuthbert posting about Romance at MWF. It’s…rather good news:
I HAVE HAD TO BE QUIET ABOUT THIS FOR MONTHS. IT HAS BEEN SO HARD!! I’m so so so happy that A Day of Romance is now out for the public! Come and see the devastatingly talented writers talk frankly and intelligently about writing about love at #MWF19 I CAN’T WAIT.
— Kate Cuthbertpic.twitter.com/8lTYXQEhRt
July 9, 2019
The Day After Two Weeks of Sick Days
Two weeks ago, the last Heartbeat log I put up on Instagram included the line “Realised the sore throat, aching muscles, and disrupted equilibrium may mean I’m getting sick (do not want).”
The next morning, I woke up discovered that I was right on both fronts: I was sick with the flu, and I truly did not want it. Work ground to a halt, the illness getting an assist from a very sick guinea pig that needed more trips to the vet and help eating every couple of hours.
I’m only just getting back to doing work-related things today, forcing my reluctant brain to look at things I’ve been ignoring for a fortnight without shying away because getting on top of things will be hard. It will still be a disrupted work day, because we’ve still got a very sick guinea pig who needs to be hand-fed every few hours, but there’s the possibility of getting stuff done around that.
Sick days are hard when you have a freelancer mindset (and you live without sick leave). While I’ve been physically better for a few days, my brain is still lagging behind in the foothills of anxiety. My subconscious keeps running around in panicked loops: “We’re so far behind. We’ll never catch up. This is why writing is a terrible idea–let’s just pack it all in and go look for a different job.”
My conscious brain is acknowledging that all those things are possible, but unlikely, and that doing nothing will almost certainly result in getting further behind, so it’s probably better to do something even if it’s not everything I want to get done.
The trick, unsurprisingly, is to cleave to the familiar routines that take thinking out of the equation: start a logbook page for the day; write a blog post to get my brain back into a place where it thinks about conveying things to an audience with words; open a notebook and put the pen next to it, even if I don’t think I’ll write.
The conscious brain knows that I’ll fret much less once things are underway, once the work ceases to be an amorphous blog of NOT DONE, AND OH GOD THE DEADLINES and becomes a set of COOL THINGS I GET TO WRITE NOW.
And the only way to get there is to poke at the work until the cool things manifest themselves, and start getting written.
July 6, 2019
The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?
The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).
After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.
Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).
MY CHECK-IN
What am I working on this week?
Most of my plans for last week were predicated on “when I recover from this damn flu,” but that didn’t end up being a thing until Friday and there’s been so much chaos at home since then that I still haven’t picked up the treads.
Which means the plans for this week are virtually identical to last week: spend a few days re-familiarizing myself with all the projects in progress, start the typing-up process of the handwritten drafts so far, and get all the little admin stuff done so I can hit the ground running next week.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Paul Heyman is booking pro-wrestling for the first time since 2006. This probably doesn’t mean much if you’re not a wrestling fan, but it’s huge news if you are–I first started following pro-wrestling week-to-week in Heyman’s Smackdown era and I’ve frequently gone out of my way to listen to his philosophies on booking wrestling, or to read up on the philosophies of guys who have worked with him (including, it should be said, a guy named Al Snow, which is how I ended up writing an essay).
What’s exciting about Heyman is the way he innovates, but also the way he pays attention to the little things–a tight focus on continuity and building threads by having people comment on things through a show. I’m enormously excited about wrestling for the first time in years, and I’m looking forward to watching how things play out.
What action do I need to take?
A new round of classes kicks off in a couple of weeks, and I am not-yet-up-to-speed on what’s going to be required, so I really need to spend a chunk of this week reading guidelines, thinking about resources, and actually logging the details in my Quarterly plan so I remember when marking is coming in and where I need to be.
June 29, 2019
The Sunday Circle: What Are You Working On This Week?
The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their goals, inspirations, and challenges for the coming week. The logic behind it can be found here. Want to be involved? It’s easy – just answer three questions in the comments or on your own blog (with a link in the comments here, so that everyone can find them).
After that, throw some thoughts around about other people’s projects, ask questions if you’re so inclined. Be supportive above all.
Then show up again next Sunday when the circle updates next, letting us know how you did on your weekly project and what you’ve got coming down the pipe in the coming week (if you’d like to part of the circle, without subscribing to the rest of the blog, you can sign-up for reminders via email here).
MY CHECK-IN
Keeping this short today, because I have the flu.
What am I working on this week?
Forward progress on drafta stalled on Thursday when flu symptoms hit, but I’m taking that as an opportunity to spend this week typing up second drafts of the first acts of the Exile redraft and Project Rad.
What’s inspiring me this week?
Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, which is a phenomenal program for writers as cooking is another industry where people dream big and deny the realities of standard business practices.
Its also a show where Ramsey looks to the development of young chefs working in poor environments and focuses on pushing them to get excited about food and potential, trying to fire ambition. we should all have such pep talk in a creative lives.
What action do I need to take?
Emial and admin fell by the wayside as I got rundown last week, so i need to take a day to get back on top of things
June 27, 2019
In Which Kitchen Nightmare’s Brings Me Comfort
Last night, my partner introduced me to Gordon Ramsey’s Kitchen Nightmares, starting with the infamous Amy’s Baking Company episode where shit hits the fan, then working our way back to the UK editions of the show which involve marginally less schadenfreude.
There’s a joke when I make in writing classes about writers being reluctant to embrace the business side of their craft, basing their expectations off a handful of outliers, which is kind of like trying to invest a million dollars into a restaurant because you’re a big fan of Jamie Oliver.
It wasn’t until the second or third episode of Kitchen Nightmares that I realised how many people actually do that, and how reluctant they are to take on board the suggestion that they, maybe, should try learning a little about how things actually work in established, successful restaurants.
It makes me oddly comforted to think writers are not alone in this particular behaviour.
