Peter M. Ball's Blog, page 5

Don’t Write What You Love

My birthday is the 18th of March. The anniversary of my father’s death is the 19th of March. This one-two punch often catches me off-guard, a double-whammy of anxiety and guilt that throws me off my game despite my belief that I’m feeling fine. As mentioned in the authors note for this week’s Saturday Morning Story, I honestly figured this would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks where I could not produce and post a story for my patrons.

Then Vulture did an article on Kelly Link, and I decided to spend Friday hustling to get a new story done.

My biggest influences have always been short fiction writers, and Kelly Link rates up there as one of the biggest. Stranger Things Happen and Magic For Beginners are two of my favourite collections ever, and half the reason I attended Clarion South in 2007 was the chance to get taught by Kelly.

In a lot of ways, her work and mentorship gave me a way into speculative fiction—2007 Peter had spent years in university writing programs, deeply immersed in poetics and post-modern narrative experimentation, and the fact I loved Conan the Barbarian and the critical work of Roland Barthes frequently left me feeling at odds with fans who argued “just turn your brain off and enjoy it” as a short-hand for “don’t critique or deconstruct the stories we love, lest we have to tackle the implications of such examination.”

(As if deconstruction and experimentation didn’t hold enjoyment of their own—I find it infinitely more fun than passive reception of a story)

There’s a really interesting aside in the heart of the Vulture article, which resonated with me heavily and got me back to the keyboard:

She said she doesn’t enjoy writing and only does it because she finds it “interesting.”

Vulture Profile: The Fabulist in the Woods

Rhetoric aimed at writers often makes a big deal of loving what you do. We’re encouraged to write for love, because there’s no real money in the craft of writing. We produce the books of our heart, because to write towards the demands of the market is to be labelled ‘crass’ or ‘a hack’. The subconscious message every writer hears is that you must love what you do, that you are not a ‘real writer’ unless you’re consumed by the writing process 24/7 (possibly to the point of self-destruction).

I’d spent two weeks feeling very grumpy with my short fiction and the Saturday Morning Story project prior to reading the Vulture article, vaguely dissatisfied because I didn’t enjoy what I was doing very much. The lock of enjoyment, thirty-eight weeks in, seemed to indicate a failure on my part. A good reason to think about winding things up and shifting my focus to something more fun.

Thing is, I undertook the Saturday Morning Story and the related Eclectic Projects releases to satisfy my curiosity: around whether it was still possible to create at the pace akin to the pulp short fiction writers of old; how doing so might change the shape of my career; what the impact would be on my process. I wanted to reset my relationship to finishing stories after several years of producing very little and thought pushing myself to hit a weekly target might yield some benefits.

Here’s an interesting thing about writing: it’s very easy to fight against your own instincts in the name of doing things “better” or “properly”. Writers who produce perfectly serviceable stories by pantings their way through the process feel the lingering need to plan and ‘doing things right’. Authors with a talent for fast-paced, commercial stories feel the need to write something fancy in order to achieve critical acclaim. Folks whose natural pace is 500 words a day, produced consistently and without a break, pick up a book like Stephen King’s On Writing and burn themselves out trying to match his 2,500 words a day.

Or, if you’re anything like me, you’ll fight against your natural interest in exprimenting with forms and voice in an effort to finally master the art of writing a chronologically consistent, vaguely realist story in third person, past tense (although every successful story I’ve written is anything but).

Not long after finishing the Vulture article I dug out Kelly Link’s collections, the Fabulist edition of Conjunctions magazine (issue 39) which introduced me to so many writers working in a similar vein, and a host of similar short story collections. I flicked through several stories which eschewed a clean, straightforward approach to voice and structure and embraced the stylised, discontinuous approach to narrative I’ve gone back to again and again since I began writing fiction. I found myself re-reading Link’s story The Hortlak three times, soaking in the voice.

Then, after weeks of working on a relatively straightforward story that played with a style I enjoyed when other people used it, I went back to a toolkit that interested me and started playing with a new idea. Twenty-four hours later—and ninety minutes before I was scheduled to post my weekly story—I had The Birthday Party finished and ready to upload.

None of this is an argument against pushing yourself or trying to master a new skill set as a writer, but it’s useful to remember that when you’re stuck and fighting against a piece, there’s something to be said for leaning into your comfort zone.

It’s My Birthday. Have A New Short Story…

Today’s my forty-sixth birthday, so I’m kicking off today’s post with the traditional unflattering birthday selfie. I gather these have long been robbed of their power to horrify my mother, but I kinda dig having an ongoing archive of my rarely-photographed face to reflect on as the years go by.

This year, my birthday falls on a Saturday, which is also when I post an original story to the Eclectic Projects Patreon every week. I honestly thought this week would be the first time in thirty-eight weeks I skipped a day because I didn’t have a story done—the week before my birthday is always rough for me, and rougher still now the 19th of March is the anniversary of my father’s death—but the weekly short story project has changed my relationship with writing.

First, because I don’t actually want to skip a week after thirty-eight weeks of showing up without fail. Second, because writing a story a week will change your relationship with your writing, and I’m increasingly confident of my ability to produce a short story in a day when the situation requires.

With twenty-four hours to go, I started a brand-new story — THE BIRTHDAY PARTY — and it’s now live over on Patreon. Because it’s my birthday, I’ve made it free to read instead of patron-only, so you can check it out in real time instead of waiting. It’s a slice of pulpy, Twlight Zone-esque sci-fi horror about social media and spectacle.

If you want to give me a birthday gift, give the story a read and maybe send the link to someone who may enjoy it.

READ THE BIRTHDAY PARTY NOW

A Delivery From the Printer (14 March 2023 Status)

The long-delayed delivery from my printer arrived yesterday and I finally got the chance to see both issues of Eclectic Projects side-by-side for the first time. In a lot of ways, these magazine issues are my platonic ideal of a book: 80 to 100 pages, self-contained, with a standardised design creating unity as things progress. Individually, the issue doesn’t seem like something of value, but stack two issues together and they become interesting objects. Stack twelve together, and they’ll like like an impressive body of work.

In other news, we’re on the countdown to my Birthday on the 18th and the anniversary of my father’s death on the 19th, and I’ve hit the traditional stretch where my mental health is wobbly. Taking it very easy on myself this week, and reminding myself that it’s not the week to be making big decisions.

ON THE DOCKET

Off to catch up with my weekly Write Club crew this morning, followed by an afternoon of graphic design and movving computers around as I try to tame my desk.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 20BRAIN JAR INBOX: 17BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 5RECENT READING

March tends to be the month where I catch up on romance reading, and I’ve been powering my way through a ten-novel boxed set I picked up a few months back. The highlight so far is Sarina Bowen’s The Year We Fell Down (not a surprise, as I’d loved her True North series back in 2020, but hadn’t clicked it was the same author).

RECENT VIEWING

I caught David Leitch’s Bullet Train on the streams yesterday, and was immediately charmed by its clear-sighted dedication to the movie it wanted to be. Back in the 90s, I was an enormous fan of Robert Rodriguez’s Desperado, a low-budget action film in which Antonio Banderas goes on a rampage to get revenge for… well, if I’m honest, the plot to Desperado is rather flimsy. What makes it work is its commitment to highly stylised action blending neo-western themes with Hong Kong action influences. The story is weak, but the film is dazzling and aesthetically different to everything else on the market.

Bullet Train reminds me of Desperado in all the right ways, a melange of styles and storylines that weave together. There’s a precision to it on the plotting level – what plot there is is flimsy and improbable, but it’s also not the point. The action and whip-smart dialogue is the point, and the improbable elements of the plot are plastered over with an impeccable commitment to internal consistency. In a world where many films seem mystified by the basics of Chekhov’s gun, Bullet Train introduces an arsenal of plot devices and weaves them together with utter confidence.

The Exodus of Boars (11 Mar 2023 Status)

As is customary of a Saturday Morning, I’ve put new fiction into the world over on my Patreon. I Hear The Call is a weird, slipstream-esque science fiction tale about a golden beam of light that calls to the inhabitants of a small, isolated Aussie town and slowly lifts them into the sky. We join the story several months into the event, when the military has erected a cordon to prevent anyone from leaving and the younger locals are doing their best to kill time by any means necessary.

1.

Outside, in the backyard, Lucas and Micky are shooting at DVDs they nailed up to the fence line. I don’t know where they got the guns, and I don’t really think it matters. We all collect stuff now, something to kill the hours. You just pick a focus and go house-to-house, sifting through the detritus of other people’s lives. It started with Mickey and coffee mugs, then collars from pets long disappeared. Lucas decided on guns, found too damn many of ‘em. Rifles and handguns and this antique SLR that Micky’s grandfather brought home after his time in the army.

It’s been three days since they brought the guns home. It’s a small blessing nobody’s said boo about fighting our way past the cordon, but that won’t last. It cannot. It cannot. None of us want to be here anymore.

All of us are desperate.

2.

Mikey got the idea to host a housewarming, complete with bonfire. I carved up the table with a chainsaw, while Deke invited every remaining woman our age and a handful of the woman that weren’t. He told them about the fire, and he told them about the games room, and he told them about the dope and then we were rolling.

The party was epic. Big fire, big buzz, the sickly sweet odour of pot in the air. Stereo turned up loud, ‘cause our nearest neighbours were three blocks away, and it’s not like the cops were going to come around and stop us.

The party is where it started. Katie Marduk proposed the game, and we were all stoned enough to buy in…

As ever, you can read the story over at Patreon for as little as a buck a month—which gets you all thirty-eight of the stories thus far—or grab it when it comes out in a forthcoming issue of the Eclectic Projects magazine.

ON THE DOCKET

Today is an admin and chores day, where I run the profit and loss for the last few months and figure out what the next three months will look like. It wouldn’t be a lie to say February was grim from a publishing point of view—it’s not my best sales month at the best of times, and selling books is a lot harder when the economy is bad—and the teaching/mentoring income definitely shored up the weaknesses on the publishing side of the business. March promises to reverse that trend, thanks to the duel release of Bites Eyes and Gorgons Deserve Nice things on the Brain Jar side of things.

Also on the list today: newsletter drafting, some website tinkering, continuing on with the proofing. The flat needs to be vacuumed and the kitchen needs cleaning. Laundry, and thinking through next week’s routine, as I’m getting worse at managing what gets done when with the constant switching of tasks during my week. My spouse is off taking care of family today, so I’m mostly trying to get as much done as possible before they return.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 38BRAIN JAR INBOX: 16BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 5

Award Season (10 Mar 2023 Status)

This week has been an embarrassment of riches regarding writing and publishing news, and just as I was thinking about how strange it would be to write a blog post with nothing big to share… BAM, the Aurealis Awards shortlists dropped with two Brain Jar Press titles included among the finalists (and many more authors who have published with Brain Jar nominated for work they’ve done with other companies).

Congratulations to Kirstyn McDermott, who wrote the fantastic Never Afters series these two books came from. It was an incredible honour to publish them, and it’s great to see the series get the recognition it deserves.

You can see the full Aurealis Awards finalist list here, and it’s full of great aussie speculative fiction for you to try.

You can grab copies of the Never Afters novellas from Brain Jar Press or wherever good books are sold.

ON THE DOCKET

Today, I need to write the last scene in tomorrow’s Saturday Morning Story on Patreon, finish the copyedits on the third issue of Eclectic Projects, get a new Angela Slatter book laid out, and get cracking on a freelance design project now the client has delivered all the details I need. There’s also a mentorship meeting around midday, my beloved is home sick, and I’m running on just a few hours sleep. I’ll be summoning all my resources to keep things on track, and full expect something to go off the rails before lunch time.

Meanwhile, I’ve got the detritus of another 700+ fraudulent orders to clear out of the Brain Jar Press systems after the latest run of fake orders, and the system will only let us clear 20 at a time. It’s going to be a long, irritating process.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 31BRAIN JAR INBOX: 13BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 4

Let There Be Gaimans (9 Mar 2023 Status Post)

OUT IN THE WORLD

I recently guested on the Pratchat podcast hosted by Ben McKenzie and Elizbath Flux, talking about Terry Pratchett’s non-fiction collection A Slip Of The Keyboard and the writing advice within. You can find the episode online now, or at any of the mysterious services that bring podcasts to your phone. Here’s the episode pitch:

Liz and Ben are joined by writer and publisher Peter M Ball for Pratchat’s first foray into Pratchett’s nonfiction! We discuss fandom, genre, Sharknado, figgins and even fit in six pieces from “A Scribbling Intruder”, the first section of Pratchett’s 2014 nonfiction anthology A Slip of the Keyboard.

Pratchett writes about the letters he receives from various kinds of fans as a popular genre author in “Kevins” (1993), before revisiting the same topic in the email age and explaining why he quit his own newsgroup in “Wyrd Ideas” (1999), both for The Author magazine. Then its time to discuss fantasy as a genre – both advice for writing it in “Notes From a Successful Fantasy Author: Keep It Real” for the 2007 edition of The Writers and Artists Notebook, and reasons why children should be reading it in “Let There Be Dragons”, a speech given at the Booksellers Association Annual Conference in 1993. Finally, best mates Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman tell us how they feel about each other, Terry in “Neil Gaiman: Amazing Master Conjuror” for the Boskone 39 convention booklet (2002), and Neil in his Foreword for A Slip of the Keyboard (2014).

As we’ve discussed before, Pratchett was never one to let a good idea only be used once – and you may have heard him talk to some of the themes in these pieces when being interviewed. Short stories may have cost him blood, as he used to say, but he never lost his journalistic mojo for writing fact and opinion – or replying to reader mail!

It’s been years since I got to go out and talk about stuff as a writer, rather than a publisher or an even organiser, and I had an extraordinary amount of fun nattering out about Pratchett (and more).

JOIN THE PRATCHETT CHAT HERE ON THE DOCKET

As predicted, I’ve spent the bulk of the last forty-eight hours shipping orders for Gorgons Deserve Nice Things (and other Brain Jar Press books—this seems to be the release where everyone caught up on releases they missed). We also announced the last book in Meg Vann’s InSecurity Triptych, Crawlspace, which will come out in May.

Brain Jar store got hit by another round of fraudulent orders yesterday. Once again, none of them are being processed as actual orders, but there’s the whole time-consuming process of clearing out the back end and dealing with the our payment processor to see if we can stop things from happening. There’s a chance it may involve investing in new and not-entirely-cheap services, which is probably the point where I need to rethink the current set-up.

Going a bit bonkers because our printer apparently shipped a recent order of books back on the 23rd of Feb, but the tracking is showing one of those codes that could mean “we forgot to process this properly, and the books are nearly there” and could mean “we’ve left this sitting on the dock, waiting for pick-up, for the better part of two weeks.” One of these is a frustrating annoyance, the other is a catastrophic problem that I should be fixing now, so not knowing which is in play is frustrating.

There’s also a mentee meeting this afternoon and I still need to finish a story for this week’s Patreon entry, plus I’ve almost got the March issue whipped into shape and ready to send to the printer (although, given the above, I really need to be expanding my lead time on these).

“Become a publisher,” they said. “It’ll be fun.” (And it is, mostly, but some days it’s all just a bit much to manage).

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 29BRAIN JAR INBOX: 22BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 4

Status: 8 Mar 2023

The latest short story collection from Brain Jar Press, Tansy Rayner Roberts’ Gorgons Deserve Nice Things, went on sale yesterday and the response has been phenomenal. Gorgons is our most pre-ordered book in two years, and while we shipped the bulk of those over a month ago, there’s also been a steady stream of first day sales to keep things bubbling along. By the standards of small press publishing—or, at least, my little corner of it—it’s on the road to being our smash hit for 2023.

Here’s the blurb, for the curious:

“We lived in a world that did not allow women to breathe; how could we be anything but monsters?”

Tansy Rayner Roberts retells the stories of seven women from Greek mythology, giving voice to the scorned, the sidelined, and the monstrous.

A young gorgon finds acceptance at the Medusa Club. Atalanta spills the truth behind the myth of the Argonauts. Scylla suffers through a series of terrible college roommates. Handmaids in Sparta get more than they bargained for when they interfere in their queen’s correspondence with a Trojan prince. A comparative mythology graduate finds herself at a speed-dating night packed with dodgy gods. Behind a velvet rope, a queenly Minotaur presides over a roller disco. Persephone shares her story via a series of pomegranate recipes.

Deliciously mythic and delightfully funny, Gorgons Deserve Nice Things delivers new takes on ancient stories, reinvigorating them with modern perspectives and settings. Showcasing the craft and insight that made her one of Australia’s most beloved short fiction writers, this collection sees Roberts at her wry, subversive best

PRAISE FOR GORGONS DESERVE NICE THINGS

“A perfect concoction of Greek myths revisited, rewilded, and remade. Bite-sized and blazing with wit and rage these stories will delight. Gorgons deserve nice things, and readers of myth and fantasy deserve this most wonderful of books.” – Trent Jamieson, author of Day Boy and The Stone Road

“This collection is an absolute delight. Tansy Rayner Roberts’ take on Greek mythology is sometimes savage, sometimes witty, always written with elegance, and often downright hilarious.  The stories are insightful, reflecting the author’s deep knowledge of her source material. Five stars from me!” – Juliet Marillier, author of the Blackthorn & Grim and Warrior Bards series

FIND OUT MORE AT BRAINJARPRESS.COM

Right, then. Now that I’ve done my bit to pay the bills and keep the cat in kibble…

ON THE DOCKET

Shipping books will be a big part of my day, obviously, but I’ve also got the soft launch of the next Brain Jar Press book and a bunch of other titles to push forward. At some point, I definitely need ot sit down and work on this week’s short story for Patreon, and prep Eclectic Projects 3 to go to the printer.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 27BRAIN JAR INBOX: 23BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 4

Release days—particularly big release days—always blow out my email numbers as there’s a chaotic stream of emails coming in alerting us to new orders, books going live on various sales platforms, and checking in on folks to make sure everything’s running smoothly.

I’ll be attempting to winnow those numbers down before the end of the day.

Status: 6 Mar 2023

We cleaned out the storage space chaos at the top of the wardrobe over the weekend and assembled an impressive list of rubbish, old clothes to be donated, and a graveyard of dead and unused modems to transport to a recycling centre. Among the detritus was a promotional postcard for 2009s Interfictions II anthology that’s been blue-tacked to the wall of multiple offices, but never found its way onto the walls of the current flat because there’s no actual office space.

I loved this anthology series and the sponsoring org, the Interstitial Arts Foundation, which always seemed to be a place where I found interesting work that pushed boundaries. Both strike me as an artifact of a very different era, where conversations about art and digital publishing focused on what you could do with the new tools and distribution methods. These days, I feel like the voices focused on what you should do typically drown out everything else, and the focus lies on replicating the space once occupied by mid-list titles. There’s still some excitements there—digital publishing spaces seem to grow new cult-hit subgenres that boom out of nowhere—but it’s harder to find the wild, experimental stuff.

(This, of course, assumes that I’ve not become so old, isolated, and spoiled-by-algorithms that I simply miss the wild experimental stuff. Odds are, this is the stronger possibility…)

ON THE DOCKET

Today there are copyedits to process and a new book announcement to organise on the Brain Jar Press front, and we’re definitely in my last-day-to-to-finalise-Eclectic-Projects-003 before I blow the end of the month publishing date. There’s a meeting with a writing mentee this afternoon which will require some prep.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 15BRAIN JAR INBOX: 13BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 4

There’s more movement on these three than the numbers would suggest, especially the personal inbox which sees a pretty constant flow of new stuff that needs handling.

RECENT VIEWING

I talked about Cocaine Bear in Saturday’s post, but I’m flagging that my beloved and I have started working our way through Star Trek: Enterprise and just hit the middle of the first season. The passage of two decades has rendered the series an oddly fascinating experience—it’s part of the transition between purely episodic television and the slow drift towards the aesthetics of Jason Mittel’s Complex TV where the expectation of repeated watching on DVD (or streaming) drives more ambitious, arc-driven storytelling. You can see the echoes of what’s to come in Enterprise, but it’s also oddly milquetoast and there’s so damn much of it.

I keep marveling at the fact that all TV used to be like this, aimed at a general viewing episode that might see one or two episodes and rarely follow the continuity, with the occasional bright spot where someone took chances.

Status: 4 Mar 2023

My beloved and I went out to the movies last night, having decided the opportunity to see Elizabeth Banks’ Cocaine Bear on the big screen was worth the stress of being out among large crowds of people. It was definitely our kind of movie, and delivered exactly what we’d hoped: a drugged out bear pulling people apart, enough subplot to keep the action meaningful, and the occasional over-the top moment.

Cocaine Bear is a movie that knows exactly what it’s doing. It knows you’ve come in to cheer to the bear on, not care about any of the human characters. My primary fear going in was that it’d break the internal verisimilitude of the world in the name of ‘humour’ (aka the Sharknado 3 issue), but it was more restrained than I expected on that front (although my definition of restraint is not going to be shared by everyone).

NEW WORK

My latest short story, Or For Eternity Hold Your Piece, goes live on Patreon in a little under two hours. It’s not the piece I’ve been working on all this week, but another I’ve been tinkering with in the background where I played with the kind of maximalism that permeated James Wan’s Aquaman. A pair of monster hunters go to disrupt a wedding between two otherworldly entities, but their plans go awry when more than one guest objects to the impending nuptials.

You can get this and—Gods, this is adding up—thirty-five other stories by signing up for as little as a buck a month, with new work coming every week.

JOIN THE PATREONON THE DOCKET

Saturdays are a bit of a wildcard on the projects front, as my beloved is home and it’s nominally the day to catch up on chores. The rest of the day will be spent doing all the distributor uploads I didn’t have time to do yesterday.

After the success of implementing Tiago Forte’s One Touch Email system earlier in the week, I’ve looped around to his Second Brain system and started plotting how to integrate it with my workload a little better. This mostly means revising his book and looking at my current process, noting problems to solve (how to integrate a physical journal and electronic note system) and weaknesses in my approach (great at capture, terrible at processing), then logging things to try.

PETER M. BALL INBOX: 10BRAIN JAR INBOX: 14BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 6

Status: 3 Mar 2023

Sent out my first newsletter since switching my provider away from Mailchimp, so it’s a bit of a nervewracking morning spent watching analytics and trying to figure out if I’ve made a terrible mistake. I’m pretty sure I haven’t, because Mailchimp was making it increasingly clear I wasn’t the kind of customer they were trying to keep.

I’ve been meaning to pull the trigger on the switch for a while, but yesterday’s “go out and be an author in public” hangover pushed me onto my zombie mode task list for the first time in a long while.

ON THE DOCKET

No meetings today, which means today is 100% devoted to getting tomorrow’s story ready for Patreon. The current draft lives in two different notebooks, scribbled around the edges of other tasks this week, so today is spent figuring out what I’m trying to do and how to make it good.

Time remaining will be spent getting two books ready to go to the distributors, and doing my weekly review of tasks to ensure I’ve not lost track of too many things as the week wound on.

BRAIN JAR INBOX: 13PETER M. BALL INBOX: 15BRAIN JAR SUBMISSION QUEUE: 6