Peter M. Ball

Hello, lovelies. Here's the glorious cover for the Sourdough Compendium (Sourdough, Bitterwood Bible, Tallow-Wife). The pre-order links are here titanbooks.com/72850-the-so... but not all work yet due to circumstances beyond my control, but B&N, Waterstones and the 'zon do have preorder pages.

And some other books by me!

Honeyeater by Kathleen Jennings Unsettling baroque image of a person in a white shirt, head obscured by birds and flowers Art by Lindsey Carr, design by Christine Foltzer, edited by Ellen Datlow OUT NOW

HONEYEATER, a haunted subtropical tale, is now out!

Order through your favourite bookstore or:
USA: torpublishinggroup.com/honeyeater/
Australia: panmacmillan.com.au/9781761562303/

Boost Your Fiction: The Power of Objects and Objectives What's the difference between a messy story and a great one? Often, it comes down to having clear objects that represent a character's goals...

Boost Your Fiction: The Power of Objects and Objectives

What's the difference between a messy story and a great one? Often, it comes down to having clear objects that represent a character's goals...

When The Algorithm Doesn’t Love You Anymore

Here’s a dirty secret I rarely say out loud as a writer: I don’t want you to friend me on Facebook. I don’t want you to follow me on Threads or Twitter or Instagram. I sure as fuck don’t give a shit if you’re following me on TikTok.  I’m on all these…

Preserving Great Writing Advice From Internet Decay A 2024 article about the slow decay of the internet has been making the rounds of social media recently. In it, S.E. Smith charts the speed at which old websites and links become inaccessible and asks what happens when the internet disappears? Here’s an interesting statistic in the article: 38% of websites accessible in 2013 were inaccessible ten years later.  The websites get taken down, or restructured in such a way that old links no longer work, or individual pages get deleted. I’m very familiar with this phenomenon. In the years before I launched Brain Jar Press, I worked for the Queensland Writers Centre and spent a good chunk of my days advising writers about how to build their careers.

Preserving Great Writing Advice From Internet Decay

A 2024 article about the slow decay of the internet has been making the rounds of social media recently. In it, S.E. Smith charts the speed at which old websites and links become inaccessible and asks what happens when the internet disappears?…

Preserving Great Writing Advice From Internet Decay | Peter M. Ball Get more from Peter M. Ball on Patreon

Peter Ball on the internet, lost knowledge, @brainjarpress.bsky.social Writer Chaps series preserving writing advice from blog heydeys, and more (free access)
www.patreon.com/posts/preser...

The Most Valuable Page Of Notes I’ve Ever Written I've been re-reading old bullet journal this morning and found this page, from 2016, which led to the most important writing gig I've ever had: I produced this on my friend Meg's back deck, trying to sort through the complicated steps required to apply for a PhD and break them into tangible, completable steps. I basically broke down everything I had to do--and especially the things I didn't know how to do--and laid things out. I wrote this on the 29th of August, 2016. By January of 2017 I was in the program, on scholarship, producing three short books (

The Most Valuable Page Of Notes I’ve Ever Written

I've been re-reading old bullet journal this morning and found this page, from 2016, which led to the most important writing gig I've ever had: I produced this on my friend Meg's back deck, trying to sort through the complicated steps required to…

The Theory Of Constraints The theory of constraints is a business management philosophy popularised in Eli Goldratt’s 1984 book, The Goal, although it builds upon work by earlier thinkers, including Germany’s Wolfgang Mewes. These days, The Goal is better known as a book Jimmy Donaldson—aka MrBeast—used to make all his employees read and assimilate. Now let’s be clear: I don’t really get Mr Beast, nor like him. I think his whole schtick is emblematic of a fundamental problem with algorithmic social media, and I’m vaguely baffled he’s a millionaire or famous. I sure as fuck don’t know how he has a line of snacks, let alone an Amazon show.

The Theory Of Constraints

The theory of constraints is a business management philosophy popularised in Eli Goldratt’s 1984 book, The Goal, although it builds upon work by earlier thinkers, including Germany’s Wolfgang Mewes. These days, The Goal is better known as a book Jimmy Donaldson—aka…

How I Got From Hemmingway And Space Marines to Carver and Zombies

The assignment was to rescue a colony that had been overrun by xenomorphs. There were eight of us, nine if you counted the android, but he had malfunctioned after being hacked by separatists and could not support us as he had when I…

The front cover of Lisa L. Hannett's The Fortunate Isles displayed over a picture of a storm-wracked sea. There are giant swells in the storm wracked water, but a few hints of sunlight gleaming through the dark clouds.

Happy Book Birthday to Lisa L. Hannett's The Fortunate Isles, coming out in ebook and paperback today!

Available everywhere good books are sold, but we always have a special love for folks who buy from Brain Jar Press directly :)

Details: www.brainjarpress.com/product/the-...

I've joined forces with a bunch of fellow horror authors to do a little May Giveaway of stories and novels. Details here: books.bookfunnel.com/horrorreader...

Once you've read slush, it's pretty clear the greatest "secret" in writing is finding the writer's guidelines and following them the letter.

The second greatest secret is "don't send abusive responses to rejection letters".

My D&D origins story: In middle school, I was so nerdy that I had no friends and knew no one who played D&D, so I read my Monster Manual like an encyclopedia. In high school, I yearned to date a long-haired poet nerd, and when I finally found one, he was sorely lacking. Insecure, awkward. But.. 1/

The fact that the supposedly leading newsletter platform (cite needed) stays afloat by subsidizing Nazi content seems like a thing to mention if we're talking about what "we" pay for newsletters but it's the NYT so

The weirdest part of designing your own book covers is how quickly you find yourself ammassing a collection of images under tags like "19th century wallpaper" or "grunge concrete textures" or "waterdamaged paper" or "cracked leather" that will be used more often than any peice of art.

Labor wants to fix Australia’s housing issues – but there’s little hope for those not already on the ladder Without genuine reform, experts predict house prices to ‘climb by 6-10% in 2025’ and the gap between homeowners and those locked out of market to widen

Labor's housing policies will probably hurt affordability; SQM forecasts to rise 6-10% in 2025 www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Image of the review website Readers' Favorite, showing the cover of Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth (which features a Latina teenage girl in a cap, with a furry alien behind her and another squid-like alien floating above her), a five-star rating, and a portion of the opening text of the review describing the novel as a "dynamic young adult sci-fi debut."

Got back from vacation to find that Val Vega: Secret Ambassador of Earth had gotten this lovely 5-star review from Readers' Favorite! "Populated with a dazzling cast of humans and aliens alike, Francisco’s story is witty, moving, and impossible to put down."

readersfavorite.com/book-review/...

the front cover of Peter M. Ball's What We Talk About When We Talk About Brains, which is a yellow book featuring the silhouette of zombie hordes and the occasional spooky tree.

Yesterday, I passed the halfway point on the draft of a new Red Rain sequence, which largely means there will be a sequel to WHAT WE TALK ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT BRAINS at some point in the future.

Until then, you can grab a copy of the first collection here: petermball.com/GenrePunkSto...

Get Your Free Copy of No Good Deed Angela Slatter’s No Good Deed is a dark fantasy tale of magic, ghosts, and marriage set in her World Fantasy Award-winning Sourdough universe. Isobel assumed her wedding would be the grandest day of h...

We've been all about the new books this week, so now is a good moment to remind folks they can read Angela Slatter's NO GOOD DEED chapbook absolute free.

Check it out if you love gothic fantasy with folklore vibes, or you dig the Sourdough universe.

Details: offers.brainjarpress.com/nogooddeed

Started today with six ininterupted hours to catch up on writing and publishing projects.

Took less than an hour to end up with a pointless-but-ticks-a-box-that-allows-useful-things-to-continue 90 minute meeting in the middle of my free day.

The front cover of Lisa L. Hannett's The Fortunate Isles, featuring sunken boats in a blue channel with spectral mermaids swimming among the depths. The cover is laid over a green textured pattern.

We're extraordinarily pleased to open pre-orders on paperback and ebook editions of Lisa L. Hannett's The Fortunate Isles, out from Brain Jar Press on May 27.

Read a Sample: read.bookfunnel.com/read/em32gw5...
Pre-Order the Book: www.brainjarpress.com/product/the-...

Dutton: we must cut public sector jobs

Voters of Dickson: ok

Dutton: OH NO

Peter Dutton conceding defeat behind a banner saying Peter Dutton Concedes Defeat

hook it to my veins #AusVotes

Fuck, I needed this overwhelming sense of schadenfreude at Dutton taking the entire ship down with him #auspol

Sneak peek at the next @BrainJarPress book just went out via the newsletter. Formal announcement next week, after the public holidays are done in Australia.

Today is a pretty good day.

Haha! Returned from write club to find this glorious thing waiting! Thanks @brainjarpress for this @kirstyn_mcdermott brilliance. 💜💜💜

Six copies of Kirstyn McDermott's collection, Never Afters, on a busy computer desk in the Brian Jar Press offices.

The official release is May 6, but print copies of Never Afters are now shipping from the Brain Jar Press store if you enjoy getting your books earlier than everyone else!

Get your copy here: www.brainjarpress.com/product/neve...

Which makes sense, because I know my printer and their couriers have longe worked off the standard operating pricniple that I should order books fifteen working days before I need them.

But 2025 has been succifiently full of fuckery that I've lost track of things and assumed we fucked up.

So after busting my ass for twenty-four hours to get everything out, I went to check pre-orders at other retailers...and discovered that somewhere along the line I'd adjusted the release date to May 6.

And instead of being horribly late, I'm pretty much right on time.