The Birdcage Heart Other Strange Tales
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| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 162 |
| Release | : 2017-11-30 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 0648176118 |
12 short stories those who love strange, heartbreaking, and unforgettable fantasy. What if kaiju decimated your hometown, but only half the population could see them? What if mermaids unleashed their wrath against Copenhagen using mechanoid war-machines? What if the man you loved wanted nothing more than running away to live with the faeries, but you were the one they wanted to take with them? The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales gathers together twelve wild and genre-bending fantasy tales from the pen of Peter M Ball, the Ditmar and Aurealis Award-winning author of the cult hit Horn and the Keith Murphy urban fantasy thrillers. These scintillating tales draw inspiration from myth, pop-culture, magic realism and Lovecraftian horrors, showcasing Peter M. Ball’s talent for blurring the line between genres and finding the sublime in both the everyday and the extraordinary. Come meet a man with a birdcage where his heart should be, the resident of Isla Tortuga’s most dangerous bordello, clockwork goats and smokestack magi, dragonkeepers, vengeful musicians, and frustrated public servants. Walk paths through briar-choked cities, deceptively ordinary towns, and an endless stairwell populated by tourists. Prepare yourself for the wickedly inventive magic and startlingly human moments. Whether you’re already a fan of Peter M. Ball, or you’re just about to become one, The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales is a debut collection that shouldn’t be missed. PRAISE FOR PETER M. BALL "Only Peter M. Ball's fiction makes falling down the rabbit hole feel like flying. Funny and surprising, with moments of extraordinary grace." Angela Slatter, Author of the World Fantasy Award-winning The Bitterwood Bible and Other Recountings TABLE OF CONTENTS - The Last, Great House of Isla Tortuga - On the Destruction of Copenhagen By the War-Machines of the Merfolk - The Seventeen Executions of Signore Don Vashta - It’s Not A Bad Job, Really - The Dragonkeeper’s Wife - On the Finding Of Photographs Of My Former Loves - The Clockwork Goat & The Smokestack Magus - The Birdcage Heart - On the Cliffs, By The Sea - Briar Day - L’esprit de L’escalier - On the Arrival of the Paddle-Steamer on the Docks of V—
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 216 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : |
For fans of the weird and enchanting, Peter M Ball returns with a third collection of speculative fiction stories that dance along the borders between horror, fantasy, and science fiction. These Strange and Magic Things collects fifteen tales showcasing why he’s among the finest writers of the strange and fantastic working in Australia right now. A zombie survival kit started as a private joke takes on new meaning in a failing marriage. A trip to the moon goes wrong when dinosaurs attack the anti-grav train in transit. The difficulties of high school prove much worse when Mike learns he’s a werewolf. A drunken party trick goes wrong when a boy with bats in his head decides to show everyone he can catch a bullet with is bare hands. Hit man to the supernatural, Keith Murphy, comes up against a demon who draws power from the wrestling ring. He’s too tough to gun down and impervious to magic, which means Keith’s only got one option - step up, play by the rules of the ring, and accept the possibility he might just be the local hero the Gold Coast needs. In These Strange and Magic Things Ball spins magic, horror, and pop culture together into an unforgettable collection of tales featuring rogue jinn, uncanny rock bands, magic bees, flying crocodiles, laundromat ghosts, haunted coins, cyberpunk gangs, and lost loves.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 28 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : |
Their final gig ended with two hundred people dead. Patrick’s only regret is that he wasn’t there to be a part of it. There were three things everyone knew about the band: they played like demons, sang like angels, and there was definitely something magic about the way they glowed onstage. Patrick’s still hanging onto that, 15 years after their final gig. All those people may be dead, but they were part of something special and he chickened out before the end. Now he’s back on the Gold Coast for the first time in years, walking the streets where he used to see the posters, going past clubs that have been turned into Korean restaurant instead of a home for punk gigs. He can remember everything about those years when he was a fan, and he’s loaded with regrets about the gigs he missed. The band were called many things in their day: Hornet’s Attack Your Best Friend Victor; Whisky-Whisky-111; All that Glitters and We Will Always Have the Lighthouse My Melancholy Bride. None of those names stuck. None of them felt real. And Patrick isn’t sure he cares what the band was called—he just wants to touch that feeling he lost, no matter what it might cost him.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 143 |
| Release | : 2015-07-15 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : |
Keith followed orders. He came back home. He freed his soul and laid claim to a magic sword. But Keith Murphy doesn’t have time to rest, because his sorcerous partner Danny Roark is out of commission and the end of the world is thundering towards humanity like a freight train on steroids. As the elder entities from the depths of the Gloom break through the veil of reality with increasing regularity, Keith is forced to assemble a rag-tag army of demons, seers, and reluctant allies to stop Ragnarök from occurring.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 52 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : |
Their music could be fatal, but their legacy lives on. Mia Dermott documents the stories of surviving in the back room of a record store, seeking a connection to the father she never got a chance to know. Her latest interviewee recounts a story of the band’s first gig, and the surprisingly legacy that her father left behind: the sole bootleg of the four-piece’s gigs that actually registered their music. It’s a tape Mia needs to find if she ever wants to understand why her father chose to die. And a tape the obsessed fans would kill to hear, if only they knew where to find it. Issue 2 in The Kaleidoscope’s Children, a mosaic series of uncanny tales set in the world of Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor & Other Things We Called The Band.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 18 |
| Release | : 2020-07-16 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : |
Read the first short story in Peter M. Ball’s Seraphim Plague series, One Saturday Night, With Angel (also available in the short story collection Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet). There’s an angel perched on the Nite Owl roof when Mike shows up for the graveyard shift. He thinks it’s the same angel whose been following him for a week. Everybody thinks Mike’s going to be purged before morning, Elvis and all the other regulars are telling him so. But Mike figures he’s lasted six days without pissing the angel off. With luck, he can make it seven and they’ll find some other victim…
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Eclectic Projects |
| Total Pages | : 48 |
| Release | : 2021-01-31 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1922479233 |
Cody Jones owes the corp a lot of money. Decanted from a cryotube with a mountain of debt and very few options, she works corporate black ops in Downside—home to the gene-freaks, gangs, and dispossessed who don’t have a place in the gleaming towers of Helix City. Cody’s latest job is simple: recover a fresh cache of cryogenically frozen citizens from a local gang before they’re bartered to the highest bidder. Deliver them to Bellamy and knock a little more off her debt. Pity the gangs have their own ideas about how this deal needs to go. What should be a simple recovery gig sees Cody and her partner caught in a conflict between the hulking kaiju-gangers and drug-addled zealots, and both sides have plans for the sleepers just might change Cody’s world foreve
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Brain Jar Press |
| Total Pages | : 76 |
| Release | : |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1922479519 |
The third issue of Eclectic Projects features four original short stories and more from Aurealis and Ditmar award-winning author Peter M. Ball. Dive into this issue to find: A glimpse into the secrets held by six cats who gather around a magical campfire in Six Cats Go Camping; A dedicated cosplayer who finds new purpose when alien's invade in The Chap Who Wanted To Be Captain Flagg; A mad scientist with dangerous ideas and the cowboy sent to stop him in One Last Job, Then Sleep; The existential crisis felt by those at the heart of the zomie apocalypse in Our Survival and Other Mysteries. In addition, professional thief Tallulah Wyndham-Pryce looks for answers in a den of inequity in part three of The Shackleton Job serial, Showdown At The Black Cherry. Issue 3 also features advice on managing writing the complex web of obligations that plague aspiring or part-time writers (equally useful if you're a non-writer with too much on) in Working Around the Ampersands: Tips for Managing Complex and Conflicting Priorities. Long regarded as one of Australia’s weirder speculative fiction authors, Peter M. Ball now brings you original fiction each month in his own magazine, Eclectic Projects. Peter is also the author of the novellas Horn, Bleed, Exile, Frost, and Crusade, and his prior short fiction has been collected in The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales, Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet, and These Strange & Magic Things. He’s the brain in charge at Brain Jar Press and lives in Brisbane with his spouse and a very demanding cat.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Eclectic Projects |
| Total Pages | : 77 |
| Release | : 2023-01-24 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1922479683 |
This first issue of Eclectic Projects features four original short stories, the launch of an ongoing serial, and one feature essay from Aurealis and Ditmar award-winning author Peter M. Ball Featuring a blend of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, this issue includes: ● Two ex-lovers with a bloody, magical secret who reunite in On Meeting An Ex-Girlfriend For Drinks At The Bar Of The Hotel Trio. ● Young hooligans in trouble with the law get sent to faerie to lie low in Four Mohocks, Sent Abroad. ● Two travellers trapped in a deadly quarantine in Sweltering Fruit. ● A reluctant photographer who shoots the subject's soul, instead of their face, in Box Brownie Blues. This issue also sees the debut of The Shackleton Job, an ongoing serial about the professional thief Tallulah Wyndham-Pryce and the otherworldly entities who contract her services, and the original writing essay On Heinlein’s Habits & The Rise Of The New Pulp Era. Long regarded as one of Australia’s weirder speculative fiction authors, Peter M. Ball now brings you original fiction each month in his own magazine, Eclectic Projects. Peter is also the author of the novellas Horn, Bleed, Exile, Frost, and Crusade, and his short stories are collected in The Birdcage Heart & Other Strange Tales, Not Quite The End Of The World Just Yet, and These Strange & Magic Things. He’s the brain in charge at Brain Jar Press and lives in Brisbane with his spouse and a very demanding cat. You can follow his writing life at www.PeterMBall.com.
| Author | : Peter M. Ball |
| Publisher | : Eclectic Projects |
| Total Pages | : 40 |
| Release | : 2023-08-08 |
| Genre | : Fiction |
| ISBN | : 1922479578 |
Fiction writers are taught to show, not tell. In each Short Fiction Lab, award-winning short fiction writer Peter M. Ball presents an original story and an accompanying essay showcasing a particular aspect of the craft or business of writing inspired by the creative work. The Story: Winged, With Sharp Teeth There have always been lands not mapped out in an atlas, and those lands have always needed heroes. Once, Steve had that chance to visit another world, but he stayed and grow older, finding contentment in his friends and his job as council librarian. In Winged, With Sharp Teeth, Steve learns his new boyfriend had a similar opportunity… and the winged crocodile determined to tempt Duke into becoming a hero hasn’t abandoned the quest just because Duke’s an adult. The Essay: Two Hundred Copies or Bust In Two Hundred Copies or Bust, Peter M. Ball asks what success really looks like for a writer, whether they’re traditionally published, self-published, or just starting out. From the expectations of other people to the secret ambitions that drive the writer, Ball explores the tensions that wear on a writer’s ambitions and shift our perceptions of whether a story is good, great, or disastrous.
