Eclectic Projects 002: Eclectic Projects, #2

By Peter M. Ball

The second issue of Eclectic Projects features four original short stories and more from Aurealis and Ditmar award-winning author Peter M. Ball. The fantasy, horror, and science fiction stories in this issue include:

• The realities of high density living prove difficult for the sensitive ears of a troll in The Bridge Troll's Upstairs Neighbours.
• A time travel agent's night off turns violent when marauding Vikings invade On The Corner of Caxton and Petrie, 12:04 AM.
• A young martial artist questions her very humanity after she's rebuilt following a deadly accident in The Fighter.
• Cows, heavy metal, and karaoke unleash chaos in Captain Moo-Vell Takes The Mic.
• Professional thief Tallulah Wyndham-Pryce secure the aid of a vampire in The Shackleton Job Part 2: An Old Fashioned Exchange.

Issue 2 also features an original essay about the evolution of publishing scams alongside the internet in Here Be Dragons: Vanity Presses, Scams, and Publishing in the Digital 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 fiction collections include 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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eclectic Projects
• Release date: Feb 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922479426

Peter M. Ball

Peter M Ball is the author of more than fifty short stories and six novellas, along with essays, RPG material, articles, and poetry. His short stories and non-fiction have appeared in venues such as Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Shimmer, Dragon Magazine, Writing Queensland, and Apex Magazine, and has been included in several Year’s Best anthologies. He’s previously taught creative writing at Griffith University and the Queensland Writers Centre, spent five years as the manager of the Australian Writers Marketplace, and convenes the biennial GenreCon writing conference in Brisbane, Australia.

Book preview

Eclectic Projects

ECLECTIC PROJECTS

ISSUE 002

PETER M. BALL

Eclectic Projects

Eclectic Projects (an imprint of Brain Jar Press)

PO Box 6687

Upper Mt Gravatt, QLD, 4122

Australia

Eclectic Projects: www.PeterMBall.com

Brain Jar Press: www.BrainJarPress.com

All stories Copyright © 2023 by Peter M. Ball.

The moral right of Peter M. Ball to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Images: Pale skinned northern undead chief with blue eyes and dark armour. © FXQuadro/Shutterstock.

ISBN: 978-1-922479-42-6 (Ebook) | 978-1-922479-43-3 (Paperback)

CONTENTS

Thank You!

On Love and Hate

The Bridge Troll’s Upstairs Neighbours

On The Corner of Caxton and Petrie, 12:04 AM

The Fighter

Captain Moo-Vell Takes The Mic

An Old Fashioned Exchange

Here Be Dragons

About the Author

Also By Peter M. Ball

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THANK YOU!

I’d like to extend my thanks to the following incredible people who supported Eclectic Projects via Patreon. Their support is a big reason this book—and these stories—exists.

Margaret Ball

Jodi

Nicole Strickland

Meg Vann

Sally Ball

Jennifer White

Maggie Slater

Tansy Rayner Roberts

Dave Versace

Mark Webb

Catherine Caine

Kathleen Jennings

Stephanie Gunn

Lois Spangler

Kylie Scott

Thank you all!

ON LOVE AND HATE

AN INTRODUCTION

Time gets wobbly, when you write for a living.

For example, I’m writing this introduction 24 hours before Eclectic Projects #1 is mailed out to folks who pre-ordered in December of 2022. The project is officially launched, and I’m eagerly waiting for the first few readers to give me their thoughts on the issue. Meanwhile, I’m packing print copies into envelopes and testing that the eBook delivery system is working, hoping the Christmas crush won’t delay shipping too much.

In the mornings, I’m writing the non-fiction essay scheduled for Eclectic Projects #5, which will be hitting the shelves in May. I’m working on the last two stories for Eclectic Projects #7, thinking ahead to July. And, in the middle of a day spent shifting my attention between work done months ago and work nobody will see for months into the future, I find myself looping back to write this introduction.

Writing is one of those jobs where you’re always living in the future or the past, rather than thinking about what’s coming out in the here and now. Fortunately, I’m confident I’ll run a full year of issues without breaking a sweat. The success or failure of the first twelve issues will tell me an awful lot about whether there will be a second year, but I’ve got my fingers crossed.

This issue is, in many ways, a series of love letters and hate letters. On The Corner of Caxton and Petrie, 12:04 AM is one of the former, a short time travel tale I think of as fanfic for a 90s Science Fiction TV show we all forgot about, eagerly waiting for a chance to step into the empty space left behind when Sliders or Primeval was cancelled. I’m definitely tempted to come back and write more stories featuring Heathcliff Carter and the organization he works for (and I’m always open to reader feedback if folks would like to see more).

This issues other stories—The Fighter and Captain Moo-Vell Takes The Mic—are also love letters of a type. Both were written during a particularly ugly couple of weeks in 2022, when my non-writing job stressed me out and all I wanted to do in the writing hours of my life was produce stories that made me smile. The Fighter definitely did that, a short vignette that sketches out a world and a character I really enjoy, using one of my favorite science fiction tropes.

Meanwhile, Captain Moo-Vell is explicitly a story written to make my beloved smile.

Often, when I'm writing, my spouse will pop their head up and ask if I'm writing them love-letters. I argue that most of my stories are love letters in some form, a tool I use to earn money and build us a life together. It's an answer that doesn't always please them, so occasionally I really am writing something that tackles things they love such as cows and punk and heavy metal (my spouse, incidentally, is far more metal than I will ever be, but we have a shared love of Van Halen and bonded over Hot For Teacher not long after we met).

On the other hand, this month’s feature story exists on the other end of the spectrum. I’d been re-reading Ray Bradbury’s essay The Joy Of Writing where he argues that writing without zest, without fevers and passions and enthusiasm, means you’re only half a writer. At one pivotal point, Bradbury asked an intriguing question: How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or your real hatred somehow got onto the paper?

It had been a while, so I wrote a story inspired by my neighbors.

Like many writers, my income is traditionally uneven and haphazard, which means I’ve lived in some interesting neighborhoods. I’ve had a litany of bad neighbors from drunks to drug dealers to families who sole form of communication is screaming arguments and death threats. It’s a source of pride to me that I’m usually sanguine about such behavior, but 2020 tested me sorely on that front when our new upstairs neighbors behaved so badly folks three blocks over would come over to complain about their antics.

I'm not a big advocate for using writing as therapy, but Bradbury inspired me to try and capture the helpless feelings of dealing with these chaps down on the page. Along the way, it became about much more than just my visceral dislike of the folks who lived upstairs, because that’s how stories work. Whatever reality inspires them quickly gets subsumed by other aspects of the craft.

Meanwhile, this