The Early Experiments: A Short Fiction Lab Primer: Short Fiction Lab, #0

By Peter M. Ball

Fiction writers are taught to show, not tell. In each Short Fiction Lab, award winning short fiction writer Peter M. Ball takes one of his own stories and explores an aspect of the writing craft in the accompanying essay.

 

In this introductory primer to the Short Fiction Lab series, Ball presents four short tales for lovers of science fiction, fantasy, and horror.
 

Upon Discovering of A Ghost in the Five Star: There's a ghost in the Five Star Laundromat. The worst thing you can do is accept her balloon when she tries to give it to you. Nick's interest in the dead girl is causing problems with his boyfriend… but he isn't sure he's ready to give her up just yet.

 

Counting Down: Phil thinks he can catch a bullet as a party trick, but he needs someone to pull the trigger. Mattie isn't sure he's got what it takes to fire the antique Luger at his friend, but he's also caught a glimpse of the bats living inside Phil's skull and knows what it means if they get out.

 

The Place Beyond the Brambles: The women who emerge from the land beyond the brambles are always strange and always beautiful. They're also prone to returning home, long before the men who marry them hope they will depart. Ethan's wife has done exactly that, leaving behind a daughter and memories that only Ethan can recall. 

 

The Things You Do When The War Breaks Out: Henry and his dad are going to the moon for a holiday. The dinosaurs who occupy the dark side of the moon are no longer content to share it with humanity. When war breaks out and the moon is evacuated, Henry's father sees an opportunity to resolve some old grudges.

 

In the accompanying essay, Here Comes The Boom, Peter M. Ball takes on the question all writers seem to shirk: where do you get your ideas from? He takes readers through the inspiration behind each of these short tales and breaks down why a great idea is often the least important tool in the writer's arsenal.  

• Language: English
• Publisher: Eclectic Projects
• Release date: Jul 11, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922479556

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

The Early Experiments

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 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

Lois Spangler

Thank you all!

THE EARLY EXPERIMENTS

A SHORT FICTION LAB PRIMER

PETER M. BALL

Eclectic Projects

CONTENTS

Upon Discovering a Ghost in the Five Star

Counting Down

The Place Beyond The Brambles

The Things You Do When the War Breaks Out

Here Comes The Boom

On The Role of Inspiration In The Creative Process

About the Author

Also By Peter M. Ball

Join the Eclectic Projects Patreon

UPON DISCOVERING A GHOST IN THE FIVE STAR

At first, I considered switching laundromats.

I mean, sure, the Five Star was just two blocks from my apartment, but there’s something about a ghost girl by the dryers that takes the thrill out of throwing wet laundry in, paying your money, and settling into an ugly plastic chair to wait until the job’s done.

Even worse, the Five Star used to get crowded in the afternoons. If you walked in and you were the fourth person there, you’d end up using the last dryer on the left, close to the spot she haunted.

Nobody wanted that. The closer you came to the ghost girl, the weirder it seemed to be there. She’d stare at you and offer the pink balloon tied to her wrist, and your skin attempted to peel its way free and get the hell away even if the rest of you insisted on staying put.

I stayed using the Five Star because she fascinated me as much as she frightened me.

Besides, the other laundromat was a good six blocks down the road.

The ghost had been Ella Sabine once. They beat her to death, in the back of the Five Star. Three punk girls with a grudge against Ella’s older sister. All charged for the crime, but they convicted only two. The third attacker avoided prison for another decade, eventually sentenced following a second lethal beat down in Tasmania. These kinds of things make the papers. You can track the details if you desire. Most people don’t. We’re too used to seeing ghosts. Too used to working round them, just another daily annoyance like taxes, traffic, and those asshole friends of a friend you’re forced to encounter at said friend’s parties.

The balloon piqued my interest at first. There are plenty of spirits in my patch of town, but few appear with accoutrements. I’d heard rumors about the ghost of an old highwayman, down on the corner of Sycamore, who still manifests his horse and sword, and a woman out by Starling Field who holds a ghostly lantern. Both were ancient hauntings, the legacy of an era when ghosts earned more respect and fear from the living.

These days we’re lucky if a ghost manifests with pants to cover