R.C. Murphy's Blog, page 10
June 26, 2014
Too Much Stuff
The other day, in the midst of research and promo crap and wrangling reviews for the ZSC, there came a point when my desk wasn’t big enough. Everything ended up piled on my bed. So I took a picture.
Not included: a full pot of coffee to get me through the day, equal amounts of water, All The Post-its, cell phone that wouldn’t shut up, and cats who meowed at the office door to make sure I wasn’t buried under piles of books.
Yes, the page flags are indeed shaped like severed zombie fingers.
June 25, 2014
It’s Not My Job to Make Your Life Interesting
Someone once said, “Only boring people get bored.” Not sure who, but they hit the nail on the fucking head.
Most of my life is spent observing other people and how they interact with the world. It’s a vital part of the writing process. I’m one person living one very strange life. But my way of coping with the world around me is not how Person X goes around doing things, and certainly Person Y wouldn’t even be caught within ten miles of where I am emotionally. (Most wouldn’t, anyway.)
Unfortunat...
June 23, 2014
Podcast-Thingie – Thank God for Pam
It’s that time of the year again. Grab your booze . . . and your headphones, and settle in for another profanity-laden True Blood review.
Spoiler: I’m still not impressed with this show.
Click this to listen to the podcast.
June 19, 2014
A Day Off
I’ve tapped my brain for blog topics this last week. Can’t think anymore. So I got a note to excuse my absence. It’s totally legitimate.
See? Legit.
June 18, 2014
F*cking Clutter
It’s late. I don’t want to blog. But according to the new regimen I’ve set for myself, I have to.
I did stop and clean my office first, though. That’s where this idea came from.
Over the last few months, I’ve traveled quite a bit. Conventions. Renaissance festivals. Trips out on the town dressed in head-to-toe zombie makeup. I’ve been all over the place, and my office reflected the chaos of my current schedule–jewelry everywhere, suitcases crammed in front of closets, books and bookmarks all ov...
June 17, 2014
The Fine Line Between Satire and You’re an Idiot
Humor is the world’s way of taking a few steps back to address an issue from another point of view. We see it a lot in movies nowadays.
Films likeScary Movie take the sting out of horror movies that actually, truly scared some people, and gave them a way to laugh at how silly it all is in the end. How many people were terrified to answer their phone after watching The Ring? I can name five people off the top of my head–because I dragged them to a theater six days after I’d seen the movie the f...
June 16, 2014
Always Working
Writers never get days off. Which is a hard truth to understand when young, idealistic scribblers decide one day over their dinner-time beer that they want to give it a go–they’re going to make a living with their words.
Guys, it isn’t that easy.
Writing is work. Writing fiction, even more so. Every single detail put on the page has to be far more based in reality than Joe Blow’s autobiography. Especially fiction involving magic, monsters, or the future. Why? Without realistic details, human mi...
June 15, 2014
Not a Creeper
Okay, maybe a tiny bit. But that’s the reality of being a writer. We can’t be isolated and hope to create characters who grab reader’s by the hand and drag them along for the roller-coaster ride that is their lives. Good characters, grounded in real emotions and actions, make readers forget they’re fictional.
Despite an author’s skill, there’s no way to fake real emotions without witnessing them.
I’ve probably written about people watching before. It’s one of my favorite hobbies. Lately I’ve ha...
June 14, 2014
Shameless Hour
Some of the links on the blog are outdated or missing. I know, I know. I’ll fix them sometime soon. In the meantime, here’s all the vital links you need to keep with with my releases. Book II of the Inbetween series will be out sometime later this year; Garik is with my publisher right now. I’m working on the final book of my vampire trilogy over the summer.
First up, I gave in and made a Tumblr. It’s mostly random crap. The unvarnished “Ooo, shiny” that comes out of my head between bouts of h...
June 13, 2014
Getting Old
I’ll be thirty in just under a month. Several times over the last six months, that realization has snuck up and whacked me upside the head. Here’s the problem, though . . . .
I don’t *feel* that old. Not really.
If I were to ask a random passerby on the street, most assume I’m around twenty-five. It’s a blessing I’ve inherited from my mother–who people constantly age down ten years, until they are told I am her eldest daughter. But it’s also slightly annoying when I have to go to an event as a...
