C.E. Murphy's Blog

art project: 70 and counting

Aight, this wraps up my Udemy course, which, weirdly enough, I started one year ago today. Even if I hadn’t started doing this project, I’d still drawn more in the past year than I had in MANY MANY years, so all by itself that’s pretty satisfying, but this project means I’ve finished it, after buying it EIGHT YEARS AGO, and that I still have about thirty hours of practice in front of me.

I thought the bricks turned out pretty cool in that one, and I’m informed the skull is better than I think ...

pissy about pokemon

yeah i know this is very niche and also childish and also by the time this posts i’ll be over it, but i don’t CARE, i’m PISSED at PokémonGo.

PoGo is not a well-balanced game. Has not, traditionally been. It started with 40 levels, went to 50 after 4 or 5 years, and the grind to get from 40 to 50 was incredibly difficult, way way way too hard. You needed 5 million XP to get to level 40.

You needed 176 million to get to level 50. Plus a series of different-per-level challenges to grind through for...

cycling: The Ongoing Bicycle Saga

The Ongoing Bicycle Saga has, I hope to GOD, reached its conclusion, she said in the wary tones of one who has been burned before.

The goddamn thing was, as previously mentioned, clicking with every half-cycle of the pedals, and the chain went right back to falling off basically any time I shifted out of second gear. So in an act of last-ditch desperation I brought it to the other bike shop, who had been rude to me the first time I went in there so I didn’t want to go back but having been to the...

funny kid :)

Last week I gave Young Indiana the new Pokemon Z-A, which came out the week before. The next morning shortly after he got up, I said, “Have you emptied the dishwasher?” and he said, “I don’t know, have you run it again this morning?”

I opened it and it was empty and, as I’d filled it at about 11:30pm the previous night, I said, “Oh! When did you empty this?”

Indy, mumbling: right before i went to bed at 5

Me: What did you say?

Indy, slightly more clearly but very sheepishly: Right before I went ...

Release Day: HEART OF STONE

HEART OF STONE returns!

Vampires and dragons and djinn, oh my! Welcome (back) to the world of the Old Races as NYC lawyer Margrit Knight discovers her hot new client isn’t just wanted for murder – he’s also a gargoyle!

HEART OF STONE is available in e-book at Amazon, and will be available in print by the end of the month. (Sorry, dropped the ball on that one.)

Very excited to have this back out in the world and very much looking forward to bringing the rest of the series to you soon! I LOVE the ...

funny editor!

LAUGHS

I have, for years, been telling the story of asking my then-editor Betsy Mitchell whether my upcoming book could have a woman with a HEAD on it, because the fashion of book covers at the time was for them to not. I knew the logic was that readers can identify better with women they can kinda sorta imagine themselves to look like (Betsy also added “at least on their best day, back in high school, while wearing an unnoticeable all-body girdle and just having come from the best hairdresser a...

Announcements!!!

ANNOUNCEMENT 1: I will be GUEST OF HONO(U)R at Octocon in Cork, Ireland, along with the inestimable Adrian Tchaikovsky, over October 3-4, 2026! This is an excellent excuse to visit Ireland, right? :D (Seriously, it is: Octocon is an intimate, cozy little convention where you really get to spend time with everybody, and I’d LOVE to see people there!)

ANNOUNCEMENT 2: Speaking of cozy! I have just signed the contract for A PINT OF MURDER, a new cozy mystery set in Ireland! I’ll be writing under the...

Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands

Recent Reads: The Cautious Traveller’s Guide to the Wastelands, Sarah Brooks – someone recommended this to me, IDEK who, but I’m grateful to them for it: it’s surreal and fantastic and a thrumming good read.

The premise is roughly that the moral equivalent of the East India Company has built a railroad connecting Moscow to Bejing, through the walled-off wasteland of Siberia, which has long-since become a surreal expanse of inexplicable and encroaching magical change that threatens everything nor...

Picoreview: Countdown

Picoreview: Countdown – this was clearly not ever going to be very good, but having Jensen Ackles in it doesn’t manage to bring it up as much as I hoped.

Countdown is an Amazon Prime vehicle for Ackles, and I can remember for about five nanoseconds at a time that it’s called Countdown: I keep calling it Crossroads, for obvious reasons (those reasons being “Jensen Ackles is in it”). It’s about a Very Handsome Man Who Is Tired Of Shaving and who is Kind Of An Asshole But Has Reasons For It! and is...

art project: whoa-aaaah, we’re halfway there

Against all odds (as far as I’m concerned), I’ve hit the 50 hour mark in the 100 hours project. I genuinely figured I’d crap out in the first twenty hours or so & have been baffled by peoples’ supportive conviction that I would, although my friend Kate pointed out people are REALLY ACCUSTOMED to seeing me finish creative projects, which, true! But those are BOOKS! I start & fail OTHER creative projects in public all the time!

I tell you what, though, I like this so much more than knitting. -laug...