C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 10

are we retrospectiving?

Are we doing the 2024 Retrospective thing? Yeah? We are? Okay, well, I did a metric shit tonne this year, and I know it, and of course I also didn’t get anything like nearly as much as I needed or wanted to done. But let’s focus on the positive.

I wrote in the region of 400K words, I think, with 4 books (WEAR WOLF, DEATH OF AN IRISH DRUID (out in January), OCTOBEARFEST and PARTRIDGE IN A BEAR TREE), 2 novellas (LION ON LOAN, KOALAFIED FOR LOVE), a massive revision which will hopefully sell in th...

TBR shelf

Over on Bluesky one of my friends was doing a “31 days of books on my to-read shelf,” listicle thing. I thought that was a good ‘un, so I started doing one too. I thought I’d port it over here. I’m really sorry but I’m tired and lazy and am only going to link to Amazon (all links are affiliate, I will earn some bitty percentage if you click through and use my links, etc etc etc) for these titles instead of doing the whole kit & kaboodle but if there are books I particularly think you should take...

Merry & Happy, All.

Merry and Happy to those as celebrates, and peace and love to all as doesn’t.

…which is not to suggest those what celebrates shouldn’t have peace and love, or that those as don’t should not be merry and happy. :)

For Christmas, I got dishcloth yarn and a raging tendency toward idiotic impulses which led me to knit an entire dishcloth today (which would be one thing if I could knock one out in an hour the way they claim proficient knitters can, but, uh, no). I will now have to not knit anything f...

20 years!

This week marks the 20th anniversary of me becoming a full-time writer!

I’ve published 52 books in that time (with 2 more — PARTRIDGE IN A BEAR TREE and DEATH OF AN IRISH DRUID, do feel free to preorder :D — due out in the next 8 weeks), 13 novellas, a dozen or so short stories not associated with longer collections, and a graphic novel.

That seems like quite a lot, tbh. And I’m sure I’m missing some short stories and things, but overall it’s probably close enough.

I’m currently working on a pro...

knitting – ten days

I’ve been knitting to keep myself offline/from doomscrolling, and it’s working pretty well except, as with everything I ever do, I’ve overdone it and my hands would like me to stop that nonsense now please. At four rows a day, which is what I’m now limiting myself to, I’m probably not quite overdoing it, but I’m not going to finish this thing in thirty days, which had been my goal. I should probably embrace the idea that it’ll keep me offline longer if I keep working on it slowly and steadily.

...

now that i can fill a bobbin…

..I have far less excuse to not sew. I mean, yes, time and all that, but honestly, it’s not that I don’t have time, it’s that I spend A GREAT DEAL of my not-working time fucking about on the internet to no good purpose. And as I keep mumbling about, I do have ambitions to be doing stuff that will cause me to NOT fuck about on the internet (and i’m getting better about it! I genuinely am!), but a thing I learned doing four days of all-consuming sewing is that having a SPECIFIC, not nebulous/ideal...

dreams, elfquest and KU

I…am mostly staying off social media right now (blogging doesn’t count). I’m posting a little, mostly about the knitting I’m doing to keep myself off social media, and to a lesser degree, about the book coming out tomorrow. But I can barely cope with my own emotions, and am finding other peoples’ to be overwhelming. So. I blog and I write. And I knit, and whatever else comes to mind that isn’t doomscrolling.

I also have frickin’ weird dreams, one of which was discovering at a SFF con that I was ...

Release Day: OctoBEARfest!

It’s release day for OctoBEARfest!

This is a spinoff from the Virtue Shifters series, a direct sequel to HOLD MY BEAR and KOALAFIED FOR LOVE, and since I’ve been planning it for YEARS it was very satisfying to get to finally write it. :D

Early readers have been exceptionally positive about this one, which makes me very happy, obviously, but one of the things that makes me especially happy is that some of them said things like “it was like going to a really good music gig” and “it’s like happy so...

new tablet!

I made a DECISION about the Android tablet vs a new Surface Pro, which ultimately came down to the question of: do I want to be able to read comics on my new device, or write? Because Android has the Marvel Unlimited app, which Windows does not, but Windows has the Scrivener app, which Android does not.

I decided in favor of reading comics. LOL. Possibly not the world’s best choice, but OTOH, look, the Surface isn’t dead yet, and also, I CAN write in not-Scrivener, I’ve just gotten used to it. S...

Halloween costume!

A bit late to be sharing, but my son wanted to be a Fortnite-inspired Doctor Doom for Halloween, and I spent more or less every waking moment for a week working on that costume in one way or another. First, a concept drawing:

The fabric available in town was olive green so I did the concept in olive and darker green trim, but Indy wanted gold trim, which was going to look terrible with the olive, so I went to Dublin to search for a darker green fabric, and came away satisfied and also with way ...