C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 109

NO DOMINION general release!

It is my absolute joy to inform you all that NO DOMINION is now available for general purchase!

Via Barnes & Noble, for your Nook!

Via Amazon, in print or for your Kindle!

NO DOMINION is a Walker Papers tie-in, mostly the result of my Kickstarter-gone-wild. It has seven short stories and one short(ish) novel. The last two stories take place after the end of the Walker Papers series, but I don’t consider them to have any spoilers in them. However, you should really, *really* have read up through RAVEN CALLS before you start reading NO DOMINION. The author feels *strongly* about this. *looks fierce*

NO DOMINION itself is a short novel about Gary Muldoon, Joanne’s septuagenarian sidekick. People have been asking me about Gary’s story since the series began, and partway through RAVEN CALLS, the opportunity to tell it leapt up and throttled me. I wrote it for my Kickstarter patrons, and now it’s available for everyone!

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt.

But now he must leave Joanne’s side to face a battle only he can win. Because as their long battle against a dark magic-user races toward its climax, it becomes clear that it was not illness that took Annie’s life, but their enemy’s long and deadly touch.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not, and death shall have…

NO DOMINION

A Walker Papers Collection

Now, NO DOMINION is a self-publishing venture. This means, sadly, that you will not be able to buy it in the bookstores. (I’ve talked about this with bookstore people, in fact. I can do a print copy which Lulu.com will make available *to* bookstores, but Lulu doesn’t give a deep enough discount on non-refundable books (which this would be) for bookstores to just go ahead and order it so it’ll be on the shelves. So it’s not that I’m neglecting that potential avenue, it’s just that basically it’s not available in any practical manner.)

You *can* order a print copy through Amazon, or buy an e-book version at Amazon or B&N. I’ll get it up on Smashwords relatively soon, but since I’ve only ever sold like six books through Smashwords it’s not a really high priority right now. :)

I would dearly, dearly appreciate it if anybody who has already read it felt moved to go write a review for Amazon and/or B&N.com, and I would equally appreciate any signal boost you felt like providing. The problem with self-publishing, even if you’re a known entity, is making people aware of the book, since it won’t be on the shelves for readers to just trip over.

Those links once more!

Via Barnes & Noble, for your Nook!

Via Amazon, in print or for your Kindle!

Recent Reads: ARCTIC RISING

I’ve just finished Tobias Buckell‘s absolutely terrific ARCTIC RISING, which is one of those rare books that I enjoyed so much that I dearly wish I’d written it, but am also not flailing with regret that I didn’t nor would ever be able to write it. Instead I just enjoyed the hell out of it and am chomping at the bit for the sequel.

It’s near-future SF, set after the melting of the Arctic ice cap. More accessible and adventure-oriented than Kim Stanley Robinson’s brilliant Science trilogy, it is exactly the kind of climate change book that I want to see on bestseller lists, getting international attention, and generating discussion about the world he’s portrayed and the futures we’re looking at.

That sounds very high-falutin’, so let me also say it this way: when the worrisome McGuffin was revealed, I actually gasped out loud. That’s how involved I was in the stakes Tobias had set up, and in the characters he’d developed. I couldn’t tell you the last time a book made me gasp like that. I not only liked the main character and the supporting cast very much, but *loved* the portrayal of the bad guy, whom I found utterly believable.

You all know climate change is a hot topic for me, having grown up in Alaska where the effects have been achingly visible. Tobias is Caribbean, and is, I suspect, similarly motivated on the topic: low-lying island countries, like Alaska, already seeing the effects of climate change. The future as he’s envisioned it seems painfully possible to me, for good and for ill. A very good book!

Teaser for MOUNTAIN ECHOES!

I’d meant to get it up a liiittle earlier in the year, but by the 5th isn’t bad!

The first chapter of MOUNTAIN ECHOES, Book Eight of the Walker Papers, is now available to read! MOUNTAIN ECHOES will be out in March 2013, woo hoo! :)

What’s in a name?

If you’ve been reading my blog for more than five minutes you’ve heard me talk about wanting to write a near-future SF trilogy around the subject of climate change. It’s a passion of mine, having grown up in Alaska, where the effects of climate change have been brutally visible during my lifetime.

One of the things stopping me–well, there are a few. One is the amount of work I feel I’d need to put in to do it right, and an inability to see how I can keep making a living while putting it together. I am not known for writing SF, and although I’m passionate about the topic and a good writer, I’m not sure a publisher would want to take the risk of handing over enough cash that I *could* work on something that big to the exclusion of other material. They might, if I put together a strong enough proposal, but in this case “a strong enough proposal” would be research, time and work intensive enough that I probably might as well write the first book entirely, which comes right back around to the making a living thing.

Another is that I’ve got girl cooties, which everybody knows means I can’t write SF.

I mean, my writer name is (not deliberately) gender-neutral, but it’s also associated with urban fantasy and girly covers. So I’m not strictly certain the gender neutrality would get me past the door, even though the name is neutral. I mean, I don’t particularly care if I changed my name to something else (presumably gender neutral) to write SF under, except for the irritating fact that it shouldn’t have to be that way.

It’s not just SF, a’course; it’s epic fantasy, too, in many ways. Not that there aren’t women being published in both, but they don’t seem to break through to the GRRM/Brooks/Goodkind/Jordan/Rothfuss/etc levels of recognition. I know … many. Let us say many. Many women fantasy novelists who say if they were starting over, they’d use a gender neutral name or a straight-out male one. I know many women SF novelists whose books have made a splash on entry, then largely have sunk without a trace.

I don’t know why it is, except we are told over and over again that Men Don’t Read Books By Women, and that Women Don’t Read SF (or comics). This is clearly nonsense, given how many people I know who run against that tide, but the rote repetition of lies is a popular way to make them true.

I don’t know how to fix it, either, because we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t. Writing under a male name is perpetuating the problem; writing under a female name apparently dooms women writers to obscurity…which perpetuates the problem.

Anyway, me being me, the discussion does make me want to say SOD THEM ALL I WILL WRITE NEAR-FUTURE CLIMATE CHANGE SF AND IT WILL BE *BRILLIANT* AND I WILL BE BELOVED–

–but I couldn’t tell you what name I would publish that brilliance under. :p

Baba Yaga’s Daughter update

For those of you who have ordered BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER, an update:

First, if you’ve gotten an alarming message from Amazon about the book being cancelled or do you really still want it, fear not, this happens and SubPress is on top of it. The book is not cancelled, just a few weeks late.

Second, I’ve just talked to my editor there, who says the sample print has been checked and okayed, and that they should have copies in the warehouse next week, which means they should start shipping shortly after that!

So we apologize for the delays, but, y’know, you can’t rush perfection! Thanks for hanging in there patiently.

DICE, Part II

So right after we got to Dublin, a comics convention started up. Even the first year, which was held in a small cramped location, had a strangely good lineup of guests for a tiny con, and the 2nd or 3rd year they even had Jim Lee. This is because EVERYONE wants to come to Ireland. :) But things happened and the con disappeared for a while, and now it has returned with gusto. We had a great time, and I’m really looking forard to next year.

It being Ireland, and perhaps it being a convention, things got started late. An hour late, which made my complicated day considerably more complicated, but I had so much fun that nevermind that. :)

First panel was “Meet the Editors”, where Marvel editors Lauren Sankovitch and Jeanine Schaefer teamed up with Vertigo editor Mark Doyle to talk about What It Is Editors Do. They were funny and informative, although most of it wasn’t new information to me. Mark Doyle repeated the oft-heard truth that you need publication credits to get publication credits, but the difference in the comics industry is that making your own comics and self or web or whatever publishing them is fine, which is not so much true in book publications.

I then didn’t go to any more panels on Saturday, I think, because I was too busy fangirling at Kelly Sue Deconnick, who is writing the wonderful new Captain Marvel comic for Marvel, and meeting the creators of Roller Grrls, an upcoming comic I’m pretty excited about, and hanging with friends who were there, talking with artist PJ Holden, and standing in line to formally introduce myself as somebody who wanted to work for the Big Two to the editors.

Honestly, probably my favorite moment of the convention was standing in line for Mark Doyle, while a young man with an artist’s portfolio got his review. I couldn’t quite see the guy’s work, but Doyle was very enthusiastic about it, and at one point said, “I mean, you know this is good–” and then with the realization of one who has been in this situation before, said, “You know this is good, right?” much more seriously.

The guy seemed–I mean, I think he did know he was good, but being told repeatedly by editors seemed to overwhelm him a bit. And at one point Doyle asked if the artist would be interested in maybe doing some sample work, and the guy gave him such a “Ya *think*?” look that even from the back it made me laugh, and Doyle looked sheepish and amused. It was great. :)

Later in the weekend, when I’d sat down to talk with one of the Marvel people, the same artist went to talk to one of Marvel’s writers. The guy I was talking to asked if I’d excuse him for a minute*, and went to laud the artist’s talents. So that was pretty great, and really, I love seeing that kind of thing so much that even if I’d had an otherwise lousy weekend that would have made it. As it was, I’d had a great weekend and that made it all the better!

D.I.C.E.

I’ve been at the Dublin International Comics Expo (AKA DICE), which is Dublin’s rebooted comics convention.

Tell ya what, I’m feeling really enthusiastic about making comics now. :) I mean, that’s not unusual, but I’m ready to press on with “Take A Chance” and see what’s going to happen with it as a graphic novel, and perhaps soon do another chapter of that story. And–I do tend to think in completionist arcs, so when one of the things discussed repeatedly this weekend was short stories, it was something I listened to. So I’d like to put together a few shorter scripts, and talk to some of the artists I know, and see if we can’t at least do some web stuff, probably in Chance’s world, just to develop it some more. We’ll see, but I’m excited about the prospect!

It was a terrific weekend, and I’ll write some more about it in the next few days!

PW reviews BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER

I don’t typically read reviews, but periodically my editors will send one directly to my mailbox and I read it out of a sense of obligation. Usually they’re nice, because generally my editors wouldn’t bother sending me bad ones. :) So a nice BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER review from Publisher’s Weekly landed in my mailbox, courtesy of my SubPress editors, and it is thus:

In this strong collection of 11* short stories, a mixture of reprints and originals, Murphy (Raven Calls) returns to the setting of her Negotiator trilogy. The spotlight is on two immortals: the dragon Janx and the vampire Eliseo Daisani. Both friends and enemies, they cross paths regularly over the centuries, often drawn to and influenced by women. “From Russia, with Love” features the titular powerful Russian witch; “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” brings in Susannah Stacey, a would-be vampire hunter in 1870s Chicago, and Vanessa Grey, Daisani’s long-lived assistant. Murphy plays with styles and tone, injecting a sense of myth into “From Russia, with Love,” evoking hard-boiled sensibilities with “Chicago Bang Bang,” and lacing other tales with mystery, romance, and action. Ranging from vignettes to novellas, these offerings grant glimpses of a much larger world, fleshing out its history and pleasing series fans.

*pleased*

*10. I’m pretty sure it’s 10 stories… o.O

further on rookie mistakes

In comments on that last post, someone said: “I would like to read what you think should be thrown away. I’m not sure I’d agree.”

Here’s the thing: you’re right. You wouldn’t agree. But you would be wrong.

I have written entire books without plots. I am a good enough writer that I can almost get away with that, and without an editor who wouldn’t let me, in one case, I would have. And that’s what’s wrong with what I’ve been working on: I had something that looked like a plot, but it wasn’t really. It was interesting, entertaining encounters between characters. Some exciting things happened. Reading it would have been fun.

But if I wrote the whole book that way, a reader would enjoy reading it and get to the end and feel like something was missing. They wouldn’t know what exactly, just that it didn’t feel quite right, and they’d keep looking at it trying to figure out what was wrong and they wouldn’t be able to quite put their finger on it.

Which is essentially what I’d been doing in the 6 weeks I’d been working on the book. The really critical thing, though, is if I pushed through and wrote that plotless book and, God forbid, an editor let it slide on through to publication…

…then I would be leaving my readers disappointed, even if they couldn’t quite put their finger on why. And if I did that, then next time a book of mine came out they might say, “Eh, meh, the last one was okay but I donno, maybe I’ll wait a while until I get this one…” and that’s one way careers are destroyed.

It’s really not that what I was writing wasn’t well-written, or even unreadable. It’s that ultimately it wouldn’t have provided a satisfying reading experience, and *that* is why it had to be thrown out.

Rookie Mistake

For the past six weeks I’ve been working on starting a new book. Now, it often only *takes* me six weeks to write a book, and although there have been some distractions, taking six weeks to get started is really a bad sign. Usually when I don’t want to work on a new project, it means I’ve done something wrong. I *know* that, so I kept looking at it, trying to figure out what I’d done wrong. I reached 75 pages on the manuscript twice, and the first time, I threw out half of them.

This, the second time, I have realized that the book’s structure is fundamentally broken. I’ve been trying desperately to insert conflict into the story, and it just has not been working. I finally realized it’s because I’ve made things too easy for my main character, right from page one.

From where I’m sitting, that’s a rookie mistake. I haven’t done that since about my fourth published novel, and this is something like the 28th one I’ve written. So yeah, rookie mistake. A really, really aggravating one, too, because it means absolutely everything I’ve written is useless, including my synopsis. I have to throw it all out, and start all over again.

And this, my friends, is part of what it is to be a professional writer: looking a complete failure in the eye, tossing it, and starting anew. *mutter*