C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 14

critical for author websites – summary!

So I got about forty responses from my question a few weeks ago about what was critical to have on an author website, and the overwhelming response was that these, in more or less this order, are what readers are looking for:

What’s NewWhat’s NextALL THE BOOKSReading Order, particularly if that’s different from the publication orderCURRENT! INFORMATION!

Okay, so this was pretty interesting! I’m gonna go into some of these more, and then touch on some of the less-widely-asked-for-but-still-...

Picoreview: My Lady Jane

Picoreview: My Lady Jane – actually quite entertaining

You know how I wrote MAGIC & MANNERS after a PRIDE & PREJUDICE watching-and-reading binge caused me to ask “what if the Bennet sisters had too much magic instead of too little money?”

Well, My Lady Jane feels like somebody did that with Tudor England, except their all-consuming question was, “What if instead of Protestants, England had shapeshifters?”

Now, lest you think this means we’re pro-Catholic in My Lady Jane‘s fantasy England, let m...

trying out kobo+

I am, with extremely mixed feelings, trying out Kobo+, which is Kobo’s subscription service, like Kindle Unlimited for Amazon.

Here’s the utterly ridiculous thing: I have zero problem with people using KU or Kobo+, so why do I feel weird about it? I do not know. But I do. If I were more likely to get through books faster, I’d just check them out from the library, but I’m all too aware that many, indeed most, of my books lie around waiting for months or years for me to read them, and libraries st...

Kitsnaps: Sligo Sunrise

I was up very, very early recently to go across the country for a PT session (that’s a totally normal thing to do), and there was a lovely sunrise going on a bit after I got on the train. My phone, which turns to greyscale at 10pm and stays that way until 7am to remind me to sleep, was still IN greyscale when I snapped this shot through the speeding train window, so I really had no idea if it had turned out nicely or not for another, like, 90 minutes.

But it had, in fact, turned out QUITE beauti...

art post: NOT-Saturday-sketches

I’ve been really, really busy and haven’t really made it to the Saturday night art zooms for a while, but I did buy a couple of new sketchbooks with the goal of filling them over the summer. One’s going to be a summer project with my son, I hope, just fast sketches stuff, and the other is a smaller one for me to just pick up whenever.

So I did a couple sketches this week. My rules were “no more than ten minutes and no erasing.” (Actually I did 3 but the one I like best/gave myself 20 minutes on ...

Picoreview: Hit Man

Picoreview: Hit Man: fairly entertaining

I like actor Glen Powell, and the reviews said he was good in this Netflix Original (at least, I think it’s a Netflix Original; it’s on Netflix, anyway), which they also said was sexy and funny and stuff.

To my surprise, it’s actually pretty sexy, which is very unusual for modern movies. And it is funny, if also sort of over-the-top unbelievable in ways that I didn’t just settle into, but instead kept kind of looking askance at. But it’s also apparently s...

a celebration!

Last week I had to go down to Dublin, and a friend brought me out to lunch to celebrate having signed with an agent. We went to Bar Italia, which is fantastic btw, and when the waitstaff arrived to ask if we’d like to look at a dessert menu, my friend said, “Yes! We’re CELEBRATING!”

They asked what we were celebrating, and I explained I was a writer and I had just signed an agent after looking for one for a very long time. They gave me, and then my friend, high-5s, which I thought was really de...

on the topic of flavors

Look, this is neither here nor there, really, but some friends have suggested I’m some kind of weird supertaster/smeller or something because I find wine and coffee and several other foods so off-putting*. I’ve never put much credence into it, but:

I can’t use some of our silver forks because as they oxidize they begin to smell like garlic, and it’s disgusting when I’m eating not-garlicy food. Nobody else in the house notices this.

I can only use certain dishwasher tablets because there are s...

Recent Reads: Species Imperative, Julie E. Czerneda

Along that whole topic of ‘books don’t have shelf lives…’

I’ve been aware of Julie Czerneda’s books since they first came out, and somehow just sort of hadn’t ever gotten around to reading any. I specifically remember the title A Thousand Words for Stranger, which I still think is a great title, and I specifically remember the cover art for the Species Imperative trilogy.

Well, the other day, book one, SURVIVAL, was on sale at Kobo, so I thought “yes I should buy this” and I did, and read it, an...

what’s critical for author websites?

My friend and fellow writer Emma Newman is asking, over on Bluesky, “When you have been to an author’s website in the past, what have you been looking for? What info is critical for you?”

I think this is a great question, and am always looking for the answers to it, myself.

I streamlined my professional website (catiemurphy.com) significantly the last time I updated it, and it’s basically just What’s Out Now, What’s Out Next, and Here Are All My Books. There’s a contact form, but not a heckin’ l...