C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 15

The Great Tisane Experiment

My workplace is, as you will no doubt have heard me complain vociferously if you follow me elsewhere, Cold. I am colder in general in Ireland than I was in Alaska, which Irish people keep telling me is due to it being a wet cold, but as I’m colder inside rather than outside, I think the fundamental problem is a combination of lousy insulation and a radically different idea as to what constitutes an acceptable indoor temperature.

(And the outside door, which I am unfortunately close to, just stuc...

how many words is that, anyway?

Whilst I was being celebratory about 50 published books, one of my friends asked how many words that was, anyway.

Anybody wanna take a guess? (You can put it in the comments BEFORE you finish reading this post. I’ll put some spoiler space in, or something. :))

The thing is, I used to have a pretty good idea, actually. I’d kinda kept track up through the end of the publication of the Walker Papers, but that was…a while ago now. So I had to go add it up. And I did include the standalone novellas, ...

Release Day: DEATH BY IRISH WHISKEY

Today is the release day for DEATH BY IRISH WHISKEY!

Do you know what’s special about this book? (Go on, guess, I’ll wait.)

(No, I won’t, never mind, I’m impatient.)

It is my FIFTIETH PUBLISHED NOVEL.

FIFTY. PUBLISHED. NOVELS. That’s a lot! A LOT a lot!

One of the two items I remember on my bucket list* that I wrote when I was about 17 was “have 50 books published by the time I’m 50.” I admit that in that scenario, I was thinking of book #50 coming out before I turned 50, rather than ‘in my 50th...

Process Post: on edit letters

There was a discussion going on over on Bluesky about dealing with edit letters, and this truth came up: “Editors aren’t always right about the solutions, but they’re nearly always right about the problems.”

That thread went on to discuss how the person quoting it, who happens to be KJ Charles whose books I read all of last year and who is also an editor, approaches edit letters; her approach involves suggesting ideas to fix the problems, because it opens the writer’s mind to the possiblity that...

SNOW!

Not very much, and not going to stick, but very pretty in the moment!

Sligo docks on a softly snowy morning. The Bridge of Light footbridge over an unusually serene River Garavogue in Sligo

The post SNOW! appeared first on the essential kit.

blog vs newsletter: fight!

The difference between the blog (this) and the newsletter (over here, and you should sign up for it if you haven’t bc…bc I said so… o.o):

The blog is just that. It’s whatever’s on my mind today (or possibly last week, depending on whether I’ve scheduled a post ahead of time or not). Daily life, nothing necessarily news-oriented. It has movie and book reviews which, despite the name ‘picoreview’ for movies, can go on at some length, and it has me flailing about stuff, and, you know, good stuff li...

a fairly decent week

It has been a fairly good week over here, work-wise.

I’m working on my next paranormal romance, with about 10k on it this week, bringing it up to around 16K/25% done, which pleases me. I have a goal to finish it by mid-February, although (of course) earlier would be better.

Beyond that, I mean, like, I’m only level 4 on City of Heroes, but I’m on level 4 in City of Heroes! I’m so happy! :)

I have big plans for Saturday which involve alternating between reading a book, napping, and maybe going to...

Picoreview: Freelance

Picoreview: Freelance: surprisingly cute!

This is a John Cena vehicle on Amazon, probably an Amazon original, about a Large American Military Dude who finds himself protecting a dictator he very much does not want to protect, and it’s much more fun than it has any right to be. Like, there’s plenty of dumb, but overall it’s quite charming and has several laugh-out-loud moments.

There was a bit where I said “That looks like X will happen pretty soon,” and almost as soon as I finished speaking, X h...

mild complaints about the state of my ear

Mild ear-piercing-related healing grossness in this post, if you’re sensitive to that sort of thing. ♥

I got my stupid slow-to-heal helix (ear cartilage) piercing looked at today, 15 months after I got it pierced. At about the 11 month mark when it not only still hadn’t healed but was still/again actively gooey, I gave up on the “just clean it with saline 2x a day” advice and swabbed it with hydrogen peroxide a few times like we did with piercings when I was a kid. It fuzzed up in a satisfyingly...

The Blog and the Future

Right, so, I’m trying to reduce my dependency on billionaire-owned social media, which mean I’m trying to increase my blog footprint again. I used to be good at blogging, but somewhere along the way, with all the short-post social media (and its instantaneous feedback, let’s be real, that’s super nice), I got well out of the habit of blogging and also, more relevantly, got to where I started feeling like multiple blog posts in a day (which I used to do all the time!) were…obnoxious. Bothersome. ...