C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 16

not dead! busy month, tho

Iiiiiii…have been meaning to post, and just not doing it because I’ve been working, and don’t want to distract myself from work. But! I got an extension on the book so I’m going to take a minute to do a short blog.

I went to Eastercon the last weekend of March, and it was WONDERFUL, but I haven’t had enough time to blog about it. Hopefully next week when I’m done with this book, which…

I’m ALMOST done with the 6th Dublin Driver book. There I was, 60K into a 70K book, the end in sight, but…it was...

ICFA: the last two days

Let’s see. Friday I had a 10:30am thing, which I know because I couldn’t have breakfast with the family. Oh, yes, it turned out to be what Geoffrey Landis said might have been the most fun he’d ever had at an ICFA panel! laughs

It was a panel with myself and Kate JohnsTon, moderated by Novella, and Kate read an incredibly funny piece from the point of view of a genetically engineered modern T-Rex who was very, very horny, followed by two more very funny pieces, after which I read from my Pride &...

ICFA: the first two days

Ok, I’m going to try an actual con writeup here, before I forget everything.

We got into Florida on Tuesday evening, collapsed into bed around 11pm, got up at 8am, and as I kept telling people all week, “I’m doing really well right now, but as of about 6pm, I make no promises for the rest of the evening!” Which was pretty prophetic: I hit a wall hard around 6pm every night, but also usually had a dinner or other activity planned, and since I can keep going forever as long as I have an audience, ...

ICFA 2024 Overview

I’m back from the International Conference for the Fantastic in the Arts (ICFA) where I was a guest of honor over the past week, and I am ridiculously tired but had a wonderful time. I am, in fact, too tired to type coherently, so if this is fully of typos, I… will assume you can read through them bc omg. so tired. :)

I’d never been to ICFA and was, tbh, very very nervous and feeling quite imposter-syndromey, which is not my general modus operandi, but my god, guys, the previous guests of honor ...

Recent Reads: At First Spite

Recent Reads: AT FIRST SPITE: a complete delight

This is a romance I preordered because how could you resist that title, even if you DON’T know the main character ends up living in a spite house (a tiny, tiny house built between other properties, practically unlivable but built out of, you know, spite) between her ex’s house, and, as it turns out, her ex’s horrible older brother’s house? Which you do know, because the back of the book tells you so, so I’m not spoiling anything. :)

The heroine, A...

old, and not hip

I’ve developed the bad habit of watching stupid little “styling” reels on FB, very few of which are any good at all.

This last one was “what I thrifted vs how I styled it” – literally a shot each of the dress, jewelry, handbag & boots, which she then…put on. There was no ‘styling’.

Why do I do this.

I mean, in this particular case, it was actually a good look. She’d made good choices. But I think ‘styling’ is a wild overstatement for what she was doing. I was expecting a revamped dress, at least...

february progress report

Well, I came into February by finishing my last book (WEAR WOLF, available now!) a week early, so I took the next week off from formal book work and wrote a synopsis for something, sent that in to an editor, and did some further work on a different proposal.

Halfway through the month, as noted before, I was struck by inspiration in the middle of the night, and now have about a thousand disconnected words on that project, which I am supposed to get 10 pages to 3 chapters written of Soon, accordin...

2024 Hugos Eligibility

The Hugo nomination window ends on, I believe March 9th.

I am eligible in the following categories for 2024’s awards:

~Best Novel~
Witchmaster (The Guildmaster Saga #5) by C.E. Murphy

~Best Novella~
Somebunny to Love (The Virtue Shifter series) by C.E. Murphy writing as Zoe Chant

~Best Series~
The Guildmaster Saga by C.E. Murphy
The Virtue Shifter series by C.E. Murphy writing as Zoe Chant

~Lodestar Award for Best Young Adult Book (Not a Hugo)~
Witchmaster (The Guildmaster Saga #5) by C.E. Murph...

heartwrenched

On Wednesday, I looked at FB earlier than usual while waiting for the cat to have her morning drink of shower water, so I woke up to the utterly joyous news that a dear friend has gotten engaged to a woman who adores her and was filled with happy tears for them.

And the next post carried the devastating news that novelist Steve Miller, co-author of the long-running Liaden series, died Tuesday afternoon.

I spent yesterday more than a little emotionally rattled.

I didn’t know Steve well, but I lik...

Release Day: WEAR WOLF!

WEAR WOLF is available now!

I have to tell you that I am already–like, this is cool. Before the book even came out, I had a couple of people comment about the fact that my hero in this book is face-blind (has prosopagnosia), because they’d never seen a character with that disability before. I’ve had a couple more people comment since, and I’m really pleased to have brought a kind of representation to peoples’ attention with this book. I’m aphantasic (I don’t see pictures in my head), which is no...