C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 17

Recent Reads: The Westing Game

I first read Ellen Raskin’s THE WESTING GAME (affiliate link) when I was about eleven. It was the first, and I believe remains the only, book that I have ever finished reading, stared at a moment, and then gone back to the beginning to read again immediately. I then read it again many, many times in my tween and early teen years, but I don’t remember re-reading it for…well, a very long time. But it came up again recently, possibly in context of Ellen Raskin as a cover designer, and I decided I w...

NOODLES!!!!

oh my GOD the noodle place is back at the Temple Bar Market!!!!

Honestly I can’t tell you how happy I am about this. It’s a little food booth at the Temple Bar Saturday market in Meeting House Square, and I always used to order prawn fried noodles even when they weren’t technically on the menu. (Prawn skewers were, and othermeat-fried noodles were, just not prawn fried noodles. BUT GUESS WHAT’S ON THE MENU NOW!!!!!) The guy always remembered my order, because it was different. He used to give me...

Picoreview: The Blue Beetle

Picoreview: The Blue Beetle – Ted and I both really, really liked Blue Beetle & if you’re doing movies in cinemas these days and like superhero films a tall, we think you should see it ASAP bc here, at least, it’s only got 9 showings a day in the largest cineplex (as opposed to Barbie opening with 36 & Oppenheimer with like 16) & it feels like the studio’s way of making sure it fails, at least partially so they can justify having not released Batgirl, another superhero movie with a brown lead.

I...

Ask the Author: writing styles

Ask the Author – The Question: What makes an author’s style of writing unique?

This will sound sort of trite, but: personal experience.

Here’s the thing, and this, again, sounds trite, and indeed, it’s overused, but it’s also true: no one can write the story that *you* can write. Because everyone’s personal experience shapes them differently, and they approach stories differently.

I have an exercise I do when I teach creative writing classes. I give everybody the same 5 sentences, the opening of...

Recent Reads: Regency Dragons by Stephanie Burgis

I’ve had the first of Stephanie Burgis’s Regency Dragons books, SCALES & SENSIBILITY, on my shelf for over a year. I admit I’ve been kind of afraid to read it because I was afraid it would trigger an overwhelming urge to work on the sequel to MAGIC & MANNERS, and I haven’t had time to do that. But this summer she sent me the sequel, CLAWS & CONTRIVANCES, for an early read because I was having a very bad week, and she hoped it might cheer me up. So obviously I then had to read SCALES.

Which I did...

Ask the Author: favorite character

Ask the Author – the Question: Of all your books, do you have a favorite character?

*looks into the camera again* Not to repeat myself from last week, but oh, come on!

Honestly, this is sort of like a favorite child question. First, it’s hard to pick because of course I *do* love them all, and second, I actually feel guilty admitting that I *do* have some favorites, as if they might somehow be offended. And at the same time, well…I do have some favorites. :)

I mean, my leads, obviously. Joanne a...

Recent Reads: Beyond the Hallowed Sky

Recent Reads: BEYOND THE HALLOWED SKY, by Ken MacLeod

I have to confess I’m…’embarrassingly far behind’ on Ken’s books isn’t sufficient; this is the first one I’ve ever read. It is already not the last, as I bought the sequel immediately, and only after the fact realized it had JUST come out. (After I read the first two chapters I was like “KEN I NEED BOOK THREE” and he was like “I HAVE NOT WRITTEN IT YET, GIVE ME SOME TIME” and, oops. O.O)

Like, I mean, he’s Ken MacLeod, so you probably already...

a silly dream :)

I did not sleep well, presumably due to stress, but there was a good dream interval there where I was on the SNW Enterprise and Ortegas had for some reason gotten hold of a manual typewriter and was in absolute hysterics over its ancient, single-purpose functionality. I was like “ooh ooh I know how to type on that!” and we typed back and forth at each other a little (“HI ORTEGAS THIS IS ME”) before she got the bright idea to launch the carriage like a torpedo and aimed it at a window (which had ...

ZOMG: a missing fan fiction, refound

This weekend, after literal years, very possibly literal decades, of searching, I re-found my favorite fan fic ever, “Sedimental Journey,” a Methos/Duncan Highlander tv show fic (one of my friends said “Of course it was Methos/Duncan,” which, well, lol/pink, yes, I’m afraid ‘of course’ was the appropriate response). :D

I’m fairly confident I read it in the late 90s originally–like, extremely confident–but I lost it through Internet Drift, although I remembered the title because I thought it was ...

Ask The Author: favorite books & writers?

Ask The Author – the Question: Dare I ask? Favorite authors? Books?

oh come on :)

No, no, okay, look, I do have some answers to this. My husband says my favorite book is TIGANA by Guy Gavriel Kay, and I can never argue with that even though who can, in fact, choose a single favorite? But if it’s not my favorite, I have a hard time telling you what is in its place. OTOH, I am now like a…decade? behind? on reading Guy’s books, which makes it feel hard to say he’s DEFINITELY my favorite author anym...