C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 19

Happy 2024!

Happy New Year, mes amis. I decided to go in to the office today for the precedent of it, although I have no particular expectation of getting anything done besides a blog post or two, which I could have done from home. :)

Last year was not awesome for me/us, and I’m not going to dwell on it much, although I was surprised a couple of days ago to realize I’d published three books and two novellas in 2023. Four books if you count URBAN SHAMAN’s re-release:

DEATH IN IRISH ACCENTS (writing as Catie...

A Melodrama In Sligo

The scene: I am arriving back in Sligo after a couple of days in Dublin.

The setting: Sligo Train Station

The performers: Myself; my father; a random older woman sitting next to Dad in the train station as he awaits me

Dad, rising from his seat, hands extended to capture mine: Catie, Catie, *Catie*! Oh, my darling! Let me *look* at you! Oh, *honey*! Let me look at you, let me look at you!

Me, embracing him: Oh, *Daddy*!

Dad: It’s been so long! My darling girl!

Older woman: -happy weepy face-

Me,...

Don’t Quit Your Day Job, They Said…

Do you know what today is?

Today is the TWENTIETH (20th) ANNIVERSARY* of me becoming a full-time writer!

I did not, in fact, quit my day job; it quit me, and I never got another one.

I have written…well, I’ve written 53 full length novels and collections now, something like 48 of which have been written since The Day Job Went Away. I’ve written a dozen novellas, and a ton of short stories, and…I literally couldn’t have done it without all of you.

I also literally couldn’t have done it without m...

A-conventioning I go

This weekend I went to the National Irish SF Convention, Octocon, for the first time in *years*. Since 2017, I’m pretty sure.

It was lovely to see everyone. I wasn’t sure until Friday that I was going at all, so I didn’t mention it to anybody except one friend, so people were Very Surprised Indeed to see me, and almost immediately upon arrival I was invited to do a panel, which was both flattering and funny.

Furthermore, to my delight, the panel was with my friend, the magnificently talented Sar...

Recent Reads: Starbridge

Recent Reads: Starbridge, AC Crispin (amazon affiliate)

This is one of my favorite books. It’s a first contact story, led by a teenage girl, and I was the same age as the protagonist when I first read it, which probably helped cement its place near and dear to my heart. :)

Mahree Burroughs (I only noticed the nod to Edgar Rice there in this reading!) is a human from an Earth colony, on her way to Earth for the first time to go to college. Their ship, captained by her uncle, picks up a signal tha...

Recent Reads: The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches

This is one of many books I’ve bought because someone on Twitter (in this case, fantasy novelist Stephanie Burgis) recommended it. For a platform notorious for Not Selling Books, I gotta say, I’ve bought an awful lot of books because of it. RIP Twitter. Anyway.

IRREGULAR WITCHES is a contemporary rrrrromantic fantasy, I guess, because there is a romance storyline of some importance, but it’s really about Found Family, and like a lot of what I’ve been reading lately, it was a balm to my weary sou...

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...