C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 20

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...

a rather lovely day

Today has been a rather lovely day. A long-time reader whom I’ve corresponded with for years is in Ireland, and we met for breakfast, which was a genuine delight. Even though she’s still mad at me for something I wrote in the Walker Papers, and took the chance to tell me I’m not yet forgiven. But I also told her a couple of SECRETS, so we were all even in the end, or something. *laughs*

I brought her a copy of GLADIATOR TIGER, which she had not known was dedicated to her, so that was quite a lot...

Marketing Monday: Bewitching Benedict

today I’m going to talk about BEWITCHING BENEDICT, which is a Regency romance with (*gasp*) no magic, despite the title. :)

I’d been reading lots and lots of MC Beaton’s Regency romances, and I asked my agent at the time if there was still a market for Regencies, because I thought maybe I could write one. He said yes, if I wrote him a charming piece of confectionary, he could definitely sell it.

Well, I *did* write a charming piece of confectionary, but he couldn’t sell it. I was told why at the...

Ask the Author: writing for Zoe Chant

Ask the Author – the Question: I am curious about how you got in on the Zoe Chant action. And how exactly does it work when multiple authors write under a single pen name?

Hah! I got in on it because I have a friend who writes for Zoe and she spent years trying to get me to apply to write for them. Eventually I did. And while that sounds easy enough on the surface, it took me two rewrites of one book and then another entire book entirely to actually manage to write A Zoe Chant Novel, instead of ...

Picoreview: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre

Picoreview: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre – this was great fun.

It *looked* like a movie where Jason Statham got to be funny again, and after his magnificent turn in SPY, I really wanted to see him get a chance to be funny again. He was not AS funny in this as he was in SPY, but he was pretty funny. :)

This was kind of like Guy Ritchie said “Okay, fine, I’m not going to get to do a sequel to MAN FROM UNCLE, so I’m just gonna…file some serial numbers off and make my own version, kinda.” It’s ...