C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 43

Sugar Wars: Two Weeks & Counting

All I want out of life is a plate of chocolate chip peanut butter cookies.

I don’t even *like* chocolate chip peanut butter cookies. I find them a perpetual disappointment. But I desperately want some.

This isn’t getting any easier. It’s not actually that it’s hard, it’s that it makes me grumpy, at least in part because I find baking soothing and these troubled times we’re living in require some real fucking soothment. But I’ve met me, and if I bake cookies, there’s no way I’ll stop eating at...

Recent Reads: The Tiger & the Wolf

I *have* others of Adrian Tchaikovsky‘s books (one may even be signed), but I hadn’t gotten around to reading any of them because my TBR shelf is a disaster, and then the book club I nominally go to here was reading THE TIGER & THE WOLF so I got it and started it and no that’s not true

I played it cagey, ladies and gentlemen. I used the preview option on my Kobo and got THAT, and it suggested I had like 80 pages of preview to read and I was like “awesome” and I got to like page 39 and SUDDENL...

Picoreview: Triple xXx / Return of Xander Cage

Picoreview: Triple xXx / Return of Xander Cage: daft but fun.

I went to Return of Xander Cage a couple weeks ago and sort of squinted at it, because I hadn’t seen Triple xXx for years but my vague feeling was that it had been an spy/action flick that lived within the bounds of extreme possibility, in much the same way that The Fast and the Furious was faintly realistic, but Xander Cage was like skipping from FF1 directly to FF6, dispensing with the build-up and just moving from vaguely realis...

Sugar Wars: Day Eat All The Things

Actually Day Eat All The Things was yesterday and today has been Eat Hardly Any Of The Things, because there were So Many Things Eaten Yesterday.

I had caramel-coated popcorn at the movie theatre. It’s probably verboten under the circumstances, but I didn’t subsidize it with a soda, which I’d have done if I’d gotten regular popcorn, so I’m calling it a caloric draw and not worrying about it. And there was eating out and hot chocolate and, y’know. All The Food. But I didn’t fall down on counti...

horrible horrible tea

Oh, god. My eyes have been hideously dry, and having had some luck with Chinese herbal tea in remedying this in the past, I went to a Chinese doctor yesterday to see if I could get some tea.

I was subjected to a beating (which some might have called vigorous acupressure, but my gawd) and given, instead of packeted dried components already ground up to make a tea, seven (well, seven pairs of) substantial bags of dried herbs and the following instructions:

1. Steep the first bag’s contents in c...

Sugar Wars: Day Rage Bot Murder Machine

Yesterday morning was extremely bad, but that was due to calorie deficit, not sugar withdrawals, per se. I don’t know what tonight’s utterly hideous temper was about, as I didn’t feel NEARLY as hungry as I did yesterday (I got trail mix. it helps). Bad goddamn mood, though. Exacerbated by knowing I wouldn’t actually feel any goddamn better if I ate half a pint of ice cream, but I didn’t quite get my steps in today and I was pretty goddamn sure if I left the house again I’d go get ice cream, s...

Launch Day: Roses In Amber

I’ll start out with the links, in case that’s all you’re here for. :)

ROSES IN AMBER, available now at:
iTunes || Kindle || Kobo || Nook || Amazon (paperback) || & at bookstores near you! Order with title or ISBN (978-1613171363)

Beauty and the Beast is my favourite fairy tale. Always has been, perhaps since I read “The Wounded Lion” in the gorgeously illustrated ENCHANTED TALES (Rand McNally, 1978) as a small child. I read Robin McKinley’s Beauty until the cover fell off, and Rose Daughter...

Sugar Wars: Day 8

Got on the scale this morning. It told me I was down 3.4 pounds.

That’s not to be expected as a typical drop, but neither is it alarming in the first week of a major eating overhaul, especially when combined with a concerted effort to get my 10K steps in daily.

Pretty sure my caloric intake has dropped by up to half, four out of seven days. That’s…rather a lot more than I expected. I figured, like, a quarter, perhaps, but no. I’m really pretty sure I’m looking at 30-50%. No wonder I’m so godd...

Roses in Amber is ALMOST HERE!!!

guys

GUYS

GUYS!!!!!

LOOK WHAT ARRIVED

I STARTED WRITING THIS BOOK ON JANUARY 1, GUYS

LOOK AT IT

LOOK AT IT

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Tomorrow is Official Launch Day. I don’t know if print editions will automagically show up on B&N/Amazon IMMEDIATELY or not or it’ll take some time to work through the system, but e-book editions for Kindle, iTunes, Kobo and Nook either are or will be available as of Valentine’s Day, 6 weeks after I started writing it!

I have to say...

Sugar Wars: Day 7

We have survived a week of this nonsense. My calorie consumption is down a ridiculous amount. I’d know exactly how much if I’d been keeping track before, but I roughed it out and it’s a lot. And I’m hungry, but I’ve recently learned to drink a couple of tisanes and the hot liquid makes some difference in the hunger, as does just having learned to tolerate being hungry better over the past year.

Having counted calories for a whole week is at least as much a triumph as staying off sugar for a w...