C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 50

No Mo Wri Mo

Up until a few days ago I was still entertaining the notion that somehow, sure, I was going to pull Nanowrimo out of the hat and participate. I’m not sure I thought that was a realistic goal, but I was hanging on to it anyway.

I’ve come to my senses. Most of the reason I’ve come to my senses, probably, is that my editor got the revision letter for REDEEMER back to me, and given that the book is now pushing 2 years late (*cringe*) that kinda has to take priority. And I’m GOOD with that, that’s...

we need to talk about sugar

And when I say ‘we’ I mean ‘I’, and when I say ‘talk’ I mean ‘write this down, maybe it’ll make more of an impression’.

Years ago after having a spectacularly bad hangover (that’s all I get, is spectacularly bad hangovers, which is why I basically don’t drink. I’m not reserved enough as a human being to require the inhibition-loosening aspects of alcohol and I stay hung over for *days*) I wrote down all of my symptoms to clarify to myself why I shouldn’t do that. I haven’t drunk to excess sin...

Octocon 2016

So Octocon was great fun. I went into it tired (because i was an IDIOT and i got a new phone on THURSDAY and i couldn’t get it to update properly and i stayed up until TWO IN THE MORNING getting it working right, the day before a weekend-long convention started!) and had a panel Friday night so I had to be vaguely functional through that, and more or less was.

It was a weekend of selfies because I didn’t have the camera with me a lot because I couldn’t find the purse that more or less went wi...

so very very very many thinks

– buy better sugar
– make fudge make MORE fudge if there’s time
– shower
– pincurl hair
– pack M&M
– pack RAVEN HEART
– pack CHANCE
– pack fudge
– pack jam
– pack dress
– pack shoes
– pack nylons
– pack sturdy underwear :)
– finish laundry
– fold laundry
– put laundry away if we’re really ambitious
– finish setting up phone
– eat something
– chop up more crabapples
– put the frozen ones into bags so i have room to freeze the new ones
– everything i’m forgetting, all by 1:45pm

The post so very...

apples apples everywhere

We picked apples on Sunday. This warped panorama does not do justice to the numbers of apples currently residing in our entryway:

The bag in the back corner, and the white box, which is like 23′ or something, are also full of apples. There are So Many Apples. There’s a fairly large bag already missing, too, as I sent one home with my sister.

A friend just dropped by and took away the small box next to the plant pots and the black bag at the foot of the photo, which made a small but visible d...

a hard time gathering myself

I’ve been having a hard time gathering myself to blog. Part of it is that I’ve been very busy (I got everything on the last post’s to do list done and a great deal more), and part of it is that I’m very tired. It’s been a terribly emotional year and as I’ve said to a few people, we’re not really so much scraping the bottom of the barrel as trying to claw our way back up to its great height.

So this is what I’ve been doing instead of blogging:

Last week I designed new business cards, got the...

there’s a million things i haven’t done

– mail voter registration stuff
– finish YoM line edits
– go over AF galleys *EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE YAY*
– shake down the crabapple tree
– process crabapples
– make crabapple jelly
– perhaps make crabapple jam
– but just you wait
– make raspberry jam for octocon/etsy
– make strawberry jam for octocon/etsy
– make hot fudge for octocon/etsy
– make FUDGE for octocon
– order this wig? for octocon because reasons
– order/have made a Stetson Aviatrix (Peggy Carter’s hat)
– email isbn info to isbn lady
–...

we have amazing friends.

this morning i came home from dropping indy off at school and ted, looking very emotional, said, “come into the kitchen and see what our friends have done.”

a little befuddled, i went into the kitchen, and there saw a large box and thought, “oh! yes, one of them said they would send a few–” and somewhere around that point a started to realize that there were two large–*large*–boxes, crammed full, and…

this is…i just…i don’t even know where to start. they organized a care package of Food We C...

hamilton au

There’s a part of me that wants to go check out all the Hamilton fic that I’m sure exists, all the alternate universes where things went…better. And the rest of me is like NO NO NO because that way lies doom.

But there’s also the part of me that keeps thinking of the Neil Gaiman bit where somebody is talking to a late 20th century Earth person & says something to the effect of, “Who’s President? Ah. Clinton? And Bush before him, and Reagan…? Ah. Yes. You live in one of *those* timelines…”

And...

history lesson, via #Hamilton

Me: *sings* My name is Alexander Hamilton!

Indy: Who’s that?

Me: He’s one of the people who fought the Revolutionary War and helped start the United States of America. He built the banks.

Indy: *wide eyes* Revolutionary War?

Me: Yes. You know how in 1916 in Ireland there was a revolution? The United States had one of those in 1776, a very long time ago.

Indy: Did Ireland have any more revolutions?

Me: Yes, in 1921. That’s when they obtained their independence from Britain, which is the same c...