C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 52

Picoreview: The Losers

Picoreview: The Losers: Good fun.

I kept seeing screenshots from The Losers on Tumblr, and commented on some funny bits and got into a discussion with one of my followers there and anyway it ended up with me having a copy of the movie and I finally got a chance to watch it last night.

It’s appallingly dude-heavy (there are, off the top of my head, only 3 speaking roles for females, one of whom is a little girl) but the dudes are very appealing: Idris Elba, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Chris Evans, an...

Kitsnaps: Eklutna Lake

Sadly, no, I have not been home lately to take these pictures; they’re from 2003, when several of us went out kayaking on Eklutna Lake, outside of Anchorage, on a ridiculously glorious day.

I’m going through my digital photo archives, trying to clean them up and get rid of all the terrible pictures, which is something I’ve been meaning to do for, uh, ever. Mostly it’s not very hard, but these Alaska photos do make me homesick.

The post Kitsnaps: Eklutna Lake appeared first on The Essential...

Kitsnacks: Homemade Pop Tarts

Many years ago, presumably before Pop Tarts began to be a thing that occasionally showed up on Irish grocery store shelves, I got the idea into my head that one could, y’know, probably MAKE them. I looked for recipes, but never got around to making them.

A couple weekends ago I was making pot pie anyway and thought I should make up an extra batch of pie crust and try ’em.

oh my flippin’ stars.

I used my basic pie crust recipe and added about a quarter cup of sugar to it, which I had never i...

these are a few of my favourite…words…!

I had the opportunity to use my favourite word this morning, and then I thought: favourite words are a thing, right? they’re totally a thing! people have favourite words! RIGHT?!

A brief enquiry on Twitter incidated that yes, other people also have favourite words. “Defenestration” is remarkably popular. I had an “acquiesce” (“Love that triphthong.”) and a “semester” (Swedish for ‘vacation’) and an ‘obstensibly’, which I can also really get behind, because what a great word to say. It’s delic...

Launch Day: Atlantis Fallen

Today is Launch Day for ATLANTIS FALLEN, first of the Heartstrike Chronicles! This is a book of my heart, with a long and sordid history; it’s undergone major revisions, and I still basically love it and hope you all will too. :)

Without further ado:
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Kindle!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Kobo!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for iBooks!
ATLANTIS FALLEN for Nook!

ATLANTIS FALLEN can also be found on Scribd and Inktera if you don’t buy from the above links. It might be available other places, too, I...

Picoreview: The Huntsman: Winter’s War

Picoreview: The Huntsman: Winter’s War: even worse than I expected. I said that to Mom, that it was worse than I expected and I went in expecting to be disappointed, and she said, “I’m glad there was SOME surprise!” *laughs out loud*

You can tell it’s bad before the credits even really get rolling, because Liam Neeson starts doing a completely unnecessary voiceover, and he keeps at it periodically throughout the film.

I believe that if they had given Charlize Theron a piece of furniture she...

Kitsnaps: Two-Toed Sloth

I actually brought my camera out to the zoo the other day. It’d been almost a year since I’d used it. *wince* Anyway, among other things, I kind of randomly decided to set it to RAW format, because, well, because.

I will never go back to shooting just JPG, OMG.

I mean, I knew RAW was supposed to be swell, but I did kind of assume it would be difficult to learn to manipulate the format. It’s not; there’s a Photoshop thing that opens up to deal with it automatically, and there’s almost certainl...

I cast on!

I cast on! I cast on! I don’t know what to do next, but I cast on! (I’ll figure out what to do next tomorrow. I felt casting on was sufficiently impressive for one day. It only took three tries and watching a video 15 times. :))

I’m terribly proud of myself. :)

The post I cast on! appeared first on The Essential Kit.

ATLANTIS FALLEN cover reveal!

A city hidden for five thousand years.

A man so ancient his early history is lost to time.

A woman who has nothing to lose…

Lorhen, oldest and most ruthless of the immortal Timeless, put aside the sword long ago for a quiet life. But peace doesn’t last forever, especially for a man whose age can be counted in epochs, and the mortal life he’s built unravels as the Keepers, a society of historians who record Timeless lives, learn that he’s been hiding in their midst.

Then an archaeologist’s cla...

a bit of coloring

It’s taken me about two weeks to do the fourth Elfquest graphic novel coloring book page. I reckon at the rate I’m going, I’ll do about one issue a year, and be finished around 2036. :)

I hadn’t posted page three yet, so here you go. I also hadn’t figured out how to manipulate the levels with Photoshop (or possibly I didn’t have photoshop installed) yet, so the color in it isn’t as representative of the TRUE BEAUTY OF MY WORK as I might like. :)

For page four I had Photoshop for sure and the...