C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 54
March 15, 2016
The Magic & Manners Project (Part 1)
About four years ago I got it into my head to wonder what PRIDE & PREJUDICE would be like if the Bennet sisters were plagued by an excess of magic rather than a dearth of cash. In a fit of inspiration, I wrote a first chapter, and then over the next year, a second and a third. By then, Patreon was a thing, and I decided to write MAGIC & MANNERS as a serialized crowdfunding project.
It took longer than I expected and brought me to the conclusion that serializing a novel wasn’t a good fit for P...
March 14, 2016
heavy lifting: completed
Oh my *god* the ATLANTIS FALLEN (formerly known as IMMORTAL BELOVED) manuscript ended up a mess. I found an entire chapter and a half that hadn’t been in the version I was working from, and a scene that had been referenced but wasn’t in the version I was working from so I had to go find it and @.@. Fortunately it, most of it at least, could more or less slide right in with just a bit of massaging, but ye gods and little fishes.
The manuscript is 20K longer than the one I started with. I think...
March 11, 2016
a funny thing happened on the way to the revisions
So I’ve been confused about this manuscript I’m working on, because it appears to be missing Vital Story Bits that I quite liked. I thought I’d perhaps somehow edited them out, for reasons I couldn’t understand, at a time I couldn’t remember, but, y’know, they weren’t there so I had to have done something with them, right? And then I went and looked for them in other files and found them, so that was good, I could at least put them back in, right? Yay and all that.
Except the manuscript was a...
March 9, 2016
Launch Day: MAGIC & MANNERS
MAGIC & MANNERS is FINALLY! OFFICIALLY! LAUNCHING! TODAY!
MAGIC AND MANNERS for Kobo!
MAGIC AND MANNERS for Kindle!
MAGIC AND MANNERS for Nook!
MAGIC AND MANNERS print edition on Amazon!
MAGIC AND MANNERS audio book on Audible!
The only major outlet I don’t have a link for yet is iBooks, but it’s coming! It’s coming!
Besides the above links, you should also be able to go into almost any bookstore, at this point, and order a print edition in. It appears that at the moment it’s necessary to ha...
March 8, 2016
attempted revision blitz
Having gotten MAGIC & MANNERS practically sorted*, I’m going to spend the next five days attempting a Revision Blitz on IMMORTAL BELOVED, which is a 20 year old book undergoing a major revamp to make it new and shiny. I’ve done the first redraft already but that’s left a lot of muck hanging about in it, and most of it is, of course, the *harder* muck to clean up. Because why would I do the hard stuff first and leave the easy stuff for the second round. :)
(Actually, why *would* I? Because rev...
March 7, 2016
the week got away from me
I have these plans, man. Plans to blog daily, or at least week-daily. They’re good plans! But they’re apparently not reality-based plans. :)
It’s been a busy week that doesn’t necessarily feel like I’ve gotten a lot done, but last time I said that someone said she couldn’t imagine doing as much as I do, so I’m probably wrong.
*Most* of my work time the past several days has been getting MAGIC & MANNERS soft-launched (you can buy it on Kobo! and Kindle! and Audible!), and in the next day or tw...
March 2, 2016
Kitsnacks: Pumpkin Muffins
I made a batch of absolutely gorgeous pumpkin muffins this morning. Light, fluffy, tender, just the right amount of sweetness.
The dog ate half of them.
#ragemachinemurderbot
Baloo’s Favourite Pumpkin Muffins:
1 (15 ounce) can pumpkin puree
4 eggs
1 cup melted butter
2/3 cup water
2 cups white sugar
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground ginger
Whisk wet ingredients together in a large...
March 1, 2016
lurching along, book edition
I *finally* got the proof for MAGIC & MANNERS (the freaking delivery service couldn’t find our Giant Invisible House). It’s extremely, extremely pretty, except it has precisely the error I feared it would:
See that thin blue line alond the spine side? That’s the spine color, and it’s not supposed to be there. (There’s one on the back, too.) The system’s template was confusing, and the cover artist made the same error I would have. The PDF proofs showed that blue line, but it was possible it...
February 26, 2016
Year of Miracles & stuff
Last night I was feeling pretty pathetic and out of ideas for the last few stories in the Old Races Short Story Project (Part One), and moaned at Ted about not knowing what to write.
An hour of brainstorming later I had three story ideas for the first part and one for the second, and today I went into Dublin for the purpose of voting, but since I was going anyway, also to write, and got 4K done on a new story. It’s got another couple-three thousand words to go, probably, but hopefully I’ll be...
February 25, 2016
A-coloring I go!
They (“They”) say coloring is a form of meditation. I’m not really sure why, except that I suppose it’s a narrow focus, but anyway, it turns out that what I really want from a coloring book is pages and pages of my childhood obsessions, in this case ElfQuest.
I’ve had the book three weeks and I’ve done four pictures, which doesn’t sound like all that much, but most of them are pretty detailed and also I keep having to stop because my writing callouses are so diminished that coloring for hour...
