C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 56
March 24, 2016
Kit’s Busy Day Out
I went out to write today, and wrote an entire Old Races short story, 5700 words, which…pretty nearly did my brain in. I’m going to have to take a revision pass at it in a few days, because I’m not sure how coherent it is. At about 5K my brain dried up and I went to ask Twitter to cheer me on so I could finish it, and cheer they did. Good peeps, are Tweeps. :)
I dropped by Chapters Bookstore, too, to see if they had MAGIC & MANNERS in yet, and look what I found on the shelves, pretty as can b...
March 22, 2016
The Magic & Manners Project: Publication Process
Part two of my series on all-out self publishing, a project I’ve taken on with MAGIC & MANNERS, a Jane Austen pastiche in which I wondered what would happen if the Bennet sisters had too much magic rather than too little cash. Part One, which focuses on finding and working with a production team as well as developing a work flow (including a Helpful Check List) is here.
This week I’m going to look at the actual publication process. I’ve been working through Amazon and Ingram, who are both doi...
thinks to do, easter break edition
maybe if i write it all down i’ll get it done.
housecleaning
– living room
» vacuum
» perhaps wash windows ahahahah
» put laundry away
» deal with random trash
– kitchen
» vacuum
» windows
» put laundry away
» deal with random trash
» wash floors
– library
» vacuum
» windows
» deal with random trash
» deal with random *stuff*
– vacuum stairs
– our bedroom
» vacuum
» clear off dresser
» change sheets
– guest room
» vacuum
» change sheets
» put shoes away
– office
» vacuum
» put things away/tid...
March 21, 2016
beta readers
I did something very unusual this weekend, which was send a book out to beta readers. Normally I…don’t do that. Broadly speaking I feel writing a book is largely a closed loop between myself and my editor: she’s the source of feedback that I need, and I generally find adding more people in to that cycle to be very stressful.
I am, in fact, finding it very stressful, which is totally on me, not the readers: they’re providing feedback in exactly the way a writer wants them to, which is clearly,...
March 20, 2016
life’s a show…
We’re watching a tv show where one of the storylines is set in India. In the second episode there was a spontaneous song and dance routine. Ted said, “I’m pretty sure people in India don’t actually spontaneously burst into song and dance all the time, but if they do, we’re really living in the wrong country.”
I then got into a discussion on Twitter about how movies from America in the 1950s also suggest that Americans drop into song and dance at the drop of a hat. A friend said when he was a...
March 17, 2016
family, food, funny
Nephew: Excuse me? I have an important question. How powerful is Captain Britain? Could he beat Superman?
Me, having already described the “the one who serves the story best” aspect of this kind of question and delighted to be asked: I *believe* CB’s power is drawn from the spirit of the British people, so potentially yes but probably only under certain circumstances.
Nephew: Right, great, okay. How about Captain Britain against Juggernaut?
Me: They’d go toe to toe.
Nephew departs, totally ha...
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...
