C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 57

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Good Guys & Responding to Womens’ Sexual Harassment

A friend of mine over on Facebook posted link to this article, Why Women Smile At Men Who Sexually Harass Us, which is a good article full of things that are tiresomely familiar to virtually all women and apparently continue to be surprising to many, perhaps most, men.

I think it’s a good article for men to read, because what prompted her writing it was how the author’s boyfriend, who is, by her estimation, one of the good guys, responded not only to her being harassed, but to her *reaction*...

Recent Reads: Desdaemona

The only thing worse than having dozens of unread books on your shelf is when half of them are by people you’re friends with so you have the additional guilt of being TERRIBLY BEHIND on friends’ books.

The only thing better than reading books that have been on the TBR shelf for years is reading one by a friend and it turns out to be WONDERFUL. DESDAEMONA is one such book, written by–

–ah, see, now, this is where it gets meta. :)

Ben Macallan is the main character of Chaz Brenchley’s DEAD OF L...

Picoreview: A Royal Night Out

Picoreview: A Royal Night Out: charming.

A Royal Night Out is ever so loosely based on V.E. Day in England, 1945, when a young Elizabeth and Margaret were granted permission to go out into the crowds to celebrate like everybody else. In real life, this apparently happened after Elizabeth, standing up on the balcony with her parents, realized she couldn’t *see* any of the people, not at all, because of the spotlights on the royal family, and she wanted to be able to see and participate.

The mo...

5 of 50…

I’ve finished the first revision pass on IMMORTAL BELOVED, which has been a very interesting project to revisit. The final third is visibly stronger than the middle third; the middle third is visibly better than the first third. I knew I’d learned a lot writing it, but it’s interesting to see it so clearly.

There are still a *lot* of things to fix. Worldbuilding, character relationship development, the poorly handled head-hopping (I don’t mind head-hopping, especially after writing MAGIC & MA...