C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 7

june: state of the cate

time, what is time, i have no time, how do i get more time, if only i didn’t need sleep so much. also, yes, I know, this is a bit late in the month for a State of the Cate, but what can one do about tiiiiiiiime.

Right, okay, so. Uhm.

May was very productive, in huge part because I retreated to a friend’s house and wrote 50,000 words. Then I got sick with a head cold and was just sick enough to feel sorry for myself and not get work done without being REALLY SICK, so I did not write another 35,00...

writing retreat!

This is no longer precisely up to date, because I went on retreat last month not this week, but it was written while I was on retreat and I’m finally remembering to post it, so you’re getting the live-action version of events. :)

So I’ve written, uh, 48,357 words since Monday morning, and that is VERY CLOSE to 50K, and part of me VERY BADLY wants to write the other 1643 words to get there, but…I’m writing this blog post instead, honestly. I’m tired. For some reason. o.o And who knows, I may yet ...

Call of Cthulhu: Egypt Beckons!

Despite my pleas, we did not stop Mask of Nyarlathotep to play Horror on the Orient Express as we traveled ON THE ORIENT EXPRESS from Paris to Constantinople (not Istanbul).

To Evelyn’s crushing disappointment, her (gay) fiance Freddy finally managed to get the party that they’d been hoping for sorted out, and she had to LEAVE before she could party with the Bright Young Things. Freddy, Betty, and possibly Margaret* will follow us later, when they’re recovered from their fun.

(*Margaret: a sudde...

The Mysterious Case of the Missing Sewing Machine (parts)

So as you will perhaps recall, last October I made my son a Halloween costume and put my sewing machine away.

In February, when my MIL came to visit, she wanted to enact some repairs on some of our quilts, so my husband got the sewing machine out, and…

…half of the base of the sewing machine had disappeared. The extension table/storage box part, you know? That fits around the needle plate/bobbin holder? It was gone. Inexplicably gone.

My sewing machine is only ever in one of two places: inside i...

Call of Cthulhu: Albion Ends!

It was a dark and stormy night…

We, disguised as cultists hiding in Edward Gavigan’s bedroom, simply open fire on the cultists below. Dylan (whose name, it turns out, is actually spelled Dillon) hits Gavigan with a shot from his (Dillon’s) elephant gun for 14 points of damage, which of course he just gets up from because he’s full of monster power. Dammit.

Teddy opens fire with a Tommy gun, doesn’t do NEARLY as much damage as he hopes, AND jams the gun. Fortunately, Calliope turns her mechanical...

three things make a post

Thing One – my friend, comics artist Matthew Dow Smith, is taking commissions for characters, any characters, in his “kid comics” style over the weekend. I got him to do Chance earlier in the month, and I love her SO MUCH! See her? Isn’t she CUTE?

He’s also taking teen kid-style commissions and I truly truly love him and this art style and it’s a super great way to support an artist for a very reasonable commission price if there’s a character you’d like to see done for you, so… go forth, buy a...

Bon Jovi discography revisitation – the 90s

So in my friend Mame’s and my ongoing quest to do a full Bon Jovi retrospective, we discussed whether we were including Jon’s solo albums, although BLAZE OF GLORY was a given, if for no other reason than it’s so strongly linked, thematically, to the early studio albums. But I did ask if we were also going to do DESTINATION ANYWHERE, and at that point, Mame, very thoughtfully, pointed out that if we were going to do both of Jon’s solo albums, then in the name of fairness, we should also do Richie...

Call of Cthulhu: Penultimate Albion

So I didn’t write up the antepenultimate adventure in England because as it turned out, we didn’t do all that much and ::laughs:: they wouldn’t let Teddy talk. :) We essentially finished defeating the monster–which the GM told us afterward was notoriously a Total Party Kill scenario, and which we survived basically unscathed–and the next morning decided that the only sensible thing for us to do was…

…visit the armory, leaning on Dylan (American sharpshooter) and Summerset (British lord)’s milita...

nearly the last of the admin…

I’m down to about the last…five or so…Murphy Lawless books to update. The paranormal romances HAVE been vastly easier than the rest of the books, as anticipated, because they were all already in the right software, but man my brain is fried from doing these. I just want to be done. And I probably will be this afternoon, but whiiiiiiiine.

Aside from that, I’m…what am I doing. I’m writing a little. I’m trying to do the thing I BELIEVE in my HEART that I can do, which is have a morning project and ...

the shape of the admin that is

So a massive part of this never-ending admin has been a long-standing need to convert most of my CE Murphy titles into the book-making software I’m currently using. I’d done, eh, half or so, of them previously, but even that stuff needs a certain amount of regular updating. It gets easier with each iteration of the software, but still: basically, scut work.

I spent a full day doing the ‘easy’ stuff, the stuff that only required a relatively minor update to the backmatter to be ok, which got me t...