C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 8

dreams, elfquest and KU

I…am mostly staying off social media right now (blogging doesn’t count). I’m posting a little, mostly about the knitting I’m doing to keep myself off social media, and to a lesser degree, about the book coming out tomorrow. But I can barely cope with my own emotions, and am finding other peoples’ to be overwhelming. So. I blog and I write. And I knit, and whatever else comes to mind that isn’t doomscrolling.

I also have frickin’ weird dreams, one of which was discovering at a SFF con that I was ...

Release Day: OctoBEARfest!

It’s release day for OctoBEARfest!

This is a spinoff from the Virtue Shifters series, a direct sequel to HOLD MY BEAR and KOALAFIED FOR LOVE, and since I’ve been planning it for YEARS it was very satisfying to get to finally write it. :D

Early readers have been exceptionally positive about this one, which makes me very happy, obviously, but one of the things that makes me especially happy is that some of them said things like “it was like going to a really good music gig” and “it’s like happy so...

new tablet!

I made a DECISION about the Android tablet vs a new Surface Pro, which ultimately came down to the question of: do I want to be able to read comics on my new device, or write? Because Android has the Marvel Unlimited app, which Windows does not, but Windows has the Scrivener app, which Android does not.

I decided in favor of reading comics. LOL. Possibly not the world’s best choice, but OTOH, look, the Surface isn’t dead yet, and also, I CAN write in not-Scrivener, I’ve just gotten used to it. S...

Halloween costume!

A bit late to be sharing, but my son wanted to be a Fortnite-inspired Doctor Doom for Halloween, and I spent more or less every waking moment for a week working on that costume in one way or another. First, a concept drawing:

The fabric available in town was olive green so I did the concept in olive and darker green trim, but Indy wanted gold trim, which was going to look terrible with the olive, so I went to Dublin to search for a darker green fabric, and came away satisfied and also with way ...

Somebunny is FREE today!

Because there’s a huge amount of stress going on this week, I’ve decided to set my very funny paranormal romance, SOMEBUNNY TO LOVE, free on Amazon Kindle through November 6th (affiliate link). Hop-fully it’ll give you something to read while you stand in line to vote, or if you just need to unplug and find yourself stuck into a guaranteed hoppily-ever-after for a while.

I hope you enjoy it. I had a great time writing it and people keep quoting bits of it at me, so I think I’ve done a pretty goo...

art class: lesson one

I’ve been drawing just enough now to remember that I think I could be pretty good at this if I practiced a great deal more. It’s inspired me to, well. About a hundred thousand years ago I bought a basic drawing course on Udemy, and I’ve been moved to start it. Do I think I’ll do the whole thing? No, not really. But the first assignment is a 2-part project to do your best at drawing a realistic eye, which you follow along with the course teacher to do. Here’s day one’s effort:

Part two was “fini...

developing a book proposal

Earlier this year, before acquiring an agent, I wrote a very short, like back-of-book-blurb, romantasy proposal that I sent to an editor I had access to. She asked for a full proposal (a full synopsis, 3 chapters), and that’s been on a back burner while I’ve been doing a thousand thousand other things. But yesterday I got to get started on it, and…

I’ve talked often about how I tend to get to the 1/3rd mark in any book, no matter how long, and hit a wall that I have to go back and fix stuff to g...

committing art

It struck me recently that I could do sketching during gaming and other zoom calls that weren’t Art Zoom (which i haven’t been to in ages, mea culpa), so this is a little art dump of stuff I’ve done…pretty recently.

The face/head was very difficult on this one, but overall I’m kind of pleased with it. Adorka stock photography model for both this and the next one.

I’m…less pleased with this one, but the hair and shoulders are pretty good, I think.

This one the model kindly complimented me on do...

september was so busy, omg.

I spent a lot of September going “Jesus I’m completely overwhelmed how am I going to get everything done I can’t this is horrible” kinds of day, and I just wanted to crawl in a hole and cry.

Then I looked at my Thinks To Do list for the month, which…was completely insane. I did So Goddamn Much in September. This is not actually quite everything, I’d forgotten to put things on and I’d not expanded a couple of the dropdowns. No wonder I was freaking out.

So that, folks, is how the sausage gets ma...

CAULDRON BORNE preorders!

I have been remiss in mentioning that CAULDRON BORNE, Book 5 of the Walker Papers* is available for preorder and will be out in a few days!

*formerly WALKING DEAD, Book 4 of the Walker Papers! this whole renumbering thing is confusing enough without changing a book name, but I did anyway!

I actually had to re-read this one to write the back cover copy, because while I remembered the graveyard scene and the name of one of the characters who was murdered, that was almost literally everything I rem...