C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 83

It’s the final countdown!

The Redeemer Chronicles Kickstarter has clicked over to counting down the hours instead of the days!

It’s going great guns, guys. It’s €220 from reaching the copy editor stage and only €2220 from reaching Lindsey Look cover art! It’s already blown away my hopes of 300 backers and is charging merrily on toward my revised dream of 350! (I confess that I’m even hoping for 365 now, one for each day of the year! :))

In fact, it’s just 5 more backers to reach my dream of 50 trade paperback backers! A...

Picoreview: The Imitation Game

Picoreview: The Imitation Game: Pretty good. Not as good as the hype, but pretty good. Better than Interstellar and its hype, for sure.

It’s Cumberbatch doing what–not what he necessarily does best, I said, thinking of him in August, Osage County–but certainly what he’s best known for: playing an exceedingly intelligent, not particularly well socialized man with grandiose vision and the ability to carry it out.

The difference, of course, is this time it’s a relatively true story. I don’t know a...

THIS. IS. KICKSTARTER!

THREE HUNDRED! THREE HUNDRED BACKERS, GUYS! THAT WAS MY DREAM NUMBER! I’m going to have to upgrade my dreams!

Oh my gosh, this is VERY exciting! VERY! EXCITING! 300 backers and the Redeemer Chronicles Kickstarter is nudging €9K now; another 600 will offset a useful-sized chunk of hiring a professional editor, which–it’s totally silly, but that excites me. I’m a pretty good writer, and I turn in pretty solid drafts, but invariably my editors have questions and insights that leave me wondering w...

Parenthetical Post

I’m holding the Sockpocalypse. We have an unbelieveable number of unpaired socks. I’ve been collecting all that I can find for the purposes of washing and pairing them. Anything left without a mate at the end gets binned. I don’t need wire hangers anyway (althoug a bicycle would be nice).

Yeterday it was (literally) freezing. As part of the Sockpocalypse, I unearthed my winter coat (and my knee-length black leather coat, and my Sassy Librarian Glasses, which means I now have a pair of glasses...

V for Victory!

Ladies and gentlemen, the REDEEMER campaign has just crossed the €8K threshold, which means the Redeemer Chronicles are a go and I am under contract–*to you*!

Oh my gawd. Holy crap. Holy BEANS. This is–I mean, NO DOMINION was very exciting, of course, but this is a whole different ball game! This is a NEW STORY I get to tell RIGHT FROM SCRATCH, and it’s a thing that’s happening because we now live in a world where readers can directly make books happen.

That is so amazing. YOU GUYS are SO AMAZ...

Kitsnaps: Botanic Gardens Greenhouse

I played hooky to go take pictures in the fog this morning. This is one of my favourites. :)

Botanic Gardens Greenhouse

Botanic Gardens Greenhouse

The post Kitsnaps: Botanic Gardens Greenhouse appeared first on The Essential Kit.

Storyteller

I just remembered something embarrassing. *laughs*

My first Usenet/email name/handle/display name was “Storyteller”.

I mean, I was 17, okay? So I can forgive me for being a little dorktastic, but in retrospect it makes me laugh because it’s so…17 and pretentious. Or dreamy-eyed or whatever you want to call it, but as dorky as it was, it was also how I perceived myself, either as I was or as I wanted to be. I wanted to tell stories to people. I’ve always wanted to tell stories to people: my earl...

Picoreview: Mockingjay Part 1

Picoreview: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1: Pretty good, actually.

I’m not really a fan of the whole split it in two thing, but this worked a lot better for me than, say, Deathly Hallows Part 1 did. I felt pretty strongly that DHP1 could have been neatly tucked into 10 minutes at the start of Part 2 and nothing would have been lost, whereas MJP1 was at least a chance for a lot of emotional resonance. It’s the audience’s chance to see just how badly damaged and PSTD everybody, particularly...

200 backers & climbing!

The REDEEMER Kickstarter has reached 200 backers and is still climbing! In fact, it’s at 205, actually, and just a whisker under €6k!

It’s got 10 days left (or will by the time most people read this), and I have a dream of reaching 300 backers. It picked up about 25 last Friday alone, so it’s not impossible! But it’s tricky, because reaching new people–

Okay, before I go on, I want to say that what follows is not accusation or frustration or anger or anything. It’s just one of the interesting...

Recipes: Pecan Pie

We’re doing American Thanksgiving today and although it’s not on my list of usual suspects, I thought I’d try making a pecan pie. Except I have real issues with most pecan pie, which is generally Far Too Sweet (and I have a massive sweet tooth, so if I’m complaining about something being too sweet it’s weird) and doesn’t taste much of pecans.

So I went and found a no-corn-syrup recipe, but then I lacked some of the ingredients and anyway, I kind of ended up inventing a pecan pie recipe that Te...