C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 84

Kickstarter comes to Ireland

First, before I start nattering about my own nebulous projects, lemme point you at three (3!) excellent Kickstarters that are currently running:

1. Lawrence Watt-Evans offers up delicious steampunky pulp! with illustrations! in TOM DERRINGER AND THE ALUMINUM AIRSHIP!

2. Ellen Million is running a second fantasy coloring books for so-called grown-ups, with a wide variety of artists pitching in books this time!

3. Patricia Bray & Joshua Palmatier have launched TEMPORALLY OUT OF ORDER, an anthology...

Kitsnaps: Old Man Orangutan

I love both of these pictures individually, but I think together they’re just about perfect. :)

The post Kitsnaps: Old Man Orangutan appeared first on The Essential Kit.

& that’s a wrap

I’ve just finished up the copy edits on STONE’S THROE, my Spirit of the Century pulp fiction novel for Evil Hat Productions. I believe it’ll be out to the backers in quite short order, and available for general purchase not *too* long after that.

I kinda love this book, guys. I think you will too. It’s full of ridiculous good swoopy pulpy fun, and I’m really glad I got a chance to write it.

And now I am going to go do the Ice Cream Dance of Celebration! :)

The post & that’s a wrap appeared firs...

so this week.

So preschool started last week and inevitably Young Indiana got a cold by day 3 and I had a cold by day 5 and very excitingly Ted did not get a cold, he got a twisted appendix (he’s on antibiotics for it and they’ll decide in another week if they should take it out or not), so this past week has been…somewhat exhausting. By which I mean we are all dragging ass and staring thousand-mile stares.

I’ve been re-reading the Continuing Time books while sitting around being on media blackout/sick/wait...

a week of work

With the arrival of September and the start of (pre)school, I have gotten more work done in the past week than in the past three months combined. There’s a cafe in the same building as my son’s preschool, so I’ve been dropping him off, walking thirty meters to order a cup of berry tea, and sitting down to write for close to 3 hours. It’s a godsend.

On the second morning, the barista said, dubiously, “Do you *like* the berry tea?” and I cheerfully admitted it was about the only kind of tea I *d...

Picoreview: The Grand Seduction

Picoreview: The Grand Seduction: Charming!

The Grand Seduction is sort of Doc Hollywood meets The Full Monty (in terms of small town whose main source of employment has dried up, not in terms of stripping :)), with a bit of Waking Ned Devine thrown in. It stars Brendan Gleeson, who is always wonderful, and Taylor Kitsch, who appears to be trying to rebuild a career after his meteoric rise culminated in two gigantic box office flops. (I *like* Kitsch, and in fact liked both John Carter and Batt...

Recent Reads: A Crack in Everything

This angel was a beautiful piece of graffiti on South William Street in Dublin. It was there a long time: I saw it often.

I never thought to write a story about it.

I would resent that now that Ruth Frances Long has written one and thus proven to me what I failed to imagine, except I’m just really, really *happy* that Ruth wrote this book, and let me tell you, it’s always a relief when a friend writes a book you genuinely like.

A CRACK IN EVERYTHING is urban fantasy set in Dublin, which–you woul...

Elfquest: Final Quest, issue 4

Sigh.

I’ll be giving the Final Quest one more issue, because it’s ElfQuest and I’ve loved it since childhood, and because there’s an *extremely* faint chance that the character they apparently killed at the end of this issue is actually dead. If they have actually killed the character off, the story becomes *much* more interesting to me…but I’m so very, very dubious that they’re really dead.

This issue featured 20 pages of story, which is enough for one solid story thread, but not the two and a...

“Let Them Eat Cake” Recipe Roundup

Okay. I had loads of questions about the “Let Them Eat Cake” recipes, especially the gluten free stuff, so I’m doing a round-up on them.

Gluten free, vegan carrot cake recipe with ‘cream cheese’ frosting. Contains flax ‘eggs’, which I’d never previously encountered and am now quite enamoured with as a substitution. Also, even fresh, that frosting tastes *remarkably* like cream cheese frosting, and if you stick it in the fridge overnight and serve it cold (it’s soft enough to spread onto a cake...

media blackout

I am…desperately behind on writing. This summer–since mid-April–has been…very bad, for writing, and the two projects I hoped to have completed by now are…not. :/ Which means that with 4 months left in the year I also have 4 major projects I want finished or significantly dented, which is…unlikely. I mean, like two of those books are half-written; two are not written at all. I also have three short stories and some copy edits to do, the sooner the better.

I am therefore declaring a media blacko...