C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 87

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...

Green Tea Cupcakes

So yesterday was the 200th birthday of Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Irish author of such gothic classics as UNCLE SILAS and CARMILLA. Swan River Press, a small Irish press specializing in gothic horror and half-forgotten Irish authors, has done a rather splendid celebration of Le Fanu, including

- a track at last weekend’s Eurocon

- a walk through Dublin with Le Fanu’s life & career as the path

- a lecture last night by Le Fanu expert Jim Rockhill

- and the release of DREAMS OF SHADOW & SMOKE: Stori...

Unforgiven: A Highlander fic

So a few weeks ago, Medieval POC, the website I feel is the actual purpose of the Internet existing, posted this picture:

and requested immortal vampire fic. I was all like “VAMPIRE WUT NO HIGHLANDER OBVS!” and she said that would do too.

And then I, er, had an idea. And then…well, then this happened:

Unforgiven: A Highlander Fic

Etruria (today, Tuscany): ca 500 BC

The last thing he remembered was the lion killing him.

He didn’t expect to awaken in a field; he did not expect to awaken with a surge...

10 movies

I’ve been working on this list for a while, and in the past few days an actual meme of it seems to have popped up on Facebook, so I don’t know, maybe it’s in the gestalt. It was surprisingly difficult to come up with the list.

Ten movies I will watch over and over again, in no particular order:

1. While You Were Sleeping

2. The Cutting Edge

3. The Replacement Killers

4. The Hunt for Red October

5. A Knight’s Tale

6. Sliding Doors

7. Maverick

8. Robin Hood (Disney)

9. The Princess Bride

10. Much Ado Abou...

Fantasy Fudge update!

Soooooooooooo the fudge fundraiser closed out on Saturday morning at a preposterous 615% funded and about 60 pounds of fudge promised to people all over the world.

The truth is that *making* the fudge isn’t nearly as big a task as packing it up will be. I’ll be sending out a Choose Your Package (1 type, 3 types, or Sampler Package) poll soon, and will make and ship the fudge in October. My expectation is that I’ll be spending weekends making and packing fudge to ship on Mondays, and I’ll prob...

Shamrokon!

Shamrokon was a lovely, fun, totally exhausted weekend. Not so much exhaust*ing* as exhaust*ed*; for some of the attendees it was the 3rd con weekend in a row, and for lots of them it was the 2nd. It turns out that’s a lot. :)

I myself was on three panels (all of which went pretty well), helped judge the Golden Blasters, which are one of my very favourite parts of the current Irish fandom scene, and threw a Let Them Eat Cake party on Friday night.

The biggest mistake of the cake party was not l...