C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 88

Loncon! Eurocon!

Ladies & gentlemen! Ted and I will be attending Loncon over the week/end of August 14-18!

I’m on four panels (Thursday at 6pm, Saturday at 3pm and 7pm, Sunday at 1:30pm) and have, um. Brunch scheduled on Saturday. Other than that I am thus far free, and people who want to catch up with me should post or email or something so we can get times arranged, because there are going to be like 6000 people and odds of randomly encountering anyone in a meaningful fashion are slim.

I may do a “Hi I’m in t...

improbable goals

It’s not actually a new month quite yet, but it’s Monday and tomorrow starts a new month so I’m calling it close enough. I have a bunch of improbable goals this month.

I have to get farther ahead on MAGIC & MANNERS, which is now approaching 40,000 words, actually, which is great. I’ve been obliged to actually buy a copy of P&P so I don’t have to keep squinting at my phone to read its text while I’m working at the cinema cafe. (Tangentially, I think Kobo’s computer interface is a real you-know...

exercise post #2

This is set to post on June 30.

June 13: After a 5:40am wakeup call I could not bring myself to do the Arnie workout again. I did this body weight workout, which hurt my toes with the lunge-walk thing, but mostly which just irritates the crap out of me with the pictures of Incredibly Fit Women doing these exercises. It turns out I’d rather look at guys demonstrating exercises, primarily because theirs is not a body ideal I have any societal expectation of reaching.

I’m giving this beginner’s bo...

updating the TBR list

for my own benefit, so i can find it again. i tell you what, though, i’m reading a lot more than is geting stricken off this list. i’m afraid that might mean i’m still buying books… o.o (sequels! they’re all sequels! they’re…well, some of them are sequels…)

Aaron, Rachel: THE LEGEND OF ELI MONPRESS, THE REVENGE OF ELI MONPRESS

Bach, Rachel: FORTUNE’S PAWN, HONOR’S KNIGHT, HEAVEN’S QUEEN

Barnes, Mark T: THE GARDEN OF STONES

Brennan, Sarah Rees: UNTOLD

Broadous, Maurice: THE KNIGHTS OF BRENTON COURT...

Recent Reads: Pegasus

Somehow I missed Robin McKinley‘s PEGASUS when it came out in 2010. (Oh. 2010. I had a baby. That’s how I missed it. Heh. Anyway.)

I spent the first part of the book kind of feeling like I’d outgrown McKinley and that probably my 12 year old self would have died of the happies reading this book but that it (unlike Judith Tarr‘s magnificent LIVING IN THREES) wasn’t actually speaking to my 12 year old self.

I did notice, though, that it was…more like Damar…in its writing than…anything else I’d re...

death of a thousand paper cuts

So my strawberry jam didn’t set up, I got a new toy storage unit for Young Indiana and it didn’t have the screws with so I had to go back to town to get them (and then watched them open another identical unit to take the screws out of it, which helps me but compounds the problem), on the way home I stopped and got strawberries which then got crushed in the bottom of my backpack which is now coated with strawberry juice, it turns out the person I sent a sneak gift to moved since last time I go...

gchat problems

Does anybody have *any* idea why the in-mail Gchat would abruptly stop showing my online presence to someone? I accidentally turned the stupid hangouts on the other day and when I turned it off, my mom couldn’t see me online anymore, and still can’t. This morning she tried sending me another invite to chat and it started not even letting her see my chats when I talked to her–it wouldn’t pop a window up.

Now I’ve turned the stupid hangouts back on and if I chat her, she can see it, but she stil...

Joanne’s Story

So the postman knocks on the door and I’m all “postman, huh, weird, I wonder what he’s delivering, I’m not expecting anything,” and he hands me this thing that says “art” on the customs slip and I’m all like “art? art? i don’t think i ordered any art? what–oh, from Eleri? Oh, she must have seen something that made her think of me, how sweet of her,” all this while I’m opening the package, and I open it so I’m looking at the back and it says “Joanne’s Story” and I’m thinking “huh interesting”...

Recent Reads: The Great Way

As I may have mentioned in the past, one of the great advantages to my job is that I’m often offered the opportunity to read books early (and one of the disadvantages is that I don’t always have time). In this particular case, I got to read Harry Connolly‘s The Great Way trilogy a little while before the Kickstarter crew and then the world in general. And I was, to put it modestly, chewing at the bit for the chance.

It lived up to–I hesitate to even say expectations. I like Harry’s writing, so...

Shaman Rises SPOILERS thread

Okay, just in case people desperately need to discuss SHAMAN RISES, I’m starting a spoilers thread on my blog. I would ask people on G+ and Facebook, particularly, to pop over to either mizkit.com or mizkit at livejournal to discuss the book, because it’s much too easy to spoil people in FB/G+ comments.

I will summarily delete anything I regard as spoilery from G+ and FB comments, just in case.

The post Shaman Rises SPOILERS thread appeared first on The Essential Kit.