C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 88

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...

Dublin 2019!

Dublin 2019! That was the other thing I wanted to mention in yesterday’s Loncon blog!

As you know, Bob, Dublin is putting in a bid to host WorldCon in 2019. I got involved with the bid about 18 months ago, and I’m really excited about the prospect.

So, apparently, is everyone else: by Saturday night at Loncon there were apparently about 250 pre-supporters, people who have given 20 quid to help finance the bid itself as well as the convention. There were many others who asked if we would be at S...

Loncon!

Loncon was pretty amazing.

It was well-run, with the only really visible snafu being that they weren’t prepared for 3000 people to show up at 9am Thursday, imagining, instead, that they’d show up more gradually through the weekend. So Thursday there was a Very Long Line to pick up registration materials, but they handled it super well and kept it moving. A highlight was my friend Kate, after walking from one end of the very long convention centre concourse to the end where Loncon was taking pl...

things to say

I have a lot of political posts warring in my brain to be written and not much actual will to write them right now, it seems. I guess in another couple weeks I’ll see if I still want to say them.

In the meantime, this is a good body image campaign.

Ten days to go on the Fantasy Fudge Fundraiser and $1077 to make me write a story about Joanne attempting to make fudge. :)

After running out of ink and getting a new toner cartridge, my printer has started jamming on hideously wrinkled pages. After c...

TBR shelf doom

I’m afraid the TBR shelf has gotten totally out of control again, and I have two SFF conventions coming up. This cannot bode well. But it’s not my fault! We went to America, where there are thousands of different titles you can’t find here! I found Barbara HamblyHamilton’s Abigail Adams murder mystery series! I got Michelle Sagara’s CAST IN FLAME (which is my new favourite of the series, OMG, the action! OMG, the end!)! I got new Jack Campbell books (I love them. they do exactly what they say...

thinks to do in august

- print up & proof STONE’S THROE

- make fudge

- go to loncon

Loncon Schedule:

Autographing 1 – CE Murphy

Thursday 13:30 – 15:00, Autographing Space (ExCeL)

THERE MIGHT BE FUDGE. :)

The Superhero-Industrial Complex

Thursday 18:00 – 19:00, Capital Suite 7+12 (ExCeL)

The creation of the Marvel Cinematic Universe has been one of the most exciting pop culture developments of the last decade — and contradicts the decades-long strategy, followed primarily by DC, of keeping superheroes in their own worlds for...

all the luggage

(Note how I carefully did not say “all the baggage.”)

We have acquired an unusually vast amount of stuff to take home, this trip. We had come prepared with an extra suitcase, but we’ve still ended up borrowing one to bring home. Once we’ve dispersed the loot amongst the family it won’t be so dramatic a haul, but there’s still an Unusually Large amount of stuff this time around. Fewer books than usual, mind you, but still not an insignificant number, and an awful lot of clothes and just…stuff!

I...

highlander on the mind

Apparently I’ve got Highlander on the mind. Last week MedievalPOC caused me to write a fic (I’ll post it after I’ve retrieved the third that I was working on when the tablet battery died), last night I got into this big discussion about Methos over on FB with a friend, which caused me to point out IMMORTAL BELOVED to her, and to wist about someday being able to write my other two Methos novels (which, unless Davis/Panzer opens Highlander up to Kindle Worlds, is not something I can ever see ha...

visiting a foreign country

We’re in America (in Upper Peninsula Michigan, which is full of motels that look like the Winchesters would stay there. We concluded, however, that they would probably be smart enough to avoid the nearby one called ‘Sleepy Hollow’.), and I left my tablet charger at home, so I’ve been offline since it ran out of battery. Oops.

American food seems to all be either very salty or very sweet. Also I have not been here enough since Obama’s election to get used to the fact that commercials now much m...

Recent Reads/GGK Book Club: A Song for Arbonne

I just finished A SONG FOR ARBONNE, which was May’s GGK Book Club book. (I’m working on catching up! I bet I’ll be almost caught up by the end of the year! :))

I’ve been kind of interested in re-reading SONG, because I’ve only read it once and it didn’t, er, sing to me, as it were. It’s the one GGK book I’ve never had any particular interest *in* re-reading, which, in the end, caused me to be interested in re-reading it. I was wondering if it was my callow youth that caused it to not click, or...