C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 94

more gardening

We went forth and got some reinforced plastic container-gardening bags, and yesterday Young Indiana and I filled two of them with seed potatoes and compost. The plastic is strong enough that the bags will hold their shape even if violated, so I did two layers of potatoes by way of cutting holes around the middle of the bags. I’m given to understand that root vegetables will grow toward the light if it’s made available, so we’ll see if that works. At least I’ve tried.

We’ve got carrots and let...

thirty directions at once

Despite it all meaning nothing, I may have accidentally-like written 2000 words on the PADYA last night (in 90 minutes, which is spectacularly fast for the first fly-by on a project). _And_ I included descriptions! :) It’s not the opening chapter (and here I sing Scrivener’s praises again, because it’s just a scene in a file that I can move to wherever it needs to go when I get that far), though I expect it to be early enough in the book to be useful for a proposal. I hope.

Chapter 8 of MAGIC...

Agents of SHIELD

I had to stay off the internets yesterday because everybody was all OMG SHIELD SQUEEEEE SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER and I didn’t want to be spoiled. So we watched AoS last night and

OMG SHIELD SQUEEEE SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Okay, not actually spoiler right now, maybe behind the cut, but seriously, that was the first really *good* episode of SHIELD. I wish they’d held off for a January premeire instead of September; I think they could have cut a lot of the mind-bogglingly slow and dull crap from th...

cognitive dissonance

So last night I was at my usual working space, trying to hammer out the synopsis for the post-apocalyptic dystopian young adult novel (forevermore referred to as PADYA) and I realize that the group of young adults at the table next to me is discussing (and utterly slaughtering) the plot of HUNGER GAMES.

I don’t know which was worse, the total cognitive dissonance of trying to create my own PADYA while listening to the rehash of another at my side, or having to stifle the urge to leap up and sh...

it means nothing.

The fact that I have created a Scrivener file for the PADYA (Post Apocalyptic Dystopian Young Adult) novel means nothing.

The fact that I spent an hour and a half pounding out a gibberish-filled rough draft synopsis last night also means nothing.

The fact that I’m looking with some interest at time-tracking software does mean something, but that’s something I wanted to do anyway, because I do want to see if I can quantify the success ratio of the exhaustive synopsis. I don’t know how many hour...

Recent Reads: Science in the Capital Trilogy

I’ve just finished reading (for the 3rd time, according to my fairly exhaustive reading list) Kim Stanley Robinson’s Science in the Capital trilogy.

I love this series; I loved it the first time I read it and I think it’s improved with the re-reads. It’d been about five years since I read them last, and I’d forgotten huge swaths of storyline and mentally revised at least one into something that totally didn’t happen. I had not forgotten, and was struck again, by the strength of the nature writ...

and draft.

73.4K out of 55K later, the first draft of my Regency romance novel is done.

Frankly, this was an Attack Book: my first brainstorming filter post about it was in the 13th of February, when I had half a synopsis written for it, so from conception to (rough draft) completion it’s definitely taken less than 2 months. I don’t think I’ve ever gone from concept to book in that little time before.

Now to polish it up a bit and send it to the agent, who will hopefully be able to sell it. Ideally for l...

triumphant dinners

So since moving to Ireland we’ve learned the numminess of Indian food (Alaska, as it turns out, is not a place to get good Indian). But it’s expensive to order out, of course, and jarred sauces are, well, jarred sauce quality, so I’ve been kind of wanting to try some recipes at home. I found a curry cookbook at Chapters that looked like it had potential, and on Wednesday–well, I’d meant to do it on Tuesday, but the lead time was even longer than I remembered, so it ended up being Wednesday af...

a brief radio silence

For once I was actually prepared to post things and was thwarted by WordPress, for some reason, deciding not to let me in to my blog for two days. *shakes a tiny fist* :)

One of the things I was going to post was the next chapter of MAGIC & MANNERS, but because I couldn’t let people know here that it was going up, I didn’t, and now I feel that it’s past my appropriate window of opportunity, so the next chapter for Patreons will go up next week. :)

Another was that I’m writing a Regency romance...

so close, so far

Well, I was never gonna get 7500 words done today, and in the end I decided to make it a usual not-writing day because I have 3 writing days coming up and trying to kill myself getting it done today just seemed dumb. So much as I wanted it to be, the book is not done today. OTOH, this is because it’s heading in for 20% over its projected length, not because I didn’t write as much as I hoped to. 61K this month, and about 105K for the year, which makes me very happy. That’s more than half of wh...