C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 96

Reader Question Round-Up

I got a bunch of short-answer (not essay!) questions from readers recently, so I’m going to do a hit-and-run with some of them!

Pamela asks Will we get more Negotiator series books?

There’s a faint possibility that in the looooong term the answer to this is yes, but for all intents and purposes, no. :)

Deborah asks Of all your books, do you have a favorite character?

Yes. :)

Kathy asks: Now that Walker Papers is wrapped up, what’s next? Will you continue in the same genre or branch out into someth...

things that fall down

1. Me.

Admittedly, this was several days ago, but I was walking briskly home from the bus stop after a movie the other night and caught the toes of my right foot on an inch-high uplifted edge of sidewalk. The fall knocked me out of my shoe and hat, and I was saved from some generous scrapes by having decided it was cold enough to wear my leather gloves, which protected the heels of my hands. Thank goodness.

Even so, my shoulder and arm were badly sore from the impact for about three days, and...

good morning, world

Busy weekend!

Look, I know it was busy, why is it so hard to remember what I did?

Well, among other things I went to see The Grand Budapest Hotel with Mom and Dad, which was fun. I hardly ever get to do things like that with them. :)

I actually spent most of the rest of Sunday at the cinema cafe, writing, and I got a heartening 4700 words written–an entire chapter in this new project–over the course of the day. The book is at just under 21K, I’ve got all the major characters and most of the mino...

patreon development

So I’ve been reading Conan! What is best for Patreon? and Ursula’s blog post & ensuing comments about Patreon, and talking to friends about my Patreon project and thinking about long games and all kinds of things.

I’ve been thinking of Patreon too much like Kickstarter, really. Too short-term large-goal oriented, whereas I think the Conan link above probably nails it in terms of it being a slow burn and a long term process, and the comments in Ursula’s post drive home the no-content-produced,...

Reader Questions: Process & Pagecount

Lots of process questions, so I’m going to tuck them together into one and answer different aspects of questions people have asked!

Lola & Anne just want straight-up process discussion, which you’d think I’d have covered with the posts for the last couple of weeks, but you’d be wrooooong. :)

Then Kat Bonson follows up with How does your writing process work (e.g. do you write specific # of pages a day or is it a hit & miss kind of thing)? How does your agent/editor fit into your process?

I have...

come along, my darling

Yesterday on Moore Street I noticed a man who looked kind of like a blunt-cut, knock-off Michael Fassbender. Good looking, if not as good looking as Fassbender.

A minute later Young Indiana wandered several steps away from me and stopped to look at something. I said, “Come along, my darling,” and the Fassbender knock-off turned toward me in slow surprise.

I laughed and said, “Wrong darling, sorry,” and off we all went our separate ways. :)

I keep trying to make posts and I can’t think of anythin...

Everything is awesome!

I haven’t liked a “hit song within the context of a movieverse” so much since “Backdoor Lover” in Josie & the Pussycats. I thought the movie was at best moderately amusing, but the song, I find hysterical. Also it’s better than almost anything for clearing earworms, and I’d far rather be singing “Everything is awesome!” than the theme song to Sheriff Callie. @.@

(I asked on Twitter what special level of hell was reserved for people who put “Everything is Awesome” as their ring tone, and a frie...

10%, 10%, 10% onward…

I’m working on a short book (the one mentioned in the process post a couple days ago) and have just edged my way past 10%, which is one of those milestone numbers. It’s starting to take shape structurally, too, which is great, because it’s a blueprint for the structure of the rest of the books. And it’s still amusing me, so hopefully it’ll amuse readers too.

I’ve also gone off-synopsis already, although the off-ness isn’t relevant to the overall structure; it’s just a nicer/smoother opening th...

First SFF?

My friend Kari Sperring (who is one of those writers whose prose just makes me want to weep with envy) has been putting up terrific questions and commentary over on Twitter. Today’s question (which can be followed at the tag #1stSFFReads) is “What was the 1st sff book you read? The 1st by a woman? By a writer of colour?”

As it happens, the first SFF novel I read was *by* a woman: THE CITY UNDER GROUND, by Suzanne Martel. It was published when I was two; I read it when I was six. It made, obvi...

evolving process

Following up somewhat on last week’s process post…

Recently on Twitter Tobias Buckell mentioned he was 6K into a 10K synopsis for a 55K book. Kate Elliott chimed in to say that in December, she’d managed 4K a day for 2 weeks straight–far above her usual writing average–due to having a supremely clear idea of what had to happen in the book at that point.

I myself have become increasingly aware that the more I outline, the more smoothly the book goes. Particular cases in point were THE PRETENDER’...