C.E. Murphy's Blog, page 97

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...

mini-retreat

For Mother’s Day (it’s Mother’s Day today on this side of the pond) I got to take a mini writing retreat to Galway, where my sister’s musical was also premiering. I hopped on the train at 11am on Saturday morning and by 6pm had 8K written and was in such a zone that if I hadn’t had evening arrangements I’d have probably stayed right where I was and written until I collapsed.

However, I did have plans, so I went out to dinner and then to the show, after a slight detour running around the Galwa...

Elfquest: The Final Quest, Issues 1-2

So the first couple issues proper of the new EQ story are out. When the first one came out, there was some blogger/reviewer type who had never read EQ before who said “confusing, too many characters, no emotional connection,” or words to that effect.

In the comments and on FB and places, people shrieked, “How dare somebody come into a 30 year saga on the latest iteration and say it’s no good! They don’t UNDERSTAND!” and words to that effect.

The thing is, the blogger was right.

I mean, I’ve been...

Picoreview: Winter Soldier

Picoreview: Captain America: Winter Soldier: I’m not going to go into any detail because this doesn’t open in America until next week, but I was pretty happy with it. There were plenty of outright funny/clever moments, more violence than I expected (I know, it’s about a soldier, but it’s the whole PG-13 drift toward greater violence. I guess I still don’t expect it.), there was at least one good heartbreak moment, and I want my Falcon movie like five minutes ago.

What I will say is dear god, C...

gardening

Due to the entirely realistic fear that if I didn’t do something with the roses and raspberries I bought RIGHT AWAY, they would rot on the kitchen counter, Young Indiana and I went out to Deal With The Garden yesterday.

Before:

Armed with a rake, a gardening fork and a spade, I murdered many, many bulbous plants that were clearly due to turn into beautiful flowers of some sort soon, terrified some snails, cut at least one fat earthworm in half (I am SO SORRY, LIL GUY), dealt with the tragic sor...