I went to the library to try to write today, to see if it would have the same effect as a cafe (ie, lots of words). It went pretty well, with 4800 words, but the amazing part is that when I came home, my husband had:

- fixed the washing machine
- fixed the dryer
- mopped the downstairs
- vacuumed
- cleaned up the disaster area of an entryway
- cleaned the kitchen
- cleaned the kitty litter
- tucked the garbage & recycling out of the way, the former into a place where it will probably not smell as much, since it’s no longer by the radiator
- gone shopping, and
- made a steak and baked potatoes dinner

Ted is *best*. :)

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 112.4
ytd wordcount: 54,700

currently: impressed

I have a cold in my nose. I don’t feel too bad otherwise, except I am very, very tired. I do not have time to be very very tired. What I have is Just Barely enough time to finish this damned book before it’s due, and tiredness is entirely anathema to that.

I will write one thousand words today. That’s only 500 more. It’s not enough, but it is at least something. Then perhaps I will go nap for an hour or two, and by so doing utterly defeat the cold in my nose and be able to spring up and write 6000 words a day all week long. Yes. That is my plan.

*glares tiredly at the word processing document* 500 words more, I tell you. 500 words more.

eta: I have, pretty much despite myself, managed to finish a whole chapter. Go me. :p

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 110
ytd wordcount: 49,900 (how annoying)

currently: aggravated

Awwww.

(Sorry, that’s it. I got nothin’ else.)

ytd wordcount: 47,300

I’m told I am remiss in failing to mention frequently enough that you can find me here on Twitter or here on Facebook, as well as at this blog and at cemurphy.net.

There. My duties here are done. :)

I remembered at the last possible moment that I needed to do the Art Fact Sheet for SPIRIT DANCES, the sixth Walker Papers novel (due out April 2011; yes, this is way ahead of where you as readers are, since book five, DEMON HUNTS, is out in June), and in a fit of truthfulness, emailed my editor with the following:

I forgot about the AFS, I’ll get it flung your way shortly! I don’t suppose, “Who are we kidding? Do what you’ve been doing, with a rattlesnake as the not-Joanne image, and maybe use, oh, I don’t know, not green because book 7 is set in Ireland so we’ll want green for it, how about yellow? for a color scheme, and by the way, this is the only book in the entire series where Joanne gets gussied up, so if you want a chance to put her in a velvet sheath dress instead of jeans on the cover, grab the opportunity while you’ve got it!” would do? :)

Turns out that’ll actually pretty much do. :) I sent a few more details upon being asked, but really, who *are* we kidding? The Walker Papers covers have been awesome and as long as they keep doing the same things, I will continue to do happy dances of squeeful joy when I get ‘em. :)

(Speaking of which, I have seen the cover for TRUTHSEEKER, and I LUFF it. LUFF LUFF LUFF. <3!!! I will show it off as soon as I'm given permission!)

3K writing day today. I'm thinking of working over the weekend, as it's been a pretty low-key week and I've been getting up comparatively early on weekends anyway but don't have to swim, so I could in theory just hie myself to the keyboard and get busy. I'm at about 73K on WAYFINDER, and have one more chapter to go before everything hits the fan, so I'm kind of looking forward to the possibility of just flinging myself in and not coming up for air until it's pretty much done. I figure there's somewhere between 30 and 40K left to go. Surrender the manuscript!

thinks to do:
Feb 01: DEMON HUNTS AAs due
Feb 05: SPIRIT DANCES art fact sheet due
Feb 19: WAYFINDER due
Apr 15: SPIRIT DANCES due
Jun 30: New book proposals due

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 106.3
ytd wordcount: 44,500
ytd km swum: 22

currently: cheerful

Somebody in comments asked, more or less, what this “sustainable funding model” thing with the Hot Time novella was, so now that I am feeling less damaged than yesterday (my toe is now wonderfully purple. It doesn’t hurt as much and is healing up fine) I thought I’d try to address it.

Gratuitously, though, I’m going to mention at the top rather than at the end of this entry that speaking of this whole topic, Crowdfunding community Rose & Bay is now running their votes for (among other things) best crowdfunded fiction of 2009, and “Hot Time” is on the list of nominees.

Inevitably, this gets long.

Read the rest of this entry…

currently: thoughtful

I was going to do a post about sustainable funding models and things, but this morning I stubbed the middle 3 toes of my right foot so hard I collapsed in tears and didn’t get up again for 90 minutes because it hurt so much it exhausted me. I was feeling pretty fragile and melodramatic, except I just looked at my middlest toe, which is black with bruising, so apparently I really did stub the holy living shit out of it and am not as pathetic as all that.

I may take a picture. It’s impressively horrible.

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 104.8
ytd wordcount: 41,300
ytd km swum: 20

currently: drained

DEMON HUNTS galleys are finished and submitted. Now the question is whether to toss the manuscript or bring it to P-Con for the auction. (*looks at * :))

That’s officially the end of the Five Year Plan, which was all about getting as many books on the shelves over a five year period as I could. DEMON HUNTS will be out June 1st, five years to the day after URBAN SHAMAN. 10 CE Murphy books, 3 Cate Dermody books, a scattered handful of short stories & novellas, and a five-issue comic series between June 1, 2005 and June 1, 2010. I’m a little hornswoggled by that.

Tomorrow: do the SPIRIT DANCES art fact sheet and finish chapter 26 of WAYFINDER, plus any other sundries which need getting out of the way so I can hit the keyboard running (to badly mix my metaphors) on Thursday.

Feb 01: DEMON HUNTS AAs due
Feb 05: SPIRIT DANCES art fact sheet
Feb 19: WAYFINDER due
Apr 15: SPIRIT DANCES due
Jun 30: New book proposals due

The Road Home: miles to Isengard: 100.6
ytd km swum: 19

currently: busy

Please note!: You will need to click the “return to merchant” button in order to be brought to the download page, once you’ve bought your copy of “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”! Having not actually bought a copy myself, I didn’t realize that would be part of the process and so I didn’t know to mention it. Sorry for any inconvenience, and if you’ve bought but not received it, please email me (cemurphyauthor@gmail.com) and I’ll email you your copy!

Couldn’t get comfortable enough to write on the train yesterday, so I haven’t reached 70K on the book, but that’s okay. We had an utterly splendid weekend in Cork and are very glad indeed to have gone.

I will no doubt be posting fairly regular reminders over the course of the month about the “Hot Time” sale, but if any of my myriad friends and … well, I was going to say “coworkers”, except my life generally doesn’t work that way, so my myriad friends, then! If any of you want to post links from your respective journals and FB and Twitter accounts, well, I would be grateful. (In fact, I got a bunch of RTs on Twitter last night, and I *am* grateful! Thank you very, very much!)

I am in an unexpectedly good mood this morning. I have *tons* to do today (or we have tons to do, but whether it’s I or we, there’s a lot of it!) and virtually none of it’s writing, but I’m feeling quite chipper and enthusiastic anyway.

*charges off to do thinks*!

- finish DEMON HUNTS AAs
- do SPIRIT DANCES AFS
- laundry
- shop
- bring glass to the recycling place
- make bread
- empty all the small garbages into the big one and then empty it
- ideally finish chapter 26 of WAYFINDER

currently: chipper

“Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight” was and is an experiment in direct-market story sales and sustainable income models for writers. Commissioned in June 2009 by some fifty contributors, the planned 7500 word short story grew to a 23,000 word novella centered around Janx and Daisani, two of the most popular characters from my Negotiator Trilogy. It’s also a sequel to the online short story Five Card Draw, and part of a longer sequence of planned short stories and novellas.

For a minimum $10 buy-in, patrons received exclusive access to the novella in September 2009. A second opportunity to become a patron for the same minimum $10 buy-in is now available through the month of February, 2010. At the end of February, “Hot Time” will be off the market until such a time as it finds a traditional publisher.

Cover art by Lanny Liu.

an excerpt from “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight”:

    She was too young, even for a man with no age, but she caught his eye. Slim, dark-haired, with long fingers caught in the skirt of a shapeless dress, she was clearly not a child of wealth. She no doubt belonged to the riverboat upon which she stood, a shabby thing that had seen better days. Even so, in the fire’s light they both bent toward beauty.

    It was her gaze, fixed on the sky, which arrested him. Others watched the fire, drawn in by its glow and movement, but she looked upward as though she could see what soared above the smoke. That was quite impossible: even knowing who danced there, Daisani could barely see them himself, but the girl watched as if she knew. Such seeing eyes were enough that he might have gone to her then, despite her youth, but tonight; tonight Chicago was burning.

Read the rest of this entry…

currently: artistic