the essential kit

gah.

mizkit — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:54:15 +0000

I just had one of those “Oh god, I’ve lost it all,” moments, when my writing computer sort of took a breath on start-up, and quietly shut down again.

It booted properly the second time–and, in fact, I’d have lost maybe two chapters of work at most anyway–but you can bet your sweet tush that I have made a backup of Nook and stored it in two, soon to be three, different locations. *heart palpitations*

Ted got up at 8. I thought I’d rolled over and he’d come back upstairs to take a shower, but it turned out an hour had passed between those two things happening. I didn’t get up until nearly 10, which is extremely unlike me these days, and which has sort of thrown me off. Dragged myself to write, and it became clear that the setup for my office wasn’t going to work; I was just getting too much brightness from outside, and couldn’t counter it with the lamps, so I was getting, if not headaches, at least consistent grumpies from the light differential. So I rearranged, after which came the computer scare. I clearly need to go have lunch and … I don’t know. That sentence should end with “write”, but right now I think just managing food will be an accomplishment.

Yoga class tonight. I think it’ll be good for me.

a somewhat schizophrenic entry

mizkit — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 18:48:27 +0000

/Pádraig rang this morning to let us know our friend /Frank Darcy died early today, which was not surprising news, but which was very sad to hear indeed. I’d spoken with his brother on Monday, after texting Frank, and had been told he’d slipped into a deep coma from which he was not expected to awaken, so … yeah. Not surprising, but very sad. We expect we’ll go into Dublin Friday morning for the funeral mass (I think probably it’s fairly traditional for the Irish to attend the removal, as well, but we wouldn’t be able to get back to Longford if we did), though the early trains might make it complicated. We’ll see.

In the schizophrenia promised in the subject line…aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, it’s really been a rather nice day. We have internets at home now, and I’ve spent the last couple hours trying frantically to catch up on some email and general arrangement of stuff. I’ve made a small dent, at least. We went to see “Hancock”, which turned out a whole lot darker than we expected, but in the end we liked it pretty well. I mean, c’mon, it’s Will Smith. What’s not to like? (really, if you don’t like Will Smith, you don’t have to answer that…)

I haven’t managed to reach 50K on the book yet. I’d decided I was taking today off, but then we heard about Frank, and I couldn’t afford to not write today if we’re going to Dublin on Friday, so I scraped through the last of chapter 14 and know where to start 15, but I didn’t quite make 50K on the book. OTOH, I have broken 250K for the year. Holy moly.

Wonder if I can show off the cover for issue #1 yet.

ytd wordcount: 250,600
miles to Isengard: 64.6

early morning blog entry

mizkit — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 20:35:26 +0000

This is my early morning “warm up the fingers before I start the real writing” blog entry, where “early morning” means about 9:30, which really isn’t very early at all. And it won’t be posted until sometime tonight when I go over to my parents’ house to use their internets. Not the point. *squinchy face*

It boggles my little mind in a turrible way that today is the first of July, and the second half of the year has begun. It’s been an extremely chaotic half-year, and I wouldn’t mind it one bit at all if the second half settled down some.

To that end, let’s see what I’ve got on my plate:

- finish writing CAULDRON BORNE
- write a proposal for THE IMPERATOR’S HEIR (asap)
- finish my “From Russia, With Love” revisions (asap)
- go to ComicCon*
- launch Chance
- hopefully sell & write THE IMPERATOR’S HEIR
- get the next six Chance issues written
- go to MeCon
- go to the Nickelback concert :)
- go to London for a book signing
- go to Octocon
- go to South Carolina to be a teacher how to write
- hopefully go to WFC in Calgary

Oh yes. That looks *much* less frenetic, doesn’t it? *rolls eyes*

While we were unpacking, I discovered pair after pair of cute pants which totally don’t fit me because I re-gained 25 pounds. It is a new month. It is a new house. It is a new town. It is my proclamation that I’m going to stop eating so much damned junk food (which really is my downfall: I love sweets, sigh) and get back into all those skinny pants. There’s a yoga class tonight. I’m going to go to that. So mote it be.

Today I need to write 4431 words, which will get me to 50K on this book.

Here I go.

(and, at the end of the day when i’m actually posting this…)

I only actually wrote about 3K, which isn’t enough, but, well, *shrug*, it’s what I wrote. I’ll try to make up the other 500 words tomorrow. We’ll see. I *did* go to the yoga class, which was invigorating, and…

…and I just got notification that TAKE A CHANCE should be in the July Previews at the end of the month for a September release. ZOMG. This might really be happening.

*If you’re going to ComicCon yourself, and we have not made arrangements to meet, please email me at cemurphyauthor@gmail.com so we can!

miles to Isengard: 61.9
ytd wordcount: 249,900

big read book meme

mizkit — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 17:16:44 +0000

the book meme!

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed. Well let’s see.
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you love.

(more…)

bit by bit

mizkit — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 15:45:17 +0000

I have conquered my office, which was critically necessary in order to allow me to get back to work tomorrow. The art isn’t up, but the room’s arranged more or less to my liking, all the knicks and the knacks are distributed (Kate, you’ll be pleased to know that all of them arrived utterly unscathed, even the hard-to-wrap delicate ones, and I am very grateful to you for your efforts. You did a much better job wrapping them than I’d have done. :)), and the computer (still named Nook, which is increasingly misleading; I’m going to have to rent out an office suite to improve on this room!), is up and running. I also got the kitchen/dining room under control, although there’s an enormous pile of flattened boxes and four boxes of the landlord’s kitchen stuff in there, so it doesn’t look nearly as much like it’s done.

I went into our bedroom, looked around, and fled again. Not man enough to face that today. Nor am I prepared to deal with the computer room, but we need some kind of support structure for our printers, and probably at least one more bookcase before we can really get a handle on that room anyway. We have a number of boxes in there labeled “living room crap” or “STUFF” which need to just be gone through item by item in an attempt to get rid of as much of it as possible. But it’s coming along, and I should be able to work in my office tomorrow, which is good.

If I was a very, very good person I would take myself out to the grocery store and buy perishable sorts of food. I…doubt I’m that good a person. I may be just barely good enough to do some writing. I don’t know yet.

miles to Isengard: 46.8

publicity shots

mizkit — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 14:05:19 +0000

Deirdre came out to Longford on Tuesday to do a photo shoot for publicity shots for the arts festival she’s participating in this fall. She gave me permission to post the three shots we settled on as her portfolio, so I’m doing so. We’re both very pleased with the results! Click through for larger versions of the photos.

I hadn’t done anything even vaguely resembling a studio shoot in *years*. I’d forgotten how much I loved it.

Back to unpacking now. :)

unpackity packity pack

mizkit — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 20:30:29 +0000

Today was a day of a lot of unpacking and not nearly enough Aberdeen. Next year, by God, we are not going to be moving house and I’m not going to be under a deadline from hell when she comes to this side of the world. But having her company did make unpacking less of a drag, and after she left it occurred to me that we’d found the stereo, so I plugged it in and had music to work to. Got a lot of the books unpacked, which *hugely* reduced the overwhelmingness of the Room O’ Boxes. So I’m feeling like a Productive Kit today, although my stress level is apparently at a peak, because I have a record four canker sores. This is not best. :/

Oh, Productive Kit reminds me, I finally figured out what name I ought to give Irish people if I want them to call me something more or less like “Catie”: Kitty. I could live with Kitty. That’d be okay. After fifteen years of responding to “Kit”, after all, I’m pretty sure I’d remember to answer to “Kitty”. Its one problem, of course, is that I look nothing like Shadowcat… :)

Emily and I took a taxi home yesterday. The cabbie said, “Do ye know where the estate is, then?” I allowed as how I did, and he said, “So I won’t be driving ye all around the town,” which made us both laugh. :)

I have gotten the cover for Chance #1. You guys are gonna *die*. *smug*

miles to Isengard: 42.7

rocky day

mizkit — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 21:19:45 +0000

Today has been pretty emotionally high-strung. I read this morning that our friend /Frank Darcy, the charming gentleman who ran the last two P-Cons, has gone into hospice and isn’t expected to live much longer at all, after spending most of the last fifteen months fighting stomach cancer. His daughter posted to his journal to let people know, and is passing messages along, which is incredibly thoughtful of her. Frank befriended Ted and myself early on in our introduction to Irish fandom, and I will absolutely never forget the entrance he made on Friday night at P-Con 5, clad in a tux and bearing a silver-headed cane. He looked smashing, and set off a fantastic weekend in absolute style. I don’t happen to believe in an afterlife, but if there is one, I rather think that would make a good entrance there, too.

The announcement made me very glad for my friends who have had cancer and who’ve come through it. Right now I’m full of hugs and tears, not just for them, but for everybody.

After that rocky start, I went over to the house with Mom and we unpacked the kitchen, or at least most of it. Poor Mom clobbered her head on the corner of a cupboard door. :/ And I went and collected /Emily from the train station, which pretty much signaled the end of the working day. We came back to Mom and Dad’s, fed the Emily, and eventually my sister showed up to do her photo shoot. We turned the living room into a makeshift studio, which was kind of fun, and spent a couple of hours in fairly high hilarity (Deirdre and I amuse each other immensely. We’re like Click and Clack, except we don’t have any topic of expertise to get ourselves a radio show about. We just make each other laugh a lot. :)), and I think we got some awesome pictures. ‘course, the cable for that camera is in Cork (or missing somewhere in the new house), so as soon as Ted gets here tomorrow I have to upload pictures and get the best ones in shape for the promotional thing Deirdre needs them for. The deadline, of course, is Thursday, so it must be done Post Haste. It occurs to me that this probably means I’m not going to get any writing done Thursday, either, which is a bother. Maybe I can get a few hundred words in in the afternoon.

The evening has been exceedingly pleasant and low-key with family (my aunt is visiting) and Emily, and…and y’know, wisdom dictates I just go to bed now. Tomorrow Emily gets to watch me unpack more of the house (she’s lucked out: she doesn’t get to help, because she hurt her back. Mom pointed out I’d used that excuse myself at least twice in the whole moving house scheme of things, and it’s true. Very effective way to not do much work. Not actually highly recommended, but effective.). She really knows how to have a good holiday. :)

ytd wordcount: 242,800
miles to Isengard: 36.2

rumor has it…

mizkit — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:03:34 +0000

Rumor up here in Longford has it that down in Cork, /Kate’s water has broken, and my husband has rushed to her assistance.

(more…)

and we’re off.

mizkit — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 11:49:35 +0000

Poor Ted didn’t get off to a great start this morning. I got a text at 6:40am saying, “Are you up yet?” I said, “I am now,” and the next one said, “Sorry. Funny thing happened. I just locked myself out of the house.”

So I got up and called him, obviously, not that I could do anything from a hundred and forty miles away. He eventually got a key from the estate agent and the movers came in and packed more or less everything into the van, and just called to say they’re on their way up here (the movers, not Ted. Ted, hopefully, will be here Wednesday evening.). No real ETA other than “this afternoon/evening”, so I guess I’m going to have some lunch and then spend a couple-three hours writing before going over there to vacuum up cruft before the movers arrive to track more cruft in. If I can just finish this chapter, that’ll be enough. *rubs face*

Arright. Once more: onward.

miles to Isengard: 31.3
music in my head: Bon Jovi, Novocaine