Crowdfunding
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Revamping my Patreon!
One of my big projects for 2018 is Revamping My Patreon, which has now largely been accomplished. First off, of course, I’ve been running a Patreon a while now, and you’ll find short stories, book proposals, even whole novel drafts here, immediately available when you become a patron.
But I’m offering lots of new fun stuff this year! I’ll be writing individual pieces of flash fiction, ranging from up to 250 words all the way to stories of 10K in length on commission, so you get what you ask for! I’m looking forward to that. :)
Another goal–in fact, the first couple blogs have been posted for these–is to have a lot more patron-first blogs before they go out to my regular blog, and I’m doing a live-blogging-the-writing series that will probably remain Patreon-only.
I’ll also be wrapping up the second Old Races Short Story Project, which is a collection of stories set post-Negotiator-Trilogy, and which will set the Old Races universe up for potential book-length sequels, which I may or may not ever actually write. :) Subscribing to the Patreon gets you early access to those stories, credit in the acknowledgements, and a complete e-book once the project is done.
The Patreon, right now, is almost halfway to an early release of a CE Murphy novel, which is one of my long-term goals for it–I have great hopes of being able to release one or even TWO novels early to the Patreon crew, and even possibly writing a couple of bonus novellas a year. So there’s a lot of exciting stuff going on there, and I’m looking forward to sharing it with you all! ♥
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Teaser: RAVEN HEART
I’m starting a pseudonym to write shapeshifting billionaire paranormal romances under. (Believe it or not, shapeshifting billionaire paranormal romances are a thing. A very popular thing! And SO MUCH FUN to write, OMG!!!)
For early access to the Murphy Lawless novellas, you can subscribe to my Patreon page! I’ll be posting about them when they’re released, but they’ll come straight to your inbox this way.
And for today, a teaser chapter from RAVEN HEART, the first Alaskan Totems paranormal romance by Murphy Lawless! :)
RAVEN HEART: CHAPTER ONE
A surveyor’s mark, hot glowing orange, cut a line across an arm’s length of mountain stone. The paint splashed a few pieces of loose rock, but not enough to wipe it out if Elena knocked them away. Farther down the mountain, where grey stone turned to loose scree, another mark could be overturned entirely, but it wouldn’t make any difference. The surveys were done, and the development rights for the land had been put up for lease.The federal government had given Alaskan natives more of their land back than any other Native American tribes—and that was a problem right there, given their land back—but this whole swath of mountain, traditional Tlingit hunting and gathering territory, still fell under federal lands, all the way out into the bay, and it turned out there was oil in them thar waters.
Elena Peratrovich’s mother, and her mother before her, had been fighting to get the land recognized as Tlingit territory for decades, long before anybody discovered oil, and today, they’d lost for good. No one in the tribe had the money to buy up the resource rights, and that meant the profits from oil and fishing development would benefit…well, someone else. As always.
So Elena had come to the mountain to say goodbye, to look out over the bay and the forests before oil platforms and cruise ships became eyesores on the glacier blue waters. She’d hiked up with the sunset around ten o’clock the evening before, and sat on the mountain through the long dusk and the few, hours of night. The horizon, never truly dark, began to brighten with grey again before three, and by four, soft gold light turned the sky pale behind the mountains. Shafts of brightness threw color on the mountainside, gradually illuminating scraggly brown and green moss, and stretching for the spruce forest that made up the range’s tree line. Farther down the stubborn spruce gave way to leafy trees and fern-filled undergrowth, Alaska’s all-but-unknown rain forests providing trees of massive size, even up to the cedars that had once made up the southeastern tribes’ traditional houses.
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Cyber…Tuesday…late… o.o
I am doing a MID-WEEK ROUNDUP of AWESOME CYBER STUFF!
1. Judith Tarr’s HORSES OF THE MOON Kickstarter is 80% of the way to funded! I personally *dearly* want it to hit the 6500 mark and get us THREE novellas, which might be just enough to satisfy my grabby little hands! :)
2. SIX BY SIX is a fantastic looking anthology with 6 stories each by 6 authors. I admire the whole idea of it and, uh, am jealous of the people doing it, if you wanna know so much. :)
3. Cats Laughing–you know Cats Laughing; they were the band who did the soundtrack for WAR FOR THE OAKS–are doing a 20 year reunion concert/album. Fourteen-year-old me is delighted. :)
4. I have FINALLY got a 2015 calendar up, if people wish to purchase one! Zazzle likes to give me a fancy link for the version with US holidays on it, so I’ve got a fancy link, but THIS is a less fancy link for a version with UK holidays on it. :)
5. This Secret To Writing mug is so admired amongst the word warriors we may declare it our Official Word War Coffee Mug. :)
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oh my gosh.
The Redeemer Kickstarter closed out about an hour ago with 428 backers and €12,251 in funding, which hit the cover art stretch goal with a wee little bit to spare.
That is *well over* a third again the number of backers I’d first dreamed of. It’s nearly *half* again the number I first dreamed of. It’s only 90 backers fewer than NO DOMINION had, which, holy *crap*, that was so far beyond my hopes I didn’t even go there. And I just now at this moment noticed that there were, at the end, 300 e-book backers, which is the number of backers I’d hoped for *entirely*, at the beginning.
I am overwhelmed, grateful, exhausted, and so very very happy right now. Thank you all SO MUCH for your enthusiasm, signal boosts, and patience while went on about it endlessly over the past month. <3 Someone said I should say thanks just by posting a picture of my smile right now, so here you go:
And now Twitter is full of messages that say, “Congratulations! Now get writing!” so I guess I’d better get back to work…especially since I’ve just arranged with Octocon for a REDEEMER book launch party there next October. Come one, come all! ♥
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WE HAVE COVER ART
One of my Loyal Readers, known in these parts as Hataroni, commissioned a short story, and then someone else put us over the top! WE HAVE COVER ART!
But Hataroni didn’t just commission a story. He’s asked me to ask YOU for story ideas that he can choose from, because he’d like to see what his fellow readers would like, too! IS HE COOL OR WHAT?!?!
So please post your story ideas here, and I’ll make sure he sees them (well, he will anyway, but I’ll make sure!)
Hataroni has also mentioned a fundraiser near and dear to his own heart, and I must say that even aside from him asking for a signal boost, this looks really, really interesting: Can sleep patterns change gene functions? So check it out, especially if you or anyone you know suffers from insomnia…!
And then because I’m CRAZY, we have a NEW STRETCH GOAL because WHAT THE HECK IT CAN’T HURT TO TRY!
At €13500, I will COMMISSION ART for the hardback spines and ALL backers will get a thank-you postcard with the spine art!