Category: CEMurphy

blog vs newsletter: fight!

January 16, 2024

The difference between the blog (this) and the newsletter (over here, and you should sign up for it if you haven’t bc…bc I said so… o.o): The blog is just that. It’s whatever’s on my mind today (or possibly last week, depending on whether I’ve scheduled a post ahead of time or not). Daily life, nothing necessarily news-oriented. It has movie and book reviews which, despite the name ‘picoreview’ for movies, can go on at some length, and it has me flailing about stuff, and, you know, good stuff like…

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Cover art: Bewitching Benedict

Marketing Monday: Bewitching Benedict

July 31, 2023

today I’m going to talk about BEWITCHING BENEDICT, which is a Regency romance with (*gasp*) no magic, despite the title. :) I’d been reading lots and lots of MC Beaton’s Regency romances, and I asked my agent at the time if there was still a market for Regencies, because I thought maybe I could write one. He said yes, if I wrote him a charming piece of confectionary, he could definitely sell it. Well, I *did* write a charming piece of confectionary, but he couldn’t sell it. I was told…

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Ask the Author: genres I’d like to write in

July 21, 2023

The Question: Are there any genres in which you’d like to write (that you’ve not written in already)? Once upon a time the answer to this question was “cozy mysteries!” but since I’ve been writing the Dublin Driver series for a while now, it’s less of a pointed answer. :) Genres, wow, well, actually yes! Having spent the past several years learning to write romance novels (which was NOT an easy task!), I’d really love to try writing romantic suspense. I have a pile of research novels to read for…

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Ask The Author: magic systems, sorta

July 14, 2023

I am implementing an almost-certain-to-be-erratic Friday Blog Post based on reader questions! Today’s question is a very, very old one: “What’s the most difficult part when constructing a system of magic for a world?” That is a Very Good Question. So, like, let’s take the Walker Papers and the Negotiator Trilogy, which are my two longest/best known serieseses. You would not *believe* how many books I read about shamanism, animism, and Native American cultures while preparing to write the Walker Papers. LOTS. MANY. BUNCHES. (I was frankly slightly less concerned…

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VERY BIG Walker Papers news!

March 7, 2023

So I have VERY BIG NEWS! News which you might have already heard if you follow me other places, but VERY BIG none-the-less! I have gotten the rights to the Walker Papers back!!! Now, I’ve learned that this is a degree of Writer Speak, so let me translate: I never *lost* the rights, per se. When a publisher buys your book to publish, they *acquire* the rights, which then can, after a certain period of time, revert to the author. It doesn’t happen automatically: the author has to ask, and…

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