Category: CEMurphy

the essential kit

EPIIIIIIIIIIC

April 22, 2013

I just finished reading Carol Berg’s THE DAEMON PRISM (which, like nearly everything Carol writes, is on my list of Favorite Books), and it got me to thinking about what makes epic work and what makes it work on a huge, international bestseller level. Carol’s epic fantasy usually focuses on a handful of people, rather than a cast of thousands, like (for example) GRRM. They’re very different storytelling styles and obviously bring different things to the table, both of which I find appealing in different ways. I wonder if one…

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Let It Bleed - Jeri-Smith-Ready

Recent Reads: LET IT BLEED

April 18, 2013

LET IT BLEED is book 3.5 of the WVMP RADIO urban fantasy series by my friend Jeri Smith-Ready, and is what happens when the publisher decides they want four books instead of five and the author turns the salient events of book four into a novella to offer her readers for free so she can wrap up the series in a way she feels is satisfying. This is in every way awesome. And the novella is, in and of itself, fine. My problem is with a decision Jeri’s made for…

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the essential kit

revision and review

April 12, 2013

Revisions on SHAMAN RISES are taking a ridiculously long time, because I have to keep looking up details–names, aura colors, locations–in other books. I have only had to resort to Twitter twice, although it might in general be faster to ask Teh Intarwebs instead of searching my own manuscripts. :) I also finished watching the first season Downton Abbey last night. I think…that I will probably not continue on. The final episode left me disgusted with the two older sisters, I loathed the Lady Grantham/O’Brien story, and generally don’t think…

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Mountain Echoes by CE Murphy

brain fry

April 10, 2013

I went through the entire SHAMAN RISES manuscript in one pass today. This may have been a mistake, since it’s nearly impossible to retain any degree of impartiality after about a hundred pages in one day. But I’ve done the first revision pass, and holy crap, that book hits the ground running and doesn’t let up. And either it hangs together a lot better than I thought it would or I’m far too close to it right now to see its glaring errors. After a few detail fixes and a…

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the essential kit

So cool!

April 8, 2013

Okay, that’s awesome. I just got an email from a friend–the father of the boy that Billy Holliday’s son Robert is named for, in fact–who said he was hanging out with his son’s class on a beach day, and he (the father) was reading the Dresden Files. A girl asked what it was about, and he said “A wizard in Chicago.” “Oh, cool,” she said. “I’m reading something similar, but I can’t remember the writer’s name right now. I’ll get it for you.” “Heh,” my friend said, “I actually know…

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