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Thinks To Done: 2019
It’s coming up hard on the end of the year & naturally I’m freaking out about everything I haven’t gotten done, WHICH IS WHY I’VE BEEN KEEPING A LIST OF WHAT I *HAVE* GOTTEN DONE
I wrote most of DEATH ON THE GREEN and all of DEATH OF AN IRISH MUMMY, the second two books of the Dublin Driver series (launching in January)!
DEAD IN DUBLIN
Book One of The Dublin Driver Mysteries
American-in-Ireland Megan Malone has always enjoyed her job driving limousines…until one of her clients ends up DEAD IN DUBLIN.A friend who fears she’s culpable for the death begs Megan to look into it, and between her irate boss and a handsome Garda who’s both amused and annoyed by her persistence, Megan has her hands full. But if cockles and mussels aren’t to blame, can Megan find the real culprit . . .before another fishy death occurs?
Preorder Now!
Amazon || Barnes & Noble || GooglePlay || KoboI also wrote a chunk of SUNMASTER, the fourth (and hopefully final) book of my YA epic fantasy Guildmaster Saga (here is a link to book two, released this year!):
STONEMASTER
Book Two of the Guildmaster Saga
It’s good luck to earn the king’s regard…isn’t it?Seamaster journeyman Rasim’s quick wits have helped to save his beloved home city and earned him the dubious honor of studying with the diplomatic Sunmasters. But not everyone is happy that magical knowledge is being shared, and when the king orders the guilds back to the Northlands on a sensitive political mission, it may well cost Rasim his life.Seamaster-born, Sunmaster-trained, Rasim now faces a fight that can only be won by a Stonemaster…
Available now!
Amazon || Barnes & Noble || Apple || Kobo…and wrote a NEW UPCOMING PARANORMAL ROMANCE which will be out early next year!
So that’s about the equivalent of 3 books written in 2019.
But wait! There’s more! I wrote a novella set in the Heartstrike world. That, too, will be out relatively early next year, and wrote 10+ words of fic for my Patreon.
I wrote two short stories, one in the afore-mentioned Guildmaster Saga world & the other, a post-apocalyptic fairy tale, set in, um, the future.
“Siryn”
a fairy tale of The Rising
Cities have drowned and the future has changed beyond recognition. But something new has been born–or perhaps something impossibly old has been released.She does not know how she came to be, only that the oceans are her favored home…until a man from the world above nearly dies in her domain, and she is drawn toward the soft and easy life he seems to possess. But there is a price to pay for love, and in the end…
…you will never be part of her world…
Available Now!
Amazon || Apple || Barnes & Noble (Nook) || KoboI ALSO *majorly* revised the first book of the Strongbox Chronicles and minorly revised the second one.
THE CARDINAL RULE
Book One of The Strongbox Chronicles
When CIA Agent Alisha MacAleer’s cover is blown by ex-lover Frank Reichart, she’s forced into a spy game that draws a curtain back on a world she never even suspected existed. No matter which way Alisha turns, she faces new dangers and heartbreaking betrayals. In the end, she has no choice but to adhere to the cardinal rule…Trust no one but yourself.
Now Available
Amazon || Barnes & Noble || Apple || Kobo
THE FIREBIRD DECEPTION
Book Two of The Strongbox Chronicles
Agent Alisha MacAleer has put the past behind her as best she can, but when a mission goes sideways, she is left with an impossible choice. She can follow orders, or she can strike out on her own to discover the hidden mastermind behind the game she’s been drawn into—a mastermind whose identity she suspects, but could never guess.With no support, no resources, and no safety net, Alisha must believe that honor can survive a trial by fire….
Available now!
Amazon || Barnes & Noble || Apple || Koboand revised the paranormal romance due out next year. I revised about a third of a science fiction novel. I ran a crowdfunding campaign & wrote 4 more pages of comic script for it due to its success!
I *released* 5 books and 2 short stories; here are the ones I didn’t link to above. :)
“From Coffin to Grave”
a Heartstrike Short
Saoirse O’Cathain should have died on the coffin ship that took her from famine-torn Ireland to the dubious safety of the Canadian coast, but an ancient immortal–a man who claims he doesn’t care–saved her by Awakening the Timeless immortality she harbored within. Perhaps it was a gift: Saoirse might have all of eternity to watch the world change, now……unless she has been Awakened only to travel from coffin to grave…
Available Now!
Amazon || Apple || Barnes & Noble (Nook) || Kobo
THE QUEEN’S BASTARD
Book One of The Inheritors’ Cycle
Belinda Primrose is the unacknowledged daughter the unwed queen of Aulun. She is a spy, an assassin…and a danger to her mother, should she ever be discovered. As she infiltrates the glamorous royal palaces where her mother’s rivals scheme, a new power awakens in Belinda. The witchlight she commands could bring down everything she’s worked for when she finds a teacher in Javier, whose claim to the Aulunian throne ranks him highly among Belinda’s enemies.Belinda has never wavered in her mission, but love and loyalty will collide as her secrets are revealed…
Available Now!
Amazon || Apple || Barnes & Noble (Nook) || Kobo
THE PRETENDER’S CROWN
Book Two of The Inheritors’ Cycle
Belinda Primrose has lied, murdered, and seduced her way through the deadly courts of Echon, and now she has come into the strength of her witchpower, a magic she shares with Prince Javier, pretender to her mother’s throne. Their craft has been used to manipulate, shape, and evolve the future of Echon…but even a power from beyond the stars cannot break the will of a daughter betrayed by everything she has ever known.After a lifetime of service, Belinda will finally shape a future of her own…and change the destiny of a world with her choices.
Available Now!
Amazon || Apple || Barnes & Noble (Nook) || Koboand also wrote an actually ridiculous number of book proposals, like, five or six of them. One is the paranormal romance coming out next year, the rest didn’t stick. But I did write ’em, and that’s a lot of proposals to do. And I did about 20 pages of a screenplay, too.
I also read 35 books, went to Disneyland, to Dublin Worldcon, was sick for 3 months, and have made a truly prodigious amount of fudge. :)
It’s been a really busy year. I WANTED to get at least one other book finished, and two more revisions finished. But I’m trying to look at everything I HAVE done, and be impressed with that, instead of dismayed that I didn’t get Literally All The Things done.
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The Hugo Post
People have asked me, as they do every year, to put together a list of what I had published last year that could qualify for a Hugo nomination. I don’t normally get my act together enough to do this, but a combination of elements, including
1. Worldcon is in Dublin this year!
2. I’m very proud of last year’s novel! and
3. Somebody else did the hard lifting and I’m able to use that for the basis of my postmeans I’m doing a proper one this year. I’ll put the cold hard facts up front, and then go into greater detail below.
The following books & stories are suitable for Hugo nominations in the listed categories.
Best Novel:
REDEEMER by C.E. Murphy
Kobo || iTunes || Amazon || Barnes & NobleBest Novella:
Kiss of Angels by C.E. Murphy
Kobo || iTunes || Amazon || Barnes & NobleBest Short Story:
Family Ties (collection: KISS OF ANGELS)
21st Century Ghost (collection: KISS OF ANGELS)Best Novelette
Threnody (collection: KISS OF ANGELS)Best Series:
The Old Races by C.E. Murphy (KISS OF ANGELS qualifying collection)Best Cover Artist:
Tara O’Shea (for KISS OF ANGELS art, & for REDEEMER design)
Lindsey Look (REDEEMER art)
Okay, that’s the cut & dry version, up above. What follows are more details and my own thoughts about the works, I guess.
REDEEMER
Suggestion for Best Cover Artist nominee: Lindsey Look
The war is over…but for Rosie the Redeemer, the homefront battle is just about to begin!It’s July 1945, and more than just the boys are coming home from war–monsters are coming with them, and Rosie Ransom learns she can redeem a damned soul–but she may lose her own in the process. And yet, without her Redeeming ability, the scare started by a few demons may turn into a full-fledged nightmare…
This was a very difficult book to write, partly because I challenged myself to several things that I’d never done before in terms of writing (not just ONE, oh no, but SEVERAL, because let’s NEVER DO ANYTHING THE EASY WAY, CATIE), and also (not to lean in to a personal sob story in awards season or anything @.@) because my mom, after whom the main character was partially named, died while I was working on it.
I honestly didn’t think, while I was working on it, that I had done well, or that I would ever want to return to the Redeemer world. Then my copy editor emailed, 3 chapters in, and said, “If the rest of this is as good as the opening, WOW,” which is not…normal. :)
Then my book designer, who is normally very, very fast, took *weeks* to lay the book out, because she was actually reading it as she laid it out, which, she says, she never ever does.
Despite all that, honestly, I still wasn’t at all sure of the book until I did the final round of copy edits on it, and I gradually realized I’d done what I wanted to with it. The writing challenges I’d set myself–no semi-colons! (the horror!!!!) limited use of ‘was’ in non-dialogue prose! (oh god that’s hard) improving my descriptions!–had succeeded, and the kind of story I wanted to tell, one about female friendships, one that reflected not just the social expectations and restrictions of the era but also shone light on the same problems today…had made it onto the page.
And then it turned out that because the book was so very late, with the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement, with the huge surge of women elected to Congress, with the upheaval of the past few years…REDEEMER had become timely in a way it wouldn’t have if I’d turned it in when it was due. Heh. Go figure. :) So in the end I’m actually really proud of this book, and I’d honestly love to see it nominated for a Hugo.
REDEEMER is available here:
Kobo || iTunes || Amazon || Barnes & Noble
KISS OF ANGELS
Suggestion for Best Cover Artist nominee: Tara O’Shea
The laws that governed the Old Races for time immemorial have been broken. Ancient rivals are scattered. Friendships are ended. What was hidden begins to step out of shadow and into the light.And after millennia of imagining this moment, even the Old Races discover they are unprepared for what it brings….
KISS OF ANGELS is covering a loooooooot of territory for this year’s Hugo nominations, carrying, as it does, the possibility for nomination of the titular “Kiss of Angels” as best novella; for best short story with “Family Ties” and “21st Century Ghost”; best novelette with “Threnody”, and, finally, best series for the entire collection as part of the ongoing saga of the Old Races, which, with the publication of KISS OF ANGELS is now some 650K words long.
The KISS OF ANGELS collection is set after the Old Races trilogy, and the titular novella, Kiss of Angels, is the teased-at and long-promised story of Grace O’Malley (yes, that Grace O’Malley). I think it stands alone reasonably well, but it also brings the entire Old Races saga to a point where I could, and someday will, write more full-length books in the world. (!)
“Threnody”, at an 8800 word ‘novelette’ length, is possibly my favourite of the collection. I think it stands alone pretty well, and I’d be thrilled to bits to see it nominated. ♥
“21st Century Ghost” is a first date story about the difficulties of dating the supernatural, and amuses me. :) “Family Ties” is a short Janx story and honestly belonged in the BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER collection, but I didn’t write it for like two years after that book was published, so… :)
Seeing the whole book nominated as part of the Old Races series would be REALLY COOL, I’m not gonna lie. That would be…REALLY COOL. :) :) :)
And I would really, really like to see Lindsey Look and Tara O’Shea nominated for their cover art work, which is reliably fabulous! ♥
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200 backers & climbing!
The REDEEMER Kickstarter has reached 200 backers and is still climbing! In fact, it’s at 205, actually, and just a whisker under €6k!
It’s got 10 days left (or will by the time most people read this), and I have a dream of reaching 300 backers. It picked up about 25 last Friday alone, so it’s not impossible! But it’s tricky, because reaching new people–
Okay, before I go on, I want to say that what follows is not accusation or frustration or anger or anything. It’s just one of the interesting things not only I, but lots of others, have found about crowdfunding, and it’s one of the things we generally can’t figure out how to squeeze past.
–well, it’s funny. I mean, theoretically reaching new people shouldn’t be all that hard. Between Facebook and Twitter and my blog and G+ and Tumblr and my mailing list (gawd, what a lot of places), I have access, in sheer straight-up numbers, to possibly as many as 10,000 people. A lot of them are probably following me in more than one location, though, so I tend to figure it’s probably more like 3K in actual numbers. So I reckon I’m aiming for about 10% of the audience I can reach with relative ease.
10% doesn’t sound like that much, but it is! It has to be the 10% that hears about the project, is interested in the project, enjoys supporting crowdfunded projects, and is in a position to be *able* to support a crowdfunded project. And probably other variables I’m not able to think of right now. :)
And then from the creator’s point of view, you also want to reach that 10% without driving the other 90% (or even worse, the people you’ve already got!) absolutely bugnuts. Better yet, you want to reach more than 10%! You want to reach ALL of your readers! You want to get them ALL as excited about your project as you are! Without driving anybody bugnuts.
You have no idea how worried creators are that they’re going to drive people bugnuts with their reminders and promotions and all of it. And then the flip side of that is you feel like you’ve been tweetingfacebookingbloggingplussing INCESSANTLY and then three people suddenly say “OMG you’re doing a crowdfund I had no idea!” and run off and pledge and you realize that you’re doing your best and still missing people! So a great many thanks are due to those who *do* see the incessant blogs etc and are patient with them. ♥
And while all of that is going on you’re also trying to figure out how to reach *beyond* your core audience. People signal boosting can make for a great day (like last Friday, with the 25+ new backers! that was so cool!), but there are projects that go viral, and clearly everybody wants *that* to happen. It’s just–how?! Promotion is hard! It’s exciting and interesting, but hard!
(Viral obviously also has to do hugely with emotional appeal on the project’s part–the potato salad guy made people laugh, the Tesla museum made people proud, Amanda Palmer’s stuff makes people feel connected. Believe you me, if I knew what project would touch people like any of those, I’d be running it!)
Anyway, I’m not sure any of this has a lot of profound meaning behind it or anything. Mostly it’s meant to say that I’m having a wonderful time with this project and I’m excited and can’t wait to see it tip over the Magic Funding Number, and that I’ll keep trying to bring backers in and I hope you all can bear with me another ten days! ♥
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speaking of crowdfunding…
I’m up for a crowdfunding award this year, for “No Dominion”. My lovely patrons said it was okay for me to post one of the short stories I’ve written as proof of fiction committed for “No Dominion”, so “Forgotten But By A Few is” available here, and the first couple chapters of URBAN SHAMAN, from Gary’s point of view, are here.
The voting page is located here. I’ve been nominated a few years running now, and, well, I’d really kinda like to win, actually, so if the spirit moves you, you can probably figure out where to click. :)
I also nominated my friend Bryant () for a Patron award, because literally none of this would have happened without him. Bryant is the one who suggested I try crowdfunding a few years ago, and directed me first at Fundable.com, and ultimately at Kickstarter. He’s the guy who put “No Dominion” over $20K. He’s been an unflagging supporter, an endless enthusiast, and utterly determined that I should somehow build on what I’ve done through crowdfunding in terms of wider publicity (which I have totally failed at because I just don’t know how). He’s been amazing. I would like it if he won too.
My friend Ellen Million () is also up for awards, actually in more than one category, but I’ll link to her Sketchfest nomination, because it’s possibly the craziest and coolest (IMO) of her projects: for 24 hours, once a month, people all over the world get together to recieve art idea “prompts”, and then go forth and make art. I think it’s awesome. Perhaps you will too, and will go vote for her. :)
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mizkit.com/mizkit@lj Raven Calls winners!
The mizkit.com winners of the RAVEN CALLS giveway are Anne Pascale Quinty, Poppy, and Larisa LaBent!
The mizkit.livejournal.com winners of the RAVEN CALLS giveaway are jasondrake, tattermuffin, and for_rainy_days!
All of you please email me at cemurphyauthor AT gmail DOT com with your snail mail addresses, your LJ names if that’s what you’ve won under so I know who you are, and whatever name I should sign the books to. :)
