Archive for the ‘walker papers’ Category

“No Dominion” Contest!

Okay, because this thing has gone utterly nuts, I’m going to run a contest for “No Dominion” Kickstarter patrons.

The campaign has about 72 hours left. I’ll give an upgrade to the $1000 package*–which is “I’ll write you a Walker Papers short story of your very own, featuring any secondary character you want” to the Kickstarter patron who guesses most closely the final dollar amount for the campaign.

The contest closes at 2pm Eastern (New York City) time on Sunday, November 13. If you want a chance at me writing you a Walker Papers short story of your own, all you have to do is buy in at $5 or more (yes, if you’ve already bought in you can just go place your guess, you don’t have to put in another $5!), and place your guess in the comments on this Kickstarter update. (Really, I mean it. Guesses won’t count if you post them on my blog.)

*Note:* I may or may not name a character after you, which is the $500 price point. That’ll depend on the story. But the winner will get everything else a $1K package would entail.

Let the games begin!

Kickstarter quandry!

This is insane. :)

The “No Dominion” Kickstarter campaign is at just below $13K right now, with a week left to go. And I have reached the peculiar point of now being afraid to mention it much, when in fact normally one would be going OMG HOLY CRAP HOW HIGH CAN WE GO?!?!?!

Because at $15K I’ve promised another novella, but with all the little stuff I’ve thrown in, another novella at $15K isn’t really cost-effective. I mean, there are four short stories, and a chapter of HEAVEN CAN WAIT, and not only have I got a novella listed at $15K, but I also (rashly, but I fear I’m still rather enthusiastic about the idea o.o) promised 2 more chapters of HEAVEN CAN WAIT at that dollar amount too. I mean, on the positive side, I did make it clear those were deadline-at-my-discretion, but even so, I’m finding myself in this weird position of going “crap, I hope it either peaks at about $13.5-14K or goes all the way to like $17 or $18K…” And I hate to close it down early because I said I’d run it for six weeks and I by God think I should, so I’m a bit flaily here!

Truth in crowdfunding, lads, that’s what this is. :) So guide me, intarwebs! Shall I sit here being mum or shall I see just how darned far this horse will go?

Also, can I just say HOLY CRAP 360 BACKERS!!! That’s just shy of TWO HUNDRED more than have signed on for any of my other crowdfunding projects! I don’t know if it’s because it’s Walker Papers/Gary vs Old Races, or if it’s because it’s Kickstarter, or if I’ve flogged it more or if it’s been RT’d more or what, but HOLY CRAP!

(I will of course write the second novella if the campaign hits $15K, because I said I would! Just in case this made anybody wonder. It’s just that only in retrospect am I appreciating the flaws in my plans. :))

RAVEN CALLS cover!

I can finally show off the cover for RAVEN CALLS, book 7 of the Walker Papers, due out in March 2012!

I’m so excited! *beams*!

Kickstarter!

Over the weekend, my friend E & I had this big discussion in which she told me I wasn’t squeeing enough about the “No Dominon” Kickstarter campaign. I said I was trying not to drown people in it, which she’d understood, but she still thought I wasn’t squeeing enough. So this morning I shall squee some, and talk about why crowdfunding excites me. :)

First off, the campaign is well over $7500 now, though not yet really near $8K. I suspect (in another lesson learned) that calendars aren’t an exciting enough Rollover Reward. :) I think it’ll probably get there, but it’s a good lesson for next time.

(Odds are it will be an Animals Calendar, because the campaign would have to reach a truly phenomenal dollar amount to justify doing the COMPLETELY AWESOME calendar idea I had after the fact, which is doing a CE Murphy Urban Fantasy Calendar, with location photos from all my urban fantasy novels: New York, Seattle, Boston, Cherokee County, Ireland–and the real Thunderbird Falls, which is outside of Anchorage. But I’ve only got a 6 hour layover in Seattle coming home, and that’s not enough time for even the most strategic strike force of photography expeditions to succeed.

Tell you what, though. If the campaign hits $8K before I leave for NYCC on Wednesday morning, I’ll bring the real camera along just in case. If it hits $9K (only $1400 away!) before I leave, I’ll at least do a desktop download version of the calendar, though it may be heavy on Irish & NYC locations rather than the other places. :))

Anyway, I’m still getting huge delight in having people subscribe–it’s over TWO HUNDRED FIFTY PATRONS now!!! that’s closing in on 100 more than my previously-most-successful crowdfunding campaign! o.O! <-- surprised scuba guy emoticon

And it is all reminding me that again and again, the thing that really hits home for me about crowdfunding is that essentially random strangers are coming together to help get art made. That sounds terribly snotty, I don't really think of my stories as art (I think of them as books or stories), but storytelling /is/ an art, the oldest art, and so: coming together to help get art made.

Even more specifically, to help get art that would not otherwise exist made. It's enormously unlikely that I would have written "Hot Time" or "Year of Miracles" or any of the ORSSP if I had not been supported, quite literally, by the kindness of strangers. I *wanted* to tell those stories, but I can't, as a rule, afford to tell stories for free, and novellas/short stories are a much harder sell in the fiction market than a full-length novel. But as it turns out, it seems that while I can get publishers to pay me for books, I can get--just people to pay me for novellas and short stories, and that means they're *totally* making a space where I can do things I would never otherwise be able to. And that's *amazing*.

I *love* that we're living in a time where instead of an artist requiring a single, extremely wealthy patron, it's possible to do something like a Kickstarter campaign and have hundreds of ordinary-income individuals become patrons instead.

*Kermitflails* That's what art and patronage *should* be: complementary and broadly accessible. Art is not for the wealthy, it's for everyone. The joy of being able to help support it should not be reserved for the wealthy, either, nor should the rewards of patronage (projects dedicated to/named for/inclusive of you, etc) be solely for the rich. I've done a bunch of silly little things already to say thank you to individuals who have hit benchmarks within the "No Dominion" campaign, and that's part of what this is all about: all being in it together.

So, y'know, thank you. This is an incredible thing you guys are doing, and I love you for it. (and in case you missed the link up above, the campaign page is here. :))

Kickstarter update!

The Kickstarter campaign just ticked over $7300. I’m holding my breath to see if by some mad chance it reaches $8K by 1 week in, although that doesn’t seem enormously likely. However, if it does, I’ll do something else fun–maybe run a Q&A where people* submit questions to be answered in-character by the character of their choice. (No spoiler answers will be given, but up through SPIRIT DANCES is fair game!)

I was looking at the Rollover Rewards, and I’m seeing a kind of a long dark teatime of the soul between $8K and $12K, as far as reward levels go. Now, this made perfect sense while I was figuring out the Rollover Reward points, which I set at Goal ($4K), Half Again ($6K), Doubled ($8K) and Tripled ($12K). But it does look awfully gappy and large there between $8 and $12K, so I suspect I’ll end up offering a $10K Rollover of Another Story.

At that point, the $10 buy-in starts to be a real steal, with four short stories and one novella. Actually, possibly I need to bump that up, in fact: the $10K Rollover Story would perhaps be for everybody buying in at $25 or more. Hm.

On that note, in retrospect, I feel I’ve managed some of the scaling badly for the campaign. I think I should’ve set the calendar level at $50, skipped the $75, and set all the $75 rewards as part of the $100 reward. But heck, this is partly about figuring it out, right? :)

*anybody can ask, but you’ll have to be a KS patron to get the answer :)

Kickstarter update

Wow.

Kickstarter says that 70% of projects that are 30% funded in the first 48 hours will succeed.

“No Dominion” currently stands at just shy of 150% funded after 48 hours. Presumably if we extrapolate from this, there’s a fair chance of reaching the astounding $12K mark which would get a limited edition trade paperback for the Kickstarter backers. That would be very cool, and I’m very interested to see how it goes. :)

At the moment, backers have commissioned the following:

- “No Dominion”, a novella about Gary Muldoon, due April 15

- a “thank you for supporting this Kickstarter campaign, here’s something to tide you over til April 15″ Gary short story, due November 15

- a totally unplanned bonus short story for funding the campaign in the first 24 hours, due, um, between November 15 and April 15 O.O

The campaign is less than $200 away from earning a second Gary story for all backers subscribing at $10 or more.

Nevermind in terms of dollar amount, which is obviously already a runaway success: this is also the most successful crowdfund I’ve run in terms of number of backers. 192 people have supported this campaign in the first 48 hours, which is 5 more than bought into the “Year of Miracles” crowdfund event–which ran for six weeks, and it’s something like 50 more than the Old Races Short Story Project, which has been running since January of this year. It seems there’s something to the Kickstarter aspect of getting the word out. (Either that or the Walker Papers are really much, much more popular than the Old Races…)

Anyway, thank you. This is really cool, and I’m really excited about it!

Kickstarter campaign launches!

All right, she said in a burst of nervous excitement, I’m throwing a Kickstarter party starting now. Let’s see if anybody comes. O.O

NO DOMINION is up for funding!

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not…
      …AND DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DOMINION.

Read the beginning of URBAN SHAMAN from Gary’s point of view for a taste of the novella’s voice! And, um. Wow. Let’s see if we can make this thing go. :)

Kickstarter teaser: “Magic Hath an Element”

Okay, so the thing about the upcoming Kickstarter campaign (launching October 1!) is that I really *can’t* use a teaser from the actual story as part of the incentive text, because it starts with a scene from RAVEN CALLS and no way no how am I spoiling that scene. :) So I’ve written the first couple chapters of URBAN SHAMAN from Gary’s point of view for a bit of flavor text as to what kind of voice the novella will be in. Enjoy!

Three days after my 73rd birthday, a leggy brunette climbed into my cab and changed my life.

She was rude, snapping, “Drive,” without even lookin’ at me. That kinda fare always set my teeth on edge, superior and holier-than-thou. Never judge somebody by how they treat you, judge ‘em by how they treat the cabbie.

Still, drivin’ paid the rent. “Where to?”

“I don’t know. Northwest.”

I eyed her in the mirror. There was me, pretty hale for a guy that age, with all my hair and teeth I wasn’t sayin’ either way about, and there was her, twenty-six and pretty in the way women who don’t know how well they’re put together can be. She wore her hair real short, which I thought most dames should. What with her doin’ something on a notepad, scribbling and muttering, I couldn’t see her eyes to tell the color. She looked tired, though, like she’d come off a European flight, not just something continental. I said, “Northwest, the airline? It’s just a couple feet up the term–”

She snarled, “To the northwest.” I glared at her and drove. A minute later, as if she hadn’t started out rude, she asked a favor: “You got a map?”

No self-respecting cabbie would admit it if he did. “What for?”

“So I can figure out where we’re going.”

I turned around and stared at her.

“Watch the road!”

Watching the road was for sissies. I twitched the steering wheel and cars merged around us, safe as houses. The fare slumped in her seat, green eyes wide, and got politer: “Do you have a map, please?”

“Yeah, yeah, all right.” I threw a city guide over the seat and listened to pages rattle as she shuffled through them. A couple minutes later she said, “Okay, we’re going to Aurora.”

“You sure? That ain’t such a good neighborhood, lady.”

“I’m sure. I’m trying to find somebody who’s in trouble.”

I lifted my eyebrows at her in the mirror. “Good place to start.”

She scowled at me. I smiled back, my best patented seen-it-all smile that told pretty young things not to mess with me, and instead of messing, she asked if I
had a cigarette. I shook my head. “Those things’ll kill you, sweetheart. My wife died of emphysema on our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. You want a smoke, kid, find it somewhere else.”

She looked embarrassed, but didn’t have the smarts to quit while she was ahead. She muttered, “I’m not a kid,” and I eyed her in the mirror again.

“You’re twenty-six, doll. From where I’m sittin’ anybody less than fifty is a kid.”

Her jaw dropped. “Nobody ever guesses my age right.”

“It’s a gift. I can tell how old people are.”

“Some gift.”

“Gets me good tips, especially with women in their forties. I give ‘em a big story ’bout how I always get ages right, and then I lie. Works like a charm.”

“You guessed my age right.”

“No point in lying. I never met anybody who didn’t want to be in their twenties. Look, why’re you headin’ to Aurora, doll? Nothing there but trouble, and you don’t look like the type.”

“I told you.” She put her head against the window. “Somebody’s in trouble. I saw her from the plane.”

That made my life a lot more interesting. I put my arm over the passenger seatback and twisted to stare at the fare. “You’re trying to save somebody you saw from an airplane? What the hell, you got some kinda hero complex? How the hell’re you gonna find one dame you saw from the air?”

“It’s basic math, for God’s sake. I got the approximate height and speed we were traveling from the pilot, so figuring out the distance wasn’t that hard, and I saw a modern church on a street with only one amber streetlight. If I can find it before the lights go out–”

“Then you’ll be the first one on a murder scene.” My day was gettin’ a lot more interesting. The guys back at dispatch would love this one. I was gonna get free coffee for a week off this story. Couldn’t let her know I was lookin’ forward to whatever came next, though, and it was only God’s own truth when I said, “You’re nuts, lady, and desperate for thrills.”

She snapped, “Like it could possibly be any of your business,” which was true enough, but I never met a cabbie who didn’t think everything his fares did was his business.

“Relax, sweetheart. A pretty girl like you oughta be on her way home to her sweetie, not–”

“I don’t have one.”

“With your personality, I can’t figure why not.”

The fare put her face in her hands. “Haven’t you ever just really felt like you had to do something?”

“Yeah, sure. I really felt like I had to marry my old lady when she got knocked up.” It wasn’t true, but the fare had gotten in my cab, not the other way around. She got whatever story I felt like tellin’ today. That was the beauty of driving fares. Them, me, we were all different every time. “I never felt like I had to go chasing broads I saw from airplanes, though. I got troubles of my own.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I’ve got enough that I need somebody else’s to make the load seem lighter.”

I grunted, surprised. Usually kids in their twenties were way too young to realize that helpin’ somebody else eased their own burdens. I warmed up to the fare even if she was rude, and nodded at the rear-view mirror. “Arright, lady. Let’s go find your corpse.”

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Kickstarter campaign: Reward levels!

I have sorted out the Kickstarter campaign reward levels, which will be as follows unless somebody makes a very good argument for a new or different level. Also: I know there’s a sharp jump between $10 and $30, I know, but at the $30 mark is where I start sending things out, and I am simply rolling S&H into the cost of the donation.

$5: a DRM-free e-book of NO DOMINION (.mobi, .pdf, .epub, pod) & your name in the acknowlegments

$10: as above, & an additional short story

$30: as above, & a bookmark featuring the NO DOMINION cover art

$65: as above, & a behind-the scenes chapbook of the NO DOMINION cover art photo shoot signed by CE Murphy, photographer Kyle Cassidy & (probably) model Charles “The Hunk” Summerfield

$100: as above, & a 9×12″ print of the NO DOMINION cover art signed by CE Murphy, photographer Kyle Cassidy & (probably) “Gary” model Charles “The Hunk” Summerfield

$200: as above, & a copy of the CE Murphy 2012 Dublin photographic calendar

$500 (Limited Reward): As above, and your name as one of the characters in either NO DOMINION or one of the companion short stories

$2000 (Limited Reward): As above, & a Walker Papers short story just for you, featuring any supporting character of your choice, to be produced in a signed chapbook limited edition of one.

$3500 (Limited Reward): As above, & NO DOMINION will be dedicated to you, what with you having funded most of it.

$5000 (Limited Reward): As above, & I will sing “You Are The Wind Beneath My Wings” to you in person within one calendar year. If this is not feasible, I will live stream the same from Temple Bar (ie, public location) & send you a personalized copy of the video.

Rollover points:
If the campaign breaks $6000, I will write a second Gary short story for all patrons subscribing at $10 or more.

If the campaign breaks $8000, I will do a unique calendar for all patrons subscribing at $30 or more. A digital/desktop version will be provided for patrons subscribing at under $30.

If the campaign breaks $12,000, I will do a signed limited trade paperback edition of NO DOMINION, inclusive of the short stories, to be made available to all patrons, and included automatically for all patrons donating at $100 or more.

High-end rollover points:
If the campaign breaks $15,000, I will write another Garrison Report novella for all patrons subscribing at $10 or more, delivery date at my discretion, or:

If the campaign reaches between $20-25,000, I will write a third Garrison Report novella for all patrons subscribing at $10 or more, or:

If the campaign breaks $30,000, I’ll write all patrons subscribing at $10 or more a whole damned novel of their own, subject & delivery date at my discretion.

To clarify the last: in the wildly unlikely event the amount hits $30K there will not be 3 novellas and 1 novel. There will be 1 novella and 1 novel. Just want to be sure that’s clear. :)

Gary novella cover art!

It’s Labor Day, I’m sure nobody’s going to be around, I should hold off on posting this, I know I should, but I JUST CAN’T STOP MYSELF.

Recently widowed after nearly fifty years of marriage, Gary Muldoon had given up on adventure. Then shaman Joanne Walker climbed into the back seat of his cab, and since then, Gary has trifled with gods, met mystics, slain zombies and ridden with the Wild Hunt.

But now he must leave Joanne’s side to face a battle only he can win. Because as their long battle against a dark magic-user races toward its climax, it becomes clear that it was not illness that took Annie’s life, but their enemy’s long and deadly touch.

Though lovers be lost, love shall not…

      …AND DEATH SHALL HAVE…

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