Ancient rivals, best of friends, worst of enemies: dragonlord Janx and master vampire Eliseo Daisani are the threads upon which a tapestry of lives and loves are woven across the centuries. From the coldest Russian nights to the heat of Chicago’s greatest fire, nothing brings the immortal adversaries together–or tears them apart–like a woman.
And there is always a woman.
Vanessa Grey has been at Daisani’s side for decades, but the secrets borne by a witch may be her undoing. Baba Yaga’s daughter has plots that are decades in the hatching, but they may only succeed if Margrit Knight, named “the Negotiator” by Daisani and Janx themselves, will work with her. And there are others: the greatest vampire hunter mankind has ever known, and a woman for whom the Old Races are a wonder to walk away from.
Revisit C.E. Murphy’s world of the Old Races with eight stories that delve into the past and future of the two most beloved characters from her urban fantasy trilogy The Negotiator!
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ZOMG ZOMG ZOMG *SQUEE*! THOMAS CANTY COVER! SO PRETTY! SO EXCITED!!! ZOMG EEEEEEEE!
BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER should be be available for pre-order later this month (or early in February) so I’ll be doing this all over again then, but SQUEE! I’m really, really excited about this book. It’s going to be SO beautiful, and I’m very pleased with the stories in it, so holy beans, I hope you guys will like it too. EEEEEEEEE!
V. large full cover behind the cut! Worth clicking through! I PROMISE!
Read the rest of this entry »
Today is Gary Muldoon’s 80th birthday. Kyle Cassidy and “No Dominion” cover model Charles “The Hunk” Summerfield had such a great time with the “No Dominion” cover shoot that they stole off to get another couple pictures of Gary on Christmas Eve:
Happy Birthday, Gary, and Happy New Year to the world!
I’ve just shut down all the links for buying in to the Old Races Short Story Project. If, for some reason, you have waited until the very last minute and *desperately* want to buy in, you can email me (cemurphyauthor at gmail dot com) up until midnight Pacific and we’ll arrange something. But it may involve mockery. :)
In the end I had about 180 patrons for the ORSSP, and it made in the region of $4K for six short stories. That’s a pretty damned good market value, around $.11 a word, so thank you. Thank you all very, very much.
It was also a huge success in terms of creating content for a possible future Old Races collection, which was my original goal with the project. And as those of you who’ve subscribed know, it’s gone a long way toward setting up the Old Races universe for future books, should I decide to return to it with book-length fiction. So that was an added bonus, and I’m pretty delighted about it. :)
I’m working on getting cover art done for the ORSSP, and when I’ve got that I’ll send out the .mobi and .epub files to all patrons, so it’ll be easier for those of you with e-readers to peruse.
After this year’s mad rush of crowdfunding, I’ll probably only be running/participating in one next year (the ElectriCity graphic novel! Squee!), so y’know, again: thank you. Thank you for supporting me as a writer, both by buying the books I write and by participating in these direct-market projects I’ve been running. You guys are absolutely, madly awesome, and I’m tremendously grateful to you all. Thank you.
And Happy New Year!
2011 has been the weirdest writing year ever for me. I only wrote about–*pauses to count*–well, in the region of 300K, it looks like, which is actually pretty much my usual wordcount. Huh. But in years past I’ve gotten that wordcount primarily from books, and this year while I *have* written two books, I’ve also written…*pauses to count again* Uh. 21 short stories. And a comic script. And half a novella.
Twenty-one short stories. This from someone who does not consider herself to be a short story writer*. 11 of them were for crowdfunded projects (ie, you had to buy in to get them, and still can, until Saturday evening, for the Old Races Short Story Project!). Two were for anthologies and two for next year’s BABA YAGA’S DAUGHTER collection of Old Races stories. The other six were Gryphon Beach stories, which I have faint hopes of selling to a children’s publisher at some point, so will not be making available for general consumption.
I am not going to be writing 21 short stories in 2012. o.O
I *do* anticipate doing some more Gryphon Beach Storytelling Hours, probably as a crowdfunded effort instead of just a free-for-all this time. And I have 4 more stories to write for the “No Dominion” Kickstarter campaign, and one short story under contract. So I may do a dozen or so shorts next year, but I believe I’ll restrain myself from doing a second ORSSP (though the temptation is MIGHTY), and try hard to just stick with the books I need to write. And the graphic novel script. :)
Yes, yes, I’m saying it here in public, where I will no doubt get mocked mercilessly if I go back on my word (which we all must admit seems very, very likely): a dozen short stories, a graphic novel script, and the contracted-for books/novellas.
Unless something irresistable comes along. :)
*Actually no longer true, and not just because of this year. It became clear to me a year or two ago that in fact I do write short stories. But for the longest time, no, I really didn’t see myself as someone who did. (And I thought I should, so I sat down and started practicing. See where that led?!?! :))
I fell off the Recent Reads posts wagon, although less badly than I might have hoped (which means I’m not reading all that much, sadly). So a quick catch-up post:
HIDDEN STEEL, Doranna Durgin : Seriously, if you’ve got an e-reader or don’t mind reading books on the computer screen, do yourself a favor and go buy it. I charged through it in an afternoon, when I have rarely read a book in a week, much less a day, these past couple years. It was a really fun read. Action-adventure romance, written for the defunct Harlequin Bombshell line (like my Cate Dermody/Strongbox Chronicles), and just top-notch storytelling all the way through. Terrific characters, *great* descriptions (I weep with despair), just, yeah. Go forth, read.
FRANKENSTEIN, Mary Shelley : Oh my lord, what a slog. I don’t think I’ve ever read a duller book with a less sympa…no, I’ve read two with a less sympathetic protagonist, but one of them was more interesting up to the point I stopped reading it. Anyway. God. At least that’s done with and I don’t have to do it again. o.O (I’ve got DRACULA up next. This doesn’t fill me with confidence, really…)
DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON, Seanan Mcguire : One of the perks of this job is getting to read early copies of books. Seanan’s DISCOUNT ARMAGEDDON was great fun, and you should read it when it comes out. :)
KINGDOM OF THE GRAIL, Judith Tarr : Judy remains one of the most amazing writers I’ve ever read. KotG was poignant, breath-taking, broad in scope and intimate in detail, just as I would expect a Judith Tarr novel to be. I really love her books. Check out what she’s got available for your e-readers!
EMMA, Jane Austen : I read EMMA on my mobile phone. I don’t think it’s actually a great book for reading on something with that small a screen, particularly when I haven’t read it since I was about 12. I suspect the mobile is better for more recent re-reads. Anyway, aside from that, although Emma’s not enormously easy to sympathize with, I did enjoy it. But I *particularly* enjoyed imagining what Jane Austen would think of her books being read on tiny mobile devices, 200 Years After. :)
GALILEO’S DREAM, Kim Stanley Robinson : I really thought I’d written about this, but apparently not. This was one of the most difficult books I’ve ever read, and not as worth it (to me) as others of KSR’s books. However, it had some utterly, utterly beautiful ideas in it, the one which most caught me being the idea that our dreams are in fact glimpses into another timeline; places we would have gone if we had made different choices. Only expressed far more elegantly, and worth the hard read just for that.
So if I was to put a copy or three of this middle-grade fantasy novel I’ve just written up on the Terri Windling auction, would people be interested in that? ’cause I’m not even planning to give this to my agent until I’ve finished the series, but people are asking when they get to read it, so I thought maybe I’d offer a chance. Be one of ten people to read it (that’s all the Lulu.com copies I’m having printed), like.
Probably I’d set it up as something like bid whatever for the book, but if it hit $N I’d eventually send you the second book, too, and at $Nx2 the 3rd, and $Nx4 the 4th & final book. Or something like that. Would that be appealing?
Time to mention the Terri Windling short story commission again!
Right now that short story commission–I will write the winner a short story of their own in time for Christmas!–is resting at $200, but here’s the thing: the current high bidder is Bill Schafer, the dude who owns Subterranean Press! Now, I actually think this is pretty clever and funny of him, but do you *really* want to let the chance for a commissioned CE Murphy short story get away to a publisher who could buy one from me at any time? I’m just sayin’!
Most of a year ago Faith Hunter and I decided to write a crossover novella with our two main characters, Joanne Walker and Jane Yellowrock. We thought we’d have it done this past summer, but, um, we didn’t.
But now it’s done! And now it’s available here, on Amazon, and soon on B&N.com!
Two heroines. Two magics.
One world.
There’s nowhere in America like the Big Easy. Just ask Jane Yellowrock, shapeshifting vampire killer, whose hunting grounds run the length and breadth of the Bayou.
Just ask Joanne Walker, whose shamanic magic has drawn her to the heart of American Weird.
But it’s not Joanne’s world, and it isn’t Jane’s either. In a New Orleans where Katrina never hit and supposedly-dead vampires stalk the streets, Jane and Jo have to find and defeat the magic that brought them there–or they just might find themselves…
EASY PICKINGS
fan fiction by the authors themselves!
Read the teaser and
PLEASE NOTE: You will be given the option to “return to open at mizkit dot com” once you’ve paid! Click through on that, because that’s what will bring you to the download page! So don’t skip out of Paypal until you do so through that link! Otherwise you won’t get your story, and I won’t know that! I’ll think you’re out there happy as a fish in water, reading all about Jane and Jo’s adventures, when instead you’ll be sniffling in your tea! Don’t let that happen!
We’re verging on finally releasing “Easy Pickings” into the wild! All we have to do is, um, learn how to upload it to Amazon and other places. Which actually I have zero idea of how to do. It can’t be that hard, can it? (…although it may be less intuitive than I think it should be. Um.)
Right. Anyway! We’re planning to release it on the 15th, and in the meantime, here’s the cover!
The Old Races Short Story Project patronage window is now closed.
(Actually, this story is titled “Legacy” but I seem to have screwed that up in the emails I just sent to subscribers, so at the moment we’ll go with “Trinity”. There’s another completely different half-written Old Races (or it was half-written til I had the computer crash; I think it may be one of the very few things I lost when the hard drive died) story called “Trinity”, but nevermind that.)
*clears throat* Right. Anyway. I’m doing a six-story Old Races short story project throughout 2011. This, “Trinity”, is a story about humans, and the sixth and final story, so if you’ve been waiting to get the whole ORSSP in one lump, this is a good time to buy in. You can buy in through New Year’s Eve up until about 5pm Eastern, after which I’ll be closing down the links and the stories will no longer be available to purchase.
You can find teasers for the other stories here: The Death of Him, a story of the selkies, Awakening, a story of the vampires set after the Negotiator Trilogy; Falling, a story about Biali in 1890s New York; St. George & the Dragons, a story about Janx; Salt Water Stains the Sand, a story of the djinn.
“Trinity”
1840, New York City
A Germanic voice murmured, “A shame about the old church,” and Richard Upjohn snorted.
“Not at all. There was nothing extraordinary about it, nothing memorable. It lacked even the respect of age, and moreover, it was poorly enough constructed that the weight of winter snow weakened it beyond repair. My church,” he said with already-significant satisfaction as he examined the enormous hole that the foundations would be laid in, “will stand for the ages.” Then he glanced sideways at the man who had spoken, and fell silent in surprise.
He was perhaps the tallest man Upjohn had ever seen, standing two meters in height, and had the breadth of shoulder to match. He was not old, but his hair glowed white even in the early evening moonlight, and his eyes were so pale as to seem colorless. His hair was unfashionably long, not coiffed at temple and top but rather smoothed back in a tail that fell between his shoulderblades, and his coat was of a cut not seen in a decade or more.
No one, Upjohn thought, would mock him for his lack of style. Not with the height and breadth of him, nor the warning rumble in the deep voice. He found himself searching for, if not an apology, at least a moderation of his strong stance against the old church, when a smile flickered across the huge man’s face. “The snow was very bad that year,” he said, defending the older building, “but it is true that it lacked age. The second church on this site, I believe. I never saw the first.”
“Of course you didn’t. It burned during the Revolution.” The war between the colonies, Upjohn had been taught to call it in childhood: the Revolution, the Glorious Revolution, had happened more than a century earlier by English reckoning, but he had come to America by choice, and become a citizen only four years ago. In America the colonial war was the Revolution, and so too for Richard Upjohn.
Either way, the first church had burned a quarter century before Upjohn was born, and the giant German at his side could certainly be no older than Upjohn himself.
Another smile flickered across the tall man’s face. “Yes, of course. Still, I had some fondness for the second church. I lived here, you know.”
Upjohn’s gaze sharpened, then fell into puzzlement. The man was not the vicar or the reverend, nor did Trinity employ a groundskeeper that Upjohn was aware of. And he could hardly be unaware of this man, who might well cow the grounds into growing tidy hedges and short grass with no more than his size and presence. “That’s absurd. I’ve never seen you before, and I was commissioned to work here when the old church was so badly damaged.”
“And yet,” the big man said idly. “Walk with me a while, Richard Upjohn. I have a favor to ask of you.”
Upjohn, curious and mystified, matched the German’s steps as they left Trinity’s grounds for the surrounding city. Three hundred thousand people lived there, a tenth the number in London, but its freshness was rife with potential. New York could be beautiful, if Upjohn and others like him were allowed their way.
The German, as if hearing his thoughts, said, “I’ve followed your career, Master Upjohn. You have a love for the Gothic. What is it that draws you to it?”
“I am a faithful man, Master…”
“Korund,” the German said. “Alban Korund. The pleasure is mine.”
I’d like to thank everybody who’s bought in so far. This has been huge fun and I’ve learned and accomplished a lot with the Old Races doing this project, so I’m completely thrilled. You guys rock my socks.
The Old Races Short Story Project patronage window is now closed.
