Author: Eamonn Murphy - Writer

Eamonn Murphy has published over seventy stories in small press magazines and collected them into small, cheap volumes for posterity. They are available at all good eBook retailers and libraries. In his spare time, he writes reviews for sfcrowsnest. Retired now after years of hard labour (building sites and call centres), he lives near Bristol, England, with a nice lady, a nasty Jack Russell, an untrainable loony Labrador and some ducks. He has a BA (Hons) from the Open University but very little common sense. Find out more at eamonnmurphywriter.com.

Nanowrimo bust

This morning I got to 50,300 words on my nanowrimo escapade and thought I might as well paste the words into the box provided to get my badge or cup or whatever. It’s not a novel but a novella and a half. The half is Brigstowe Dragons III which is getting longer as I write (novelling makes you verbose) so long, in fact, that there will have to be a Brigstowe Dragons IV.

But, Lo! When I pasted it all in the nanobox it came up with a word count of less than 50,000 which it explains by telling me no two word counters work the same. I am 700 words short. It’s not good enough.

Since I was only using nano to train myself in bashing out 2000 words a day the result is irrellevant. It’s not even a novel. Still, it’s disappointing and may be crushing for someone who pounds the keys until midnight tonight, thinks they’ve just made it and then finds out that a dodgy word counter has condemned them to failure.

I may bash out 700 more words anyway as I still have to finish the book but this is a glitch I didn’t expect.

 

Nearly on target with Nanowrimo

After three days at a dead stop with writing, I got going again today. I did eke out a few hundred words one day but I couldn’t be bothered to enter it in my daily totals on the site. Today I brought the total up to 40,876 words so less than 2000 a day to finish on time.

Whatever the flaws of the procedure – rushed work, artificial deadlines, low quality perhaps – it does make you produce. That is not to be sneezed at. The rough ore can be refined later, can it not? On the whole, it’s been a beneficial experience for me. Whether or not readers like the result, only time will tell.

The Martian Wave

My review of The Martian Wave 2017, an anthology of space exploration tales from Nomadic Delirium Press was just posted on SFcrowsnest.  Read it here.

The book can be bought direct from the publisher and other sources here or from Smashwords here if you want to give me an ipsy-wipsy teenee-weenie affiliate fee. I already have a yellow polka-dot bikini and what business is it of yours anyway. Smashwords provides books in multiple formats and even do a mobi version for kindle as they are not seeking to crush all competition and get a complete monopoly of the book trade.  If you really want to help small presses survive, buy it from the publisher.