Mike Murphy's writing diary

Sunday 20 September 2015

My first feedback from someone who is reading my book came from my grandson Bradley who is five chapters into it. His comments were that he and his partner, Danielle, agree with Manny's views on male/female relationships and that he particularly likes the way I show Manny's inner thoughts. This is very reassuring and particularly when it comes from a young man. I had imagined my readers mainly to be older women. If I can find a strong readership in Bad and Danielle's age group that would be excellent, I have now sold nine copies and more than twenty have been sent to family, potential reviewers and libraries. Hopefully that will produce some reviews on the Kobo website and Amazon, when the book is uploaded there. There is no sign of it so far but I'm told it can take a while. If I can get ten favourable reviews other web sites will take it up and promote it. Meanwhile I'm going back to Why Murder A Grandmother? I've got some ideas on how the story is going to develop in a way which will make using Tom and Joan as the povs work better.

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Authors I like

Anna Jacobs

A mentor in my early writing days and still one of my favourite authors. Her sagas about family life in Lancashire are among my favourites but she is a prolific writer and it's all good.

Michael Robotham

Michael urged me to keep writing when I was in a depressed period after another publisher's knock-back. He is basically why I kept writing and turned to self-publishing. I've read all his books and I'm always waiting eagerly for the next one.

Dave Warner

I only recently discovered Dave as a writer after having had his Dave Warner and The Suburbs album since it was on vinyl. It's interesting having another writer who sets his stories in Western Australia.

Dick Francis

I've read all his books at least twice and sometime more often. He's the writer I always return to when I need to feel totally in my comfort zone. Good stories, tight plots, easy writing style. I'd love to know if it really was his wife Mary who wrote them. His son Felix is doing a great job of keeping the family business going.

Leslie Thomas

Ever since Virgin Soldiers I've been hooked on Leslie Thomas and his Dangerous Davies series are among my all-time favourites.

I am because I write

I come across a lot of people who would like to be writers and I often wonder why. For me there has been no question. Since a very young age I have been a writer. Certainly not a famous or even successful one but while other people were doctors or teachers or sportspeople, the thing I did best and was most comfortable doing was writing. For some reason I had a natural flair for it and that raw talent was honed when I became a journalist and learned that what bubbled out of my head was not what was needed. I had to to be able to write to order. One of my earliest lessons came from Bob Duffield, a reporter who took the story of the closure of Perth's Roe Street brothels and wrote different versions of it for convervative, sensationalist, religious and sociological publications. I learned that writing was a craft to be learned, and I have spent many years learning not only the craft of writing, but of story-telling, which is an art in itself. Whether it's a poem, a short story, a novel, my family history, one of my blogs or web sites, I will always be writing something. It's simply who I am and what I do.