Mike Murphy's writing diary

Sunday 20 December 2015

Getting a CPAP machine to improve my sleeping has made a world of difference and I am back to writing for much longer periods than I have been managing for some time,
I am still working on "Why'd They Kill Grandma?" which is the sequel to "Murder For A Grandmother" which is on offer to a traditional publisher. I am also working on "The Man Who Didn't Like People" as a follow up to "A New Era For Manny Youngman" and I am re-vamping "The Man Behind The Mask" which is a romance I wrote several years ago.
I know some people say they can only work on one project at a time but I find my mind tends to think in scenes. I write a scene of one book and then take a break before coming back and tidying it up before going on to the next scene. It is more productive to use those breaks to work on one of my other projects.
My aim is to have at least three books published in 2016 - either by a traditional publisher or I will self-publish them.
I am developing an extensive mailing list of people who liked "A New Era For Manny Youngman" and I am also embarked on an extensive programme of author talks, It makes much more sense to be promoting several titles instead of one.

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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.