Mike Murphy's writing diary

Saturday, 15 August 2015

It's funny how things combine to give you a new idea, In the first Grey Nomads book I had a character named Sissy Wildflower who was meant to be a willowy hippy type who drove a chartreuse mini-bus with flowers painted on the side, She dropped out of the story mainly because I had too many other characters who were more important to the plot. Now I'm on the second book I was thinking of bring her back, Then I watched a video on Stevie Nicks and saw her gypsy/fairy like images floating around, and I was watching a Black List DVD which mentioned gypsies and the idea started to take shape. I make Sissy one of a band of gypsies or gypsy-like people. It would be natural for the Grey Nomads to meet them. travelling on the road. The way it would fit into the story is that the gypsies could have been travelling this route for years and some of them could have been around at the time the murder was committed, They would't have spoken to the police or may have been suspected at the time, but they could supply the Grey Nomads with information that helps solve the murder, It makes a good thread to try out in the outline I am working on.

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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.