Mike Murphy's writing diary

Tuesday 20 October 2015

Haven't been posting here because so much is happening, New Edition Bookshop in Fremantle has taken copies of A New Era For Manny Youngman, which I see as a major step forward. Now I have to get it into the other indie bookshops around Perth. It doesn't guarantee sales, of course, but at least I can tell people where to get a copy when they ask, I've set up a Facebook page for the book and I'm working on directing people to the page. It's all a big learning curve.
And while all this is happening, I've started on the outline of a new book, provisionally titled The Family Fortune although that may well change. The premises is a mysanthropist learns he is about to die and faces the problem of what to with the large amount of money he has accumulated. He revisits his long-abandoned family to see if any of them are worth leaving the money to. The ensuing story is about ugliness being only skin deep, not judging a book by its cover and the importance of family. It is not a sequel to Manny but in the same vein, which is why I want to write this now instead of continuing with the Granny series, As another local writer, Heidi Kneale, put it, I have established a brand with Manny and I should continue to develop that brand. I feel it is also more "me" in that it answers my original question to myself when I was 17 - writers have a meaning - what meaning have I? Like Manny this book can tell a good, readable story while conveying something of my personal values and thoughts about life generally.
I also have my story Under The Rotunda coming out in the Rocky Romance anthology, I'm taking part in a coupe of panel discussions for the Rockingham Writers Centre and I'll be giving my first author talk at the Book Fair in November and another at a local library in December.

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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.