Where do I get my ideas

Good afternoon, Self!

I've been asked more times than I can count; where do I get my ideas for novels?

The answer is: many places. A few times, I've been half-awake, lying in bed early in the morning and will have just left rem-sleep and an idea comes to me. So, yeah, sometimes I dream them up. Other times, I think up a catchy title and build a story around it. I listen to a variety of music when I write, and once, I reached a minor impasse on a story and leaned back for a short break. The song that was playing at that time was an old, old rock song that I had listened to for over forty years. As I veg-ed out, I actually listened to the lyrics and realized that in all those years, I had never really known what the song was about. As it turned out, the song dealt with a funeral and the emotions that the lyricist was dealing with concerning it. One line in the song spurred a thought, and that thought bumped into another thought and before I knew it; I had an actual train of thought going. The thought led to my alternate world novel, It Happens Every Day. Another novel inspired by a line in a song was Taken Apart. Demonic possession was never something that I ever thought about, but this song made me think about what it would be like to have another consciousness crawling around inside my mind, controlling every function of my body. It was creepy but gave me the idea for the novel.

Another time, many years ago, I was car-pooling with another guy and it was his turn to drive, so I sat back and stared at the countryside as we rode along. My employer was based in a town 18 miles from my home and if you know Oklahoma, you know that there is a lot of country between towns. Not exactly wide-open spaces like you find in the Dakotas or one of the other Northern Plains states, but enough that you see farmhouses, barns, gullies, creeks, stands of trees and etc. With my eyes on the landscape, I started picking out places that would provide breastworks and other cover in the event of a battle. From that came the kernel of the idea for my novel, Gulf of the Plains.

At work, either waiting for a job to finish, or while loading DTs into an optical reader/sorter; real mindless stuff that everybody had to contend with, I used to daydream and if my co-workers knew that from those few minutes of robot-like-activity came the ideas for at least half of my novels, they would be astounded.

Well, those are just a few instances, and there are others. A really great series of novels that I wrote was somewhat derivative of several other novels that I read. The idea came from the similarities between the pantheons of gods worshipped by a variety of different cultures that had little or no contact with each other. Were the attributes of those gods universal, or was there a race of humanoid creatures that paid a visit to those cultures over a period of thousands of years? I don't profess to know the answer to that question, but it gave me the idea for the series. It's too bad that I will probably never publish those novels. The reason for that is that I am not comfortable with some of the subject matter. Perhaps I should publish them anyway and take a chance on them becoming extremely popular. But I really don't want to answer a lot of questions in the news media about whether or not I believe what I wrote, or why I chose to have my characters break so many of our culture's taboos.

With that, I will leave you today. May you all find something to read that you enjoy and may it stay with you all the days of your lives.

Derek A. Murphy
Author of Behind the Stone, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle

Names of characters

Good morning, Self!

If you are like me, and I know you are since you are me, then you sometimes have trouble finding names for your characters. I was advised to get myself a book of baby names and use that. However, picking a name for a character is as difficult as picking a name for a baby. You want just the right name that will hopefully project the qualities and flaws you want to inject into your characterization. I imagine what I want the character to be like, then find a name, male or female, that rings true. But then I've got the problem of selecting a surname to go with this perfect given name for my character. I have bookcases ranged around my office with the names of the authors prominently displayed, and if I need a name quickly for a minor, throwaway character, I select from them. A phonebook also comes in handy, but you have to keep in mind the locale you are using for the book's action. Does this place have a strong German community? Or, maybe you are putting your action in the Southwest. You need to use the surnames that are most likely to be found in the area, no matter where the action takes place.

Maybe this is an attention to detail that is unnecessary, but for me, it gives the story flavor, a sense of authenticity that, I hope, lends credibility to my efforts as a writer. If I accomplish this, then the reader closes my book at the end and immediately goes in search for another of my works. Isn't that what any writer hopes will happen?

So, to sum up: Envision your character, select a given name that strikes the emotional chord you want to play, find a surname that is in concert with both the given name and the locale. These are my simple steps to finding just the right names for my characters. I'm sure I'm not the first to use them, just as I will not be the last.

Oh, and one last thought; I have found that burying myself in the minutiae of writing helps take my mind off the fact that writers also sometimes suffer from a form of stage-fright. It's just not as immediate. Then when I am finished, and am sure that there is nothing else I can do to make it a better story, I set about copyrighting, formatting and publishing.

Goodbye, Self. Have a nice day.
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Taken Apart, Eggs of Empire and others.
Available on Kindle

Perceptions

Good morning, Self!
This morning I would like to address the public's perceptions of Indie authors. As a culture, we have grown demanding in the quality of the things we consume in our lives, and our reading material is no exception. We have become accustomed to the publishing industry's control over everything that falls under our eyes and while that could be a good thing, it's not. The Bigtime Publishers have so molded the minds of America that unless something we read has that stamp of approval from a publishing house, we aren't interested.

I admit that it's nice to know that what we pick up to read will be relatively free of typos, and that it will follow the path of the novels we have read in the past. But that can be stifling for a writer. How many times can a writer receive a folder from his publisher, demanding changes in a manuscript, before the story he wrote no longer resembles the story that formed in his mind. After some bored, overworked worker-bee in a cubicle has finished with the writer's work, it comes to look, smell and taste like every other book that sits on the shelves of innumerable bookstores across the country.

The publishing houses are interested in books that can turn a profit for them right away. I admit that if they don't show a profit, they can't continue to exist, but how many times have you picked up a book and begun to read it, only to find that the premise, the characters, the storyline and the situations are exactly like the book you read last week by another author? Publishers produce what sells at the time. If a book about a mentally crippled detective sells this week, another in the same vein will sell next week. That's the way they look at publishing.

The award winning authors who break the mold and are publicly promoted by big publishing houses have mostly spent their time in the hellish limbo of writing what the publisher wants for several years until they have become popular enough to demand and receive a free hand in what they write. Only then do they become the authors that the public recognizes as innovators who can, and do, deliver stories that the public finds intriguing.

Enter the Indie author. He, or she, doesn't have the constraints of the publishing houses hanging over his head and he writes what he wants. The work produced by Indie authors may not be as polished, though we try very hard, as that produced by a publishing house, but in it, you will find all the ideas, characters and storylines that big publishers won't take a chance on.

Having said all that, I will only add that I urge you all to take a chance on an Indie author. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains and others.
Available on Kindle

New blog linked to Author Page

This is the inaugural post for this blog on my Amazon Author Page. Once I figured out what I needed to do, it was easy. One of those things that makes you slap your forehead. That's something I've found happens all too often when I try new things.

For those who have joined us late, please read the previous posts and feel free to post a comment.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains and others.

Why so coy?

Good morning, Self.

'Tis the second day of this blog and no comments from readers as yet, though the blog has had a ton of hits.

Progress on my Gulf of the Plains sequel: Paget Redpath and several of the Gulf Rangers are in a tight spot and while I am not having trouble deciding what I want to happen to them, I have struck the dreaded 'Chapter Five Doldrums'. The words and sentences come slowly and drag themselves out like a sleepy cat, gliding slowly across the floor. I think it's because I have some things to do today and I am having trouble motivating myself to do them.

I will repeat my question of yesterday and ask my readers; why do women find my post-apocalyptic novel, Gulf of the Plains, so interesting? Is it the cast of characters and their various back-stories? Is it the emotional interplay amongst them? Is it the gentle romance that occurs between the people who make up the two couples comprising the four main characters?

Enough of that for today. Until next time, Readers.

Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, It Happens Every Day, Questionable Interests, Taken Apart, Behind the Stone, Stitch in Thyme, Eggs of Empire,
Congruencies, A Quart of Djinn, A Taste For Blood
Available on Kindle

Question that has been bothering me.

I had a thought and decided to ask the people who read my work. What is it about my novel 'Gulf of the Plains' that is so interesting? It is my best seller and I can always depend on sales from it when sales for my other work are flat. For those who like the novel, I am currently writing a sequel to it titled, 'Gulf of the Plains II: Fog and Bog'.

A beginning

This is the beginning of a new direction for me. I was raised to be averse to putting myself forward, and that fit in nicely with my shy personality. But since I have embarked on a new career in writing, I have been forced to realize that I must put that behind me and embrace the modern methods of self-promotion. Hence, this blog. I'm not sure if anyone will ever read any of this, so I will write as though I am speaking to myself.

Good afternoon, Self. If you have read any of my work, (and I know you have, since you are me) then you are familiar with the themes and subject matter that I usually include in my work. I worried for quite a while that the sex would be too graphic, then I got an eye-opener by sampling some of the stuff that today's women call 'romance novels'. If anything, my work doesn't go far enough for today's women;some of them have passed on my works as being too tame for them. I'm not sure I will ever be able to write the stuff that they like. Maybe I'll take a crack at it, but then again, maybe not.

For those who have read my work; feel free to ask questions about my novels. They are currently available only in Amazon's Kindle Store. Simply use their search engine to find my work and my Author Page there.

This has taxed my peabrain long enough. Thank you, Reader, for taking the time to check out my blog.