Motivations

Hello! I'm back! Been away in spirit if not in body. My heart just wasn't in writing the blog and rather than post the depressed maunderings of a man approaching an accelerated old-age, I opted to let the blog lie fallow until I had something of worth to plant in it.

Addressing the title of this post: my motivations for writing. I like the idea of leaving something behind me for others to see. Perhaps they might come to understand me to a certain degree. It's not that I'm especially difficult to understand; I live, I breathe, I eat the foods that others eat, I want many of the same things that others want. I'm just not very vocal about how I feel about things. That's where writing comes in, like a knight on a white horse, carrying me forward and spurring me to essay new and untried avenues of expressing myself.

There is also a cathartic release for me in my works. Did I have a romantic relationship that went horribly wrong? Yes. Have I come to terms with it? No. Though the blame resides with me every day, it originated with another and I curse the day that I relented and agreed to speak to her. After being hammered day in and day out with her pleas and promises, I eventually did as she wanted and it cost me dearly, in more ways than one.

So, how do I achieve a cathartic release from that? I have written several pieces expressing how I feel about the pain that I feel every day. My novel, "Congruencies" was my daydream of how I would go back in time to change the thing that I did to ruin my life. No. I haven't taken my characters from anyone that I knew in life. I'm not about to court a lawsuit of any kind because of my writing. My work is a product of my imagination coupled with the pain I've known in my life. The short stories in my book, "The Empty Heart: A Collection", are also drawn from my emotions and longing for a second chance. As a young man, I was what was called "a dog" where women were concerned. I suppose it was only justice that I was lied to, lied about and deceived in every sense of the word. The penalty that Kellan pays in my short, "Cost of Passage", is self-flaggellation for me. The emptiness of heart and loneliness of never truly having loved another that Wade Travis feels in the title piece sums up the way that I've felt for a very long time. Incidentally, the macabre visitation that he experienced is something that actually happened to me shortly after I betrayed the young woman that I should have spent my life with. Was it a product of her ill-wishes? I don't know. That's why I explored it in the story.

After dealing with such heavy thoughts while writing those stories, I wrote "Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken" as an exorcism of those dark thoughts. I thought that something funny was in order. "Repetitions" expressed my thoughts regarding reincarnation. I don't believe that there is any possibility of distancing from race or culture. I believe that if reincarnation exists, then people must be reincarnated within their original culture, from DNA belonging to their families. How else can they atone for their sins against people they have known intimately? It only makes sense to me that by remaining as a karmic burden of their family, they are most likely to come in contact with the reincarnated spirits of thsoe they've hurt the most. That's simply a personal opinion and I have nothing to offer as proof.

Do ghosts exist? I addressed that question in "If Shadows had Voices". I kind of think that karma is also tied up with the concept of ghosts. If a spirit is unwilling to be reincarnated; where does it go? Is it stuck in a kind of limbo? Is a haunting, being tied to a place, a kind of limbo? Can ghosts be tied to living people?

"Cold Feet" was my foray into the urban adventure genre. I liked the experience and will probably write more of them. Imagine; ordinary people, faced with extraordinary circumstances. It enables me to write with realism and gives me an enjoyable writing experience.

For my attempt at writing a Howardesque piece; see "The Keystone". I liked it but felt that it was incomplete when I was finished with it. I wasn't able to write with the florid phrases that he used in his works because I have been too heavily influenced by the spare, but evocative writing style of Zelazny. I AM NOT AS GOOD A WRITER AS ZELAZNY AND NEVER WILL BE! I wanted to get that said so that no one will think that I am comparing myself to him. I just like the way that he wrote and don't think that anyone can ever write as well as he did.

Now you have read a few of my motivations for writing and I must say that there are others that I don't have time, space or inclination to go into here. The best way to get a firsthand sampling of my motivations for writing is to read my work. Read between the lines and apply them in a suppositional manner to aspects of your own life and you may come up with an idea of why I write.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of The Empty Heart: A Collection, Congruencies, Gulf of the Plains and others.
Available on Kindle

Progress on the sequel

I don't often post anything in this blog about something that I am currently working on, but thought that today was a good time to start doing that.

Work goes on apace on the sequel to Gulf of the Plains: Fog and Bog. Paget and her new family are suffering another upheaval in their lives and I'm wondering where it will lead. Oh, I know what I've plotted, but as I once said: I like to let my stories grow organically. She has acquired a new romantic interest to take the place of Bailey and her sister is making her first appearance. Unlike Paget, she has not suffered at the hands of any enemies until now and I'm wondering if she will be made of the same stuff that Paget is. Will she be too brittle to handle the occurrence as well as Paget has done in the past? While I have toned down the sexual abuse that marked the first book, (it seemed kind of skeezy), it is still important to show how Paget's sister deals with it. I felt there needed to be some symmetry in their relationship. Julia had judged Paget harshly pre-polar shift and I believed it was necessary to let her walk a mile in Paget's shoes.

John Sheaves is growing within the role that his father and his own actions have set for him and Beth has become a tried and true helpmeet in the smashed world they have to live in. Matt and Molly are as steadfast as ever and Matt's sense of humor is standing him in good stead. He is still the same irreverent, young man in an old man's body that he was in the first book.

Moving on to Paget's love interest; Carl is as silent as he was in the first book, but now we see that it is just his way. He is a wise and canny leader of men and it is his judgement that helps Paget to survive in their adventure.

A new character, Pencherjevsky, has made an appearance and will continue to have an impact on the lives of the group. I am toying with the thought of establishing a relationship between him and Julia, but feel that it might be too convenient. I'll have to think about that. Maybe they should just have a casual-type thing. Or, maybe he should be too concerned with what's happening in the story to spend any time dallying with her.

You see, I have a weakness for showing some characters as heroes and others as victims. Bringing such characters together naturally includes giving them a relationship. But maybe it isn't so natural. In life, it may be, but such relationships tend to fail in time. Maybe I need to show that failure. It would tend to give both of them some depth, something that a new character needs in any story.

Okay. I've told you my thoughts without including any serious spoilers, so that's about it for today. I have to go throw my characters into their lives and see if they sink or swim.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains, Congruencies and others.
Available on Kindle

Characters

Okay, so the title of this post is a little lame. It has meaning for me, and you read this blog to see what I have to say. Accept it and move on.

The characters in the books I have written, Mason Kelly, Claire De Luca, Lillian Reese in A Taste For Blood, Stephan(Stitch) Lyne, Grrrl-tew, Brisa Lyne in Stitch in Thyme, Brian Caffrey and Aditi in A Quart of Djinn, Patrick Cameron and Rebecca Franklin in Congruencies, Michael (Miles) Peregrine and Katie Milburn in Behind the Stone, Dorothy Augusta, Peter Sunday and the private investigator trio of Shepherd, Tanner and Decker in Eggs of Empire, Louisa Gerard and Demon in Taken Apart, John Sheaves, Paget Redpath, Bailey Lovell and Beth Stewart in Gulf of the Plains, Brian Maclin and Annalisa Carey in It Happens Every Day, Drummond Rand, Bruiser and Cruiser Linehan in Questionable Interests, all owe their existences to my imagination. Gee, that's quite a list. And it doesn't even include all the secondary characters that I created.

Did I mention that I re-use some characters in other works than the ones in which they make their first appearances? Lillian Reese and Bruiser and Cruiser have all been in multiple books. Bruiser and Cruiser have been in three, though in two of them, they have played extremely limited parts. Identical twin geniuses, condemned to live far from academic lives because of their appearance and background, they seemed to spring full-blown into my mind when I began writing of them. Did I say that they are both nearly seven feet tall and, though highly intelligent, somewhat obtuse regarding how they look? They dress well in expensive clothing, but seem unaware of their badly broken noses. The only difference in their appearance is their noses and it is the only way that people can tell them apart, though most people are too intimidated by them to mention it.

Some of you may have noticed that I have used several mysterious characters who seem to have no place in the story, though their actions are the deciding factors in the stories' resolution. They are: Rod (Rodw Muze'l Oki) Mallory, Rhiann (Oki Rhi'an'a Shta) Mallory, Emmet (Em't oKun Rodw) Mallory and Delia (Rhiaph Deli'a Shta) Mallory. Another character that I have used, but failed to identify for you, the reader, is Anna (Rhiaph An'a Shta) Mallory. All these characters belong to a series that I cut my teeth on before I ever published anything. In all, they and others, populate five, or is it six, novels that I wrote prior to anything I have published. I'm very much afraid that I will never publish these other novels because I'm not sure that very many people will be accepting of these aliens' familial dynamic. Or even of their hidden identities.

You see, I reasoned that the ancient gods of Mesopotamia, Egypt and Greece had to have come from somewhere and; why couldn't they have been aliens? The stories I have written regarding them start just as they are leaving their home world and I have envisioned, and included pastiches of their pasts, in several books as flashbacks. While I am certain that a great many new-agers, emos, goths and other people who can't be identified by any of these classifications, would enjoy the stories, I'm afraid that mainstream readers would sneer at them and avoid them in droves. Besides, since I was just beginning to write, they come off with a soap opera flavor to them that makes them seem amateurish and unsophisticated. Not that any of my other works can be called high literature. I simply recognize that they require a great deal of re-writing that may or may not be worth the trouble. Maybe someday I'll re-write them. If I do, you, my readers, will be the first to know.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of The Empty Heart, Questionable Interests, It Happens Every Day and others.
Available on Kindle