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