Influences

That's right, the title is "Influences". Not because my writing or stories are influenced by any particular writer, but because I would like to tell you, my reader, what influenced my latest book.

It is a book of short stories and the first story was prompted by something that happened to me many years ago. I still find it puzzling and have been unable to come up with any explanation other than the supposition I posited in the story.

The second story came to me one night as I lay thinking about the 'lucky' coin I had carried since my Senior year in high school. I thought to myself, "At least when I die, I will have a real silver coin to pay the Boatman with." And thus, a story was born.

The third story was a throwback to the stories I enjoyed so much as a teenager. Many of them were written by Howard and while his stories were heavier on the 'heroic' action than this one, I feel that mine exceeds his in giving the main character a life beyond the action.

The fourth story was a flight of bawdy, almost vulgar, fancy that came to me as I thought of something that my wife sometimes says. I've never heard of a 'Banshee Chicken' from anyone but her and the incongruity of the two words together gave me an idea for the storyline.

In the fifth story, I was feeling down and blue and the memory of a place I enjoyed as a boy came to me. I have included the place in a couple of other stories I have written and still feel as though I could walk to that place, sit down on streamside and waggle my toes in the water, startling the tadpoles and minnows that live therein.

The sixth story is a companion-piece to my novel, Gulf of the Plains, and was included simply because I thought that readers of that novel should be treated to the realization that other people than my characters in the novel had a hard time in that apocalyptic world.

The seventh story is my attempt to deal with the loss of a dream I held dear for many years and was loathe to relinquish. I have come to believe that karma plays a strong part in our lives and wondered if a vow could live after the deaths of the people who uttered it.

With the eighth story, I felt some guilt for behaving shabbily toward another person as a teenager and while she is gone forever from my life, I believed that this story could play the part of an apology for that behavior.

The ninth story was strictly an urban adventure that I have played around with for years. Thoughts of the story have lived many incarnations in my mind for at least thirty years and I felt that the story's time had come. Simply put, I wondered what would happen if a famous person, verging on sinking back into the anonymity we all live in, encountered a common man who was able to improve her life by simply doing what was right.

The tenth story is part of my musings on whether or not an inanimate object can carry a resonance of evil instilled within it many years earlier. I still don't know if that is possible or not, but the story exists for others to peruse and pose the same question to themselves.

With all that said, perhaps others will realize that inspiration lives within us all and that the most mundane things can stir it to a life outside ourselves.

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