My writing style and content

Yes, I know my style is somewhat quirky in the placement of the ellipses, but they denote passage of time or change of location or pace.

As for the content; well, the content isn't always everyone's cup of tea. However, many of my readers have said that though the content wasn't what they were accustomed to and not what they usually looked for in a read; most of them have said that the story was compelling enough to draw them in and make them stick with the book.

Of course. You're asking why that should be. Well, I take great pains to make my characters as real as possible. If the character has another problem besides what I have presented him/her with in the story, then I also show him/her dealing with that other problem in order to develop the character fully. The only exceptions I have made to making the characters real is the short story, Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken. In it, I used stock, stereotyped characters, though the stereotypes my not have been recognized by many readers. The reason they were unrecognizable is because I knew a great many people in my youth who spoke and acted like Niedyck and his cronies. And the vernacular in which I wrote the story was one that I grew up hearing from family members and friends. It's very nearly another dialect of English, like the old Plug-a-ploo dialect spoken by the mountain-men of the 19th century.

Yes, I exaggerated the dialect. Why? you ask? Well, the story was supposed to be a tongue-in-cheek, taunting leer at myself, my family and many of the friends I once knew. You would have had to grow up when and where I did, with the people I grew up with, to really get the story. Oh, sure, it's funny and at least one of my readers gets it; though she is of a later generation. She has known, and still knows, people who behave and speak as the characters in the story. So, yes, Wild Weasel Wilson and the Banshee Chicken lives on and re-echoes through the years, though the people who inspired the story are long dead or so respectable nowadays that they can't recognize themselves as the inspiration for the characters.

As for my other works; as I said, I make the characters as real as I can and give them problems to deal with that can be insurmountable. That they manage to emerge victorious makes them the heroes that I once read about as a boy in old Norse myths. Incredibly human and flawed, but willing and able to push their way through to the end and come out on top.

Thank you,
Derek A. Murphy
Author of Dolly Games, Congruencies and others.