Author: John P. Murphy

I'm an engineer and writer living in New England. My research background is in robotics and computer security; my writing is primarily science fiction and mystery.
Written by John P. Murphy

A Stab in the Dark: Out The Door

I finished up the most recent short story yesterday afternoon. I trimmed a few scenes, but made up for it by adding a whole other one (I’ll be curious if anyone coming back to this post can figure out which scene was added). It’s a good piece, one of the better mysteries-per-se that I’ve written. […]

Written by John P. Murphy

Stab in the Dark: Rough Draft

I finished up a rough draft of my work-in-progress. I wound up wrapping it up at around 6300 words, though I may expand it a bit on the next draft. I added a scene looking for a particular piece of evidence, and discovered that the character addition from earlier shortened that scene considerably. Now comes […]

Written by John P. Murphy

A Good Night (For Murder!)

Just finished up a good bit of writing: Just shy of a thousand words, net, on the current mystery story, A Stab in the Dark, after going back and making some revisions based on my notes from the plane. Adding a character (now Sgt. Van Rijn) was very much the right thing to do, the […]

Written by John P. Murphy

Onna Nother Jet Plane

Well, that was interesting. Thanks to the thunderstorms, I spent far too much time in an airport yesterday, and didn’t get home until midnight. But the end result was more work on that piece of flash fiction (which may no longer be flash, I’ll have to type it up and word-count) and managed to overcome […]

Written by John P. Murphy

Onna Jet Plane

There’s something about airports and airplanes that’s good for writing. I can’t tell whether it’s the lack of decent internet access or the cramped seats that make it tough to use your laptop, or the scarcity of outlets, but lately I eventually drag out my notebook and start writing longhand. I got the better part […]

Written by John P. Murphy

On the Subject of Fair Play

To commemorate the starting of This Here Blog, I thought I would go back and dig up an essay I wrote last year, looking at the doctrine of Fair Play, and looking at how it can be applied to science fiction. I went through and spruced it up, cut some dead weight, and added some […]