If you haven’t gotten around to picking up the Alembical 3 anthology with my science fiction mystery novella Claudius Rex, or have been waiting for the ebook, now’s your chance: it is available now for Amazon’s Kindle for only $3! Claudius Rex, as you may recall, was my SF homage to the Nero Wolfe mysteries. […]
Oh, it’s been forever since I last posted. The reason for that: I’ve been putting the finishing touches on my Crandall novel A DEATH IN DEEP SPACE — which is done! Really, seriously, ready-to-show-people done. Man, that’s weird to type. I’ve been working on that story in one form or another for five years, starting […]
My short story “No Body” was published today in Penumbra e-zine’s October issue, “Paranormal Adventures”, alongside several other excellent stories by talented authors (several of whom are friends of mine, which is always nice). At $4 for 7 stories, I’d say it’s well worth the price. As for my story, this one’s a bit of […]
My science fiction/mystery novelette Death in a Tin Can went live on Amazon this morning — only 99 cents, or free for Kindle Unlimited readers! This story is a special one for me: it was my Viable Paradise audition piece, and benefitted from advice from our talented teachers and my talented classmates. It’s been sitting in […]
Sounds like a nice 1950’s B-movie title, doesn’t it? Needs an exclamation point or five and a font dripping blood. Maybe starring Lon Cheney and the child star edition of someone you’d never associate with that sort of thing, like Andy Griffith or Jim Carrey. Anyway! It wasn’t a horror movie; in fact I had a […]
There are many reasons a writer puts pen to paper. Some do it in hope of fame and fortune, others to show off how clever they are or make people laugh, others to scratch an itch or exorcise a demon, others just to pay the bills. I’d say there are as many reasons to write […]
… begins with purchasing a treadmill. Which I have just recently done and installed as the main part of a walking desk. I have been noticing for a while now that my writing output has been dropping off. At first, I chalked it up to my move last summer, and then my change in focus […]
I’ve been sitting on the fence about this Amazon/Hachette thing for a while. Mostly because I just don’t give a damn. As far as I can tell, it’s one big company against another in pretty much standard big-company negotiations, moderately more amusing than most because each party is trying to suck in its gut and […]
I’ve been thinking a lot about short mystery structure lately, trying to figure out what works at the 4k-12k word range. Shorter works than that always seem to rely on twists, and feel more like vignettes or rely on a single gotcha like those “Catch A Murderer!” books. Longer works than 12k get closer to […]
I had reason to recall this morning The Strand’s interview with Rex Stout (which is itself very much worth a read) and noticed an interesting interchange I wanted to comment on: McALEER: Did Archie hang up the picture of Sherlock Holmes that is found over his desk, or did Wolfe put it there? STOUT: Did I say that […]
John P. Murphy 