…keeps everyone away! I thought it might be fun to write up a description of a little writing challenge I set to myself this year. I’ve been thinking a lot about my writing habits, which have gotten pretty spotty as my day job has gotten more stressful, and also about the nature of creativity: it’s […]
I need you to understand that there are no answers here.
First, some Claudius Rex news: The Year’s Top Short SF Novels 5, an audio anthology which includes that novella (along with stellar entries from Ken Liu, Cory Doctorow, and others), is available on CD and from Audible.com. I’m very pleased with how it came out, and if you’ve got a lot of travel coming up […]
The fictional private eye has never been all that realistic: he or she’s always been a crystallization of the times, doing things the hard and painful way when more effective ways exist. The key to the success of the PI in the public imagination is the nature of those more effective ways, and public doubt in them.
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’m a devoted listener to the podcast Writing Excuses — despite their claims to the contrary, they really are that smart — and found their most recent episode, on Middle Grade fiction, to be fascinating. (Defining Middle Grade is contentious, but loosely, it’s fiction for kids 9-12: think Charlotte’s Web, the first Harry Potter book, […]
I had wanted to put up a thread earlier for my story The Body and the Bomb, published back in April by Crossed Genres, but I don’t think that page is the appropriate place for me to put my thoughts about the story — I don’t entirely subscribe to the “death of the author” or […]
Good news, everyone! My short story, “The Body and the Bomb” has been published over at Crossed Genres for this month’s issue on Mystery, linked from the front page. If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you enjoy it! (And don’t just read mine! There’s some great stuff there)
Just for fun, I thought I’d post a scene that I’ve been working on. This is from early in the novel, so while it contains important plot points, it’s not much of a spoiler. It takes place aboard the Colonial Union Ship William S. Halliday, which is currently docked with the Deep Space Telescopic Array […]
Looking back on my last few weeks of blog posts, one could be forgiven for thinking that I’ve spent more time writing about writing than actually writing! So, maybe a little update is in order. I have three primary projects right now, and have made some progress on all of them. First, I’m rewriting a […]
John P. Murphy 