Murphy skillfully transports spaghetti western tropes to a lawless space station in this action-packed debut. Publisher’s Weekly The ebook and audiobook versions of my debut science fiction novel Red Noise are out and available to download and start reading or listening right now! Red Noise is the story of an asteroid miner who just wants […]
I just sent in my fifth fiction submission of the new year. If you count the one that’s waiting on a February submissions opening, I have five stories actively on the market. That’s not bad, but looking at what’s in progress, I’m going to have trouble keeping that up: I’m pretty thoroughly stalled out on […]
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 […]
It does not take the most incisive literary analysis to say that murder mysteries are about death. Someone turns an alive person into a dead one, other people react to that, and a detective (sometimes as the representative of larger society) examines the death in an effort to learn how and why. There is an […]
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 […]
I’ve been working, on and off, on a mystery novel through the summer, as I’ve posted before. It’s coming along (about 5,000 words written that I haven’t thrown out already), but the writing is slow because, ultimately, I’m kind of unhappy with my outline, etc. etc. It’s stalled. I had been thinking about doing NaNoWriMo, […]
I haven’t actually forgotten this site! Things have just been a little busy around here (who knew it would be that hard to put in an extra outlet for the A/C, even with someone else doing most of the work?) but I’ve been working hard on planning this novel. (Discussion of plot follows, but no […]
I’ve been working diligently (well, working) on the outline I talked about earlier. I’ve managed to work myself into a lousy space: Judging by the increase in outline length (doubled) I’ve probably doubled the length of the story. 40,000 words is kind of a lousy length. There are markets for fiction that length, to be […]
I mentioned earlier two plans related to the novel I’m starting: 1) I’m starting with an outline rather than just diving in, primarily because I’m worried about my lack of organizational skills. 2) I’m taking the plot of a 20,000-word novella I wrote last fall and using that as the basis of the novel: I’m […]
In the beginning, there was the Outline. Or there will be. (Will have been?) Having more or less run out of usable ideas for short fiction for the moment, I’m diving back into the project I had earlier: expanding Where Do They Bury the Survivors? to novel length. I approach with some trepidation, as the […]
John P. Murphy 