David Murphy's Blog

The smell of cut grass washes over cracked sidewalks. Nobody pays attention as he passes by, ever. Or they might have once. Sometimes they still did. Sometimes they fooled you. He had grown up ordinary with ordinary looks. Normal mousy hair and normal brown eyes. He can't even be called a nerd, he doesn't fit in with loners - he is that ordinary. Sometimes he likes words and sometimes he doesn't like words. Sometimes words are tricks. He never changes them though, every word on every class paper, every fleeting thought. They are ordinary and at some point a long time ago he decided that he too would be ordinary.
When Nathaniel was younger he had friends, the result of being a nonthreatening spoke in various wheels. In time, his friends found things that defined them, that in turn defined other hubs. They moved in orbits and sub-orbits. He slipped away. Sometimes he listens to insects, the relentless buzzing of cicadas. The sidewalk smells like warm earth and wet grass. It is uneven and and houses pass as he walks by. It smells like an ordinary day. He is walking down the street to the community college. Sometimes he likes being inside his car but sometimes he doesn't. He has a backpack. He has entered the words he needs to enter for his classes. He hasn't changed them. His cellphone predicts torrential rain, that's okay. He lives in Iowa.

1994 Olds Cutlass Ciera. V6, chilly air, 189K miles, runs sweet, torn headliner, burns some oil, needs brakes & tires. Awesome pioneer cassette/AM/FM. This could be yours for $1400.

Read more here....
http://thatdavidmurphy.blogspot.com/2...

I woke up the other morning, had a cup of coffee and clicked on Kindleboards where a fun and disparate clan of self-pub writers swap stories and advice. I was feeling good about receiving my fifth favorable book review on Amazon. It's not a lot of reviews but it's still nice to receive a modicum of appreciation. I penned a happy post, receiving a few kind expressions of support in return. Shortly thereafter I checked my Amazon page and saw that my book had received yet another review. This was fantastic! Until I noticed that it was the bottom of the barrel one-star rating, guaranteed to send a happy morning straight into the toilet. Unless, there is a helpful lesson to be learned.

The person who bestowed this tasty treat (labeled “All over the place”) goes by Michael C. He's written literally hundreds of reader reviews for Amazon so I figured he must be a pretty dedicated fan of literature. I dove in with great interest – if he gave it the worst rating possible under the Amazon system then it would probably include some first-rate critical analysis. This would no doubt make me a better writer and isn't that what constructive criticism is all about? Curiously however, Michael hadn't actually read much of the book – he based his analysis on the free excerpt at the beginning. It was in his words, “too tiresome to bother.” I can understand where he's coming from. Sometimes I find things tiresome too. Sometimes, the tiresome nature of things sends me straight to a late morning nap.

After my nap, I considered the rest of Michael’s admittedly brief review, centering on the “grammar mistakes, run-on sentences and disjointing scenes.” I thought about this, about rules of grammar and proper sentence structure. Personally, I am A-okay with those who bend the rules. I also like artists who paint outside the lines and guitarists who distort their chords and cute kittens and warm coffee and long naps. I'm not sure I would have used the word 'disjointing' though. Disjointed with an “ed” at the end might have been more grammatically sound, unless you're describing the dis-assemblage of plumbing pipes or chicken legs. And look, it wasn't as if the review was all bad – he did note a glimmer of talent behind the fluff.

So what makes Michael run? I needed to explore, to resolve, to contemplate! Like Marlow in Heart of Darkness, I began churning up the serpentine river of reviews. I started with a few of the real slams – he'd bequeathed the dread one-star status to a handful of other novels within a 48 hour period. There was certainly some consistency – the man does not tolerate "long sentences or flowery writing" easily. One of his one-star critiques offered a refresher course on what makes Hemingway great – this as a framing device for why run-on sentences and big words suck so bad. I can understand where he's coming from. I like brevity too, sometimes. Unless I don't.

Enough of the bad – what about the good? This was obviously a man of great literary principle and integrity. Interestingly, every book listed as a “verified Amazon purchase” was accorded a glowing five-star review while every non-purchased book (i.e. free preview/excerpt) was awarded only one star. I wondered what this was all about – there wasn't any real middle ground – it was all or nothing, superlatives or disdain. And just what gets Michael’s creative juices flowing?

For one thing, some pretty awesome covers. Black bras, wrists wrapped in rope, a woman on her knees who may have been inspecting a man's trousers for lint. And there's nothing wrong with that – lint is an abomination after all. Some pretty tasty titles as well, such as Lesbian Strap-On Role Play, Rock Stars Dirty Groupie, and Bound to be Punished. To be quite fair, it's not all whips and giggles. Michael also awards five (fairly breathless) stars to 10 Natural Beauty Tips, Easiest Bible Memory Verses, and Lustmord: Anatomy of a Serial Butcher.

Book critics are not always known for charity and kindness – that's not their job. James Wood for the New Yorker and Michiko Kakutani for the NY Times aren't likely to suffer sloppy writing gladly but of course, they're at the top of the literary food chain and get paid to write their reviews. Amazon reader reviewers don't. Or, do they? It's actually a fairly lucrative cottage industry, so says the NY Times – crank out enough of these rave puff pieces and you can make a decent living, certainly more than most self-pub book authors. And, if the sheer volume of reviews doesn't leave time to actually read the book, what's the harm?

Am I accusing Michael C of shilling for book authors? Naw, I would never do such a thing. And besides, why would somebody dump on every single non-purchase? I'm sure he's not trying to scare writers into buying a five-star reviews. And I'm really, really sure that he wouldn't then offer to delete the negative reviews. Nope. I'm convinced he's really just a sweet guy who loves to read and share with others. And I can understand that. Because like Michael C, I'm all about sharing with the world. Peace, brother.

It's the Fourth of July, Independence Day, which we usually celebrate by exploding things in the sky. When I was a kid we'd go down to Wellfleet, Cape Cod where my grandparents had a summer home. Friends and neighbors would congregate in the backyard which was the best-bar-none spot to watch fireworks set off from Cannon Hill, right across a narrow inlet of water. Dads would drink Ballantine Ale and moms would help their kids roast marshmallows and we'd all watch the fireworks and it was pretty spectacular. The next morning my older brother Alec and I would trek across the rickety Uncle Tim's Bridge and collect unexploded ordinance. The gunpowder inside was rich and black and very good for personal projects.

Read more here.... http://thatdavidmurphy.blogspot.com/2...

A link to my Searching for Slava blog - the basic idea is to look to the right of the article and click on the Smashwords widget - after setting your font and line-spacing options you'll be treated to 58 free pages of my book Coma Dog which may possibly entice you to leave a review.


http://searchingforslava.blogspot.com...

About eight years ago, I made the first in an unceasing series of disastrous decisions. Actually, it wasn't the first but there's no reason to make my first blog entry for Goodreads even longer than long. I had recently come to the end of a ten-year stint as a literary agent in Los Angeles, repping writers in film and television. I was burned out, the industry was rapidly shifting and downsizing and I didn't pursue a new job with the same ambition that I once might of. Having been a reader of books all my life, I decided that it would be a tremendously good idea to write one.

I started with a new laptop and no actual idea of what to write – this being a sound plan for an out of work literary agent who had spent years advising desperate writers who overspend after scoring their first big deal in a town that feeds on desperate writers who score their first big deal. Electronic books were in their infancy at the time and not remotely on my radar – it was hardback or nothing. Imagine if I had had a modicum of foresight at the time – I could have crafted an eight-year mother-lode of vampire assassin stories and be set for life by now.

Fortunately, the hands of divine intervention appeared, sparing me the necessity of creative thinking. A buddy gave me a book for Christmas – a simple field guide to Birds of North America. I didn't have much interest in the subject but the dryly laid-out text began to interest me with its repetitive minutiae.

It wasn't enough but again, happenstance. I was in the Pasadena Library, standing in front of rows of musty books and closed my eyes, allowing my hands to trail, randomly stopping on A Unit of Time A Unit of Water: Joel White's Last Boat. It was a beautifully written accounting of the last days of a legendary boat builder, dying of cancer. It was not only about Joel's life and his boats, but his relationship with his father – none other than E.B. White, author of marvelous children's literature and scholarly essays and my favorite writer growing up.

I needed more though and after a considerable struggle, came up the idea of writing about a guy who doesn't know what comes next. I had my book! I would chart the life of Harold, a middle-aged advertising executive who sails his boat up along the Atlantic seaboard, following the migratory path of birds. I even came up with a brilliant title – Birds, Boats and Middle Age.

I wrote at a snails pace, day in, day out. Slowly amassed details, lots and lots of details. This was important stuff. The Birds of North American Guide was not enough – I purchased the definitive work on the subject – the Sibley Guide to Birds. There would be nothing left out. And books about boats. Lots of books about boats. About a year went by. I now had 300 pages with marshes and birds and plant life and sailing and a guy named Harry who's kind of a dick.

The next logical step was to dump the manuscript off on a good friend who was also a very good writer. I needed affirmation of this Pulitzer-worthy creation. My friend found it to be boring and repetitive with an unlikable main character. He had enjoyed one random section however, in which Harry flies out to Hollywood to meet with studio types about running the ad campaign for the hopelessly snake-bitten sequel to a talking dog movie.

The scrapping of all but 40 pages didn't come easily. But it came, along with other characters and story devices and drafts that topped out at 450 pages and were again stripped down. And years of stops and starts including a move to Cape Cod and eventually a move to Austin, and different climates and different influences and crashing computers and submissions to New York City literary agents who never responded and lost files and lost interest and eventually a found memory stick with an old draft and more revisions and at the end, an unstable mess as a result of different software systems and who knows what.

Perhaps the best thing about the process is just that – the process. The story about an ad exec and a dog with diabetes, a trio of entitled white wannabe gangstas and a Hungarian junkie director won't win any awards but it will exist in cyberspace as a drawn-out exercise that hopefully helped me become a better writer. One final circle of hell presented itself – an abomination called e-formatting. I basically gave up on that battle. One would think that the investment of eight years in a writing exercise would include an actual editor, professional formatting and a cover that is at least marginally better than a cell pic of a tennis ball on a lawn but that wouldn't have played well in the continuum of disastrous decisions.

Coma Dog is electronically available for 0.99 cents – at least until the New York lit agents realize their colossal blunder and come calling with pots of gold and plans for vampire assassin supremacy.

I haven't yet deduced how to embed hyperlinks via the Goodreads formatting tips. Here's some links below:

http://www.amazon.com/Coma-Dog-ebook/...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/coma-...

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/...