Enter a wondrous universe…the latest volume of Sword and Sorceress, featuring stories
from new and seasoned authors. Herein you will find tales of fantasy with
strong female characters, with some version of either martial skill or magic.
Not all the protagonists will be human, and sometimes the magic will take
highly original forms, but the emotional satisfaction in each story and in the
anthology as a whole, remains true to the original vision. The release date will
be November 2, 2018.
Kindle: https://amzn.to/2NitlHH
Deborah J. Ross: Tell
us a little about yourself. How did you
come to be a writer?
Deirdre M. Murphy: When
I was a kid, I felt like books were my best friends. They brought me a lot of joy and led, in the
end, to me being less lonely in real life and finding human friends who
understood me. I wanted to be one of the
storytellers, to give those gifts forward, in part, and to, in a sense, play
with the storytellers I’d admired for so long, whether or not I got to meet
them in person.
DJR: What
inspired your story in Sword and Sorceress 33?
DMM: A panel at a
science fiction convention. We were
discussing monsters as metaphor, and there was one pretty obvious metaphor that
hadn’t been used much, which combined with the thought that dysfunctional
behaviors are often functional behaviors done wrong, or occasionally the
function is just misunderstood.
DJR: What authors
have most influenced your writing? What
about them do you find inspiring?
DMM: This
question is too big for a short interview!
I love stories that surprise me, that make me think, that give me a
window into a different world or into understanding people who are unlike me in
some fundamental way.
DJR: How does
your writing process work?
DMM: I’m a night
writer, mostly. There’s something about
the mystery of the darkness, and the quiet that happens when most people around
me are dreaming that just works for me.
As to the stories themselves, sometimes I get a flash of imagery, or a
character, or a situation and just sit down and write as fast as my fingers
will go. That’s delightful, when it
happens, but a lot of the time it’s like anything worthwhile, there’s parts
that are fun, parts that are fascinating and challenging, and parts that you
just have to slog though.
DJR: What have
you written recently? What lies ahead?
DMM: I’m
currently working on a cozy mystery with sea monsters. If that becomes popular, I’ll doubtless do
more about the same characters. I’m fond of them.
If the cozy mystery doesn’t catch, I have some catkin
characters in an alternate Chicago, who don’t know they have a city to save. Yet.
I’m fond of them too, though I have fewer words invested in them so far.
I also have edits waiting for a YA novel about a girl and
her snow-unicorns. But right now, I’m
having fun with my amateur sleuth just happening to be underfoot when the
professionals have told her to leave the investigation to them.
DJR: Where else
can readers find you?
DMM: I have a
Patreon at https://www.patreon.com/Wyld_Dandelyon. I put at least one “something new” there
every week. Sometimes it’s a photograph
I took and an accompanying haiku, and other times it’s more elaborate. I’ve put ficlets and character studies there
for supporters, and I have some chapters of my Quirky Writer’s Guide to
Courting Inspiration and Foiling Writer’s Block up there. There’s a number of posts that are visible
to the public, and some just for my supporters.
I am also Wyld_Dandelyon on Dreamwidth and twitter.
DJR: What advice
would you give an aspiring writer?
DMM: Write. Live.
Write some more. Live some
more. Read. Laugh.
Revise. Send some random kindness
and beauty out into the world. Live deep
and wide. Keep writing.
Deirdre
M. Murphy is a writer, poet, artist, and singer-songwriter whose first
professionally published story appeared in Marion
Zimmer Bradley's FANTASY Magazine.Since then her work has appeared in
various venues including Crossed Genres;
Trafficking in Magic, Magicking in Traffic; and Tails of the Pack. She is one of the
primary creators of Torn World, with stories, art, and award-winning poetry set
in an original science fantasy world at www.tornworld.net.
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