Defending Turquoise: in Beta Reads

Defending Turquoise is finished through first draft! As of Sunday the last sentence was written and the polish began Monday. The cover is being developed Down Under and the editor has set aside his time to edit. At this point it's almost all the way out of my hands, depending on what the beta readers come back with.

In order to get the book finished and meet the pre-order deadline, I skipped football the past several weeks and still don't know how the Pack or the Bears did, but I've got those recorded. The problem with football, though, is it eats into time I'd rather spend writing.

At this point the next book has been heavily researched. It's the book that's either going to get me run out of town or have me swimming in Nobel Prizes. We'll have to see.

Tired and overdue for a fresh Starbucks.

Oh, one other thing. Just raised all prices across the board to $3.99, might soon go to $4.99. My books are worth that and I have to pay my bills while I keep the hammer down. Hope my fans understand and support me in this.

How I Became an Overnight Success

Thaddeus and I came on the scene of the great American legal novel seven months ago. Last month we sold over 5,500 books and it's climbing every day.

An overnight success story?

On some of the blogs I read, new writers who have written a book or two often wonder why they're not selling.

I think I know why. They don't read.

How dare I, an overnight success, say that!

Sit back and let me tell you about overnight success. I began my creative writing career in 1967, my sophomore year in college. This was before most writers writing today were even born. I kept writing until 2014, when I self-published my first book, The Defendants. During that time I wrote five novels before The Defendants, got an agent, submitted my novels to the great New York City gatekeepers, and they turned me down. My novels were lacking this or that or the topic wasn't one they thought they could sell and etc etc etc. Always some reason. So what did I do? I kept on writing. Short stories. Novels. Poetry.

Know what else I did?

I learned to read. That's right, I learned to read my own writing and began to see it for what it was. Much of it was muddy, didn't say what i thought it said, meandered, was full of itself--and on and on. So I began the task of learning how to write all over again.

I wrote the first paragraph to a new novel and spent three days with that paragraph trying to understand what I'd said. I realized, again, that I hadn't said what I was trying to say. There was too damn much music in my writing that wasn't my own music. I was sounding too much like this guy or that gal or being something I wasn't.

How did I solve this?

Simple. I accepted myself and my own style. I started writing what I was thinking. Not trying to skirt around it in a literary fashion as they teach you in college when they ask, What is the writer actually saying here? I don't like that kind of crap, but I was doing it. So I decided to write from the heart. If I felt something or believed something, then Bang! it went on the page.

Finally I had it. I was the one to tell the story, in my own best way.

I called the story Thaddeus and the rest is--is becoming--history.

5,500 last month. And counting.

Overnight success.

Happy Labor Day

Have you noticed? Have you noticed there's no "management day?" Wonder why that is.

Anyway, today being Labor Day, I decided to labor. I wrote probably 4000 words on Defending Turquoise. It'a an exciting book and I love working on it. Turquoise is a mid-teen Navajo girl accused of murdering the man who was raping her.

Did you know that on the Indian reservations the rape statistics put that crime at twice the level of non-reservation parts of the U.S. Did you know that with Alaskan tribes some stats show it's twelve times higher there? Well...that's enough to commend and command a novel right there.

I like to look for my stories in the common places, but not always. Sometimes we have to sit up straight and take a look around us. There are people out there whose stories deserve to be told. Thaddeus Murfee is ready to embrace those forgotten and ignored people and their stories.

So am I.