NEWLY PUBLISHED JULY 2015 - The Cartier Brooch and Other Unlikely Stories

We are very proud indeed to announce the publication of Sylvia's new book! 

The Cartier Brooch and Other Unlikely Stories is a collection of some of Sylvia's marvelous short stories written for magazines over many years. Touching, humorous, inventive and surprising - the stories evidence a lively imagination and a great range of feeling, all written in Sylvia's characteristic warm and vibrant storytelling prose.

The book is available through the following links -

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.com

Christmas has been and gone...

Yes, if you blinked you will have missed it.
I managed to avoid being tied up in the bad weather, but the cold has seeped into my fibres and now I'm longing for some warm weather. Lets just pack up and go to the Med again?

I did manage to stick to my resolution not to start writing anything new until the holiday was over - now here we are, it is over, and I should be starting - on what?

More cat's tails?
Jenny in France told me that little Tyfoon, the French kitten, not my Tyfoon, was so delighted/excited by the whole Xmas thing that she climbed up the Christmas tree and sat there all day!

Oh yes, and Sholto Brooking/Meyer, who bravely drove the family camper from Cornwall to the Isle of Skye through the snowstorm on the Sunday before Xmas to visit a sick friend. I know they arrived safely in Skye but have they come home yet? More....
Yes - a story from Lorraine in Thailand about a cat who had her kittens in the wrong place. More...?

'And I have discovered some othe background about my cat (when I was a child) that went to work with my mum and ended up starring alongside James Mason in "The Seventh Veil" -will those do for starters?

Christmas is coming

Anyone who is still visiting this blog will notice that I have changed around the format and also combined my original 4 blogs in one. This one is linked to a revised website, which should lead you from here to the website, directly to Amazon, where with 1 click you can buy at Amazon's prices. This seems fairer all round, as Iwas naver comfortable with charging p&p.
I am also working hard to get organised selling my "cat" books at various cat shows - The organisers seem to be happy to have me at their events, and they buy a lot of books, so it is worth the journey and a day away. So if you a felinophile (can that be right?) and you go to the local cat show, keep a look out for me and my books. (One kind lady approached my display table and said, "Oh, you must be Tyfoon's Mummy!")
Big Ginger is becoming popular, even more so than Tyfoon's Tale, though it is a completely dufferent kind of story.
I am planning to start on another story soon - once Xmas is over. I am, of course, suffering from the usual author/publisher problem of not having time to do both jobs!
And time to post a blog...? You must be...

Book covers

Hello there - this came to mind when I was writing about the possibility of furry book jackets.

You will see in my post about reviews for CANDY’S CHILDREN that one reviewer commented that the cover design of Candy's Children is "dreary".

Fine - he is entitled to his opinion and I have recorded it faithfully.

However, have you noticed that several paperback covers this year have the same misty, sepia photograph effect? Have I started a trend? Or are we really moving away en masse from multi-coloured glossy images of bits of women's bodies? DISCUSS

Reviews of CANDY'S CHILDREN

THESE ARE ALL GENUINE REVIEWS FROM THE NATIONAL AND LOCAL PRESS, AND FROM INDEPENDENT READERS - just to encourage you to try Candy's Children!

Lesley Toll, Daily Mail -"This book is most impressive..."

Becky Moran, Devon Today - "Interweaving the stories of the five main characters - plus their mother - she has drawn on her family's own experiences and looks at the darker side of family relationships."

Exmouth Journal - "It's a long and complicated story but it was worth it - it's a good story."

Sarah Pitt, Western Morning News - "This gripping Novel by Sylvia Murphy draws on her own childhood in pre-partition Palestine. It tells of Candy's love for a Muslim boy and being left, age 15, by her parents to give birth to a child who she believes is stillborn. As her children investigate the truth behind her death they learn about her past.

Bridget Baines - "At present I’m finding it ‘unputdownable’ and have just come in slightly late to work as a result! I’m very surprised that you didn’t get it picked up by a publisher, except I suppose that it falls between niches. No wonder you sacked your agent! Also, the historical bits of Israel and Palestine are sensitive to some I suppose. I do enjoy the style – it’s varied in tone, and the characters (though some are a bit unlikely) are nevertheless interesting and likeable."

Carol Brooking - "What a wonderful book!! I was given it for Christmas and just couldn't put it down. A fascinating and intriguing story so intricately interwoven . . . and I want more! I found the story line gripping, moving and humorous. Candy's Children also fascinated me as I was introduced to aspects of Palestine about which I had previously known nothing. I enjoyed all the characters and would love to know even more about each of their stories ... each character could have a story of their own and I hope she'll write is for us!! . . . and I am REALLY pleased it ended as it did.

Having learnt a little about the author I now admire the book even more!"

Nicholas Clee, The Guardian Review - "Sylvia Murphy has self-published this superior saga some years after writing novels for Hodder& Stoughton and Gollancz. So it is fair to ask whether there are qualitative differences between Candy's Children and the output of the principal London houses. Yes, the novel has a dreary cover (!); and one guesses that some London editors woould have urged Murphy to flesh out one or two important episodes in the story. Perhaps, too, this kind of novel, with melodramatic events involving glamorous characters in a variety of international locations, is not as fashionable as it once was. But anyone who enjoyes the fiction of Penny Vicenzi, say, will get pleasure from Candy's Children. Murphy's prose is often startlingly apt and her scene-setting is authentic. It is not surprising that the author rushes certain elements of her plot because she packs so much into her 300 pages. Her heroine, born in Palestine before the second world war, has an illegitimate child she believes, wrongly, to have died; emigrating to England she marries a pilot, and also believes wrongly that he has died; then she marries a matinee idol; then an Earl. When her ill-assorted family gathers for her funeral a gloriously over-the-top finale ensues."

Claire Burns - "This is a complicated story that combines nostalgic accounts of the Middle East and England during and after World War 2, with the tension and anger of modern terrorism. An old lady makes a mysterious visit to the country she once loved and knew as Palestine, only to become a victim of a bomb atrocity, and this brings together her children who gradually learn about themselves and how they came to be born to a mother they never took the trouble to understand, and who was never able to bring them together as a family.

Tautly plotted and written with the same sharp observation that has characterised all her books, Sylvia Murphy has crafted an un-put-downable tale about a lifetime of family betrayal."

Yvonne Carey - "I loved the Candy Story. It's sort of huge but intimate at the same time and you never know what is coming next and you get the feeling it could go on for ever - Candy, the sequel?"

Sarah Rankin, University of Bedfordshire - "Candy's Children is such an enthralling story, had the novel been snapped up by a publishing house, I'm certain it would be a best-seller. The story is superbly paced with memorable characters, an immensely enjoyable book to read. The visual impact of Sylvia Murphy's excellent writing would make this book an exciting TV mini series. Drama, mystery, pathos, rags to riches, it's all there."

PALESTINE: A PERSONAL HISTORY by Karl Sabbagh

I know I have long since finished writing CANDY'S CHILDREN, but this book by Karl Sabbagh ties up a lot of the implicit material in my book, that comes from personal and family memories. It pastes in the reality background to my story and confirms to me (and I hope to my readers) that I have got that background right. It certainly confirms the perfidy of politicians and the greed of certain national leaders, and although it is really about what happened fifty years ago and more, I don't think these people who purport to lead us have changed very much. Just change the names and the story is the same again and again.

How does CANDY'S CHILDREN begin?

JAFFA

The explosion hit the morning with a blinding flash and a crack of sound, followed almost immediately by the roar of moving air. Pieces of debris hurtled outwards from the epicentre with the velocity of bullets, shattering and splattering everything that stood in the way, turning the busy thoroughfare into a nightmare of death.

The immediate debris was immolated blood and flesh, shattered bone. Unrecognisable pieces of human bodies spread amongst the twisted furniture of the little pavement cafe where the businessmen liked to take their morning coffee. The first to be shredded were the elderly lady in a pale blue linen suit and the young woman in a black djellabah who had been hurrying towards her. An instant later two little boys playing football with a tin can in the gutter were ripped open and their viscera splattered against a passing car that was then lifted and hurled into the path of a lorry coming in the opposite direction. The lorry driver slammed on his brakes before he was crushed by a piece of flying masonry. The lorry mounted the car, mutilating its occupants beyond recognition, before hitting the side of a bus that was picking up passengers, showering those inside with shards of glass and bits of twisted metal that acted like daggers. The bus leaned over under the weight of the lorry, tottered on two wheels, then fell on its side, on top of the people who, a moment before, had been crowding around to mount the steps.

The people killed by the flying debris rather than the immediate explosion were dissected more neatly before being hurled through the air. A complete arm here, a head there, a bloody torso wrapped around a lamp post. The ponderous, moustachioed gentleman sitting at a table inside the cafe reading a newspaper froze for an instant before he was flung backwards in his seat and simultaneously decapitated by a piece of metal flying sideways with the force of a falling guillotine. The young waiter bringing him coffee, his mind on fond thoughts of the girl he was to marry next week, was thrown backwards against the counter and overtaken by the plate glass window that cut off both his legs as it crashed around him and left him to bleed to death.

As the front of the cafe disintegrated, the supports of the two upper storeys of the building collapsed and it folded in on itself, burying the cafe proprietor, the chef who had only started work there last week, the grandmother in the upstairs apartment who was sweeping the floor and listening to the chattering of her daughter’s infant, left in her care, the young couple on the upper floor who were still learning to live in peace together. The neighbouring buildings were left teetering until a pick-up carrying vegetables from a nearby farm careered out of control as the driver panicked, and buried itself in one of the unstable walls, bringing another building down.

Seconds later the sound of breaking glass came from every quarter as the blast took out windows in an ever-widening circle. Car horns blared as vehicles collided in the spreading chaos.

Then the screaming began.

Where does the story for CANDY'S CHILDREN come from?

WAR WITHOUT MUMMY
Personal experiences during World War II

It's hard to understand what The War was like unless you were there. Thosse of us who were kids at the time thought the world was always going to be like that - bombs being dropped on us, ration books for our food and clothes, pig swill bins on the street corners, home made Christmas presents, parents suddenly disappearing. My sister and I were looked after by our grandmother while our father fought in the army in the Middle East, and our mother joined the WAAF. Our grandmother was Swiss and taught us to speak French even before we went to school. She looked after us very well, but she was often angry (I suppose I would be if I had the struggle she had to feed us every day). It wasn't the same as having Mummy at home.

MY FATHER'S STORY IN MY LATEST NOVEL
The real stories are great material for fiction

I was born in Palestine before WW2, when it was still an autonomous country, and hadn't been taken oveer by Israel. I am the eldest child of the son of a wealthy Liverpool fruit merchant and the daughter of an army officer.

My father represented his father's business in Palestine, buying and shipping oranges to Ireland and Liverpool. Because the couple were expecting their second child in 1939, they went back to Liverpool to stay with my father's family where the baby was born. They fully intended at the time to return to Palestine but when WW2 broke out it was deemed too dangerous - apart from the main thrust of the war in Turkey and Iraq, daily life in Palestine was increasingly punctuated by riots and more serious atrocities, as the Palestinian arabs tried to prevent the Jews from taking over their land. So my sister and our mother stayed in England for the durataion of the war while our father joined the army. When his superiors discovered that he could speak fluent Arabic he was sent back to the Middle East to join a special unit in Syria. My father wrote about all his adventures when he was an old man with an unquiet spirit. For a long while after his death I didn't read it, then I realised that if I didn't read what he had written, and if I didn't find a way of writing my version, the knowledge of the past would soon fade away. So I have used his story, and what my mother and grandmother told me about Palestine, and what I remember about the war days, to write my latest book, CANDY'S CHILDREN.

Why CANDY'S CHILDREN?

Candy was an English girl who grew up in Palestine and fell in love with a Moslem boy. She loses her lover and believes her first baby has died and though she has several other children, she never manages to be the kind of mother she wants to be. It is only at her funeral that her children begin to understand her.

This you won't believe

WHY NOT? Well, it's never happened to me before, but of course it must have happened to someone else this week.
WHAT HAPPENED? It's always one of those great moments when, after all the work, the writing, the design, the proof checking, the arguments and discussions, the finally assembled book arrives from the printer. I had one of those about 10 days ago with TYFOON'S TALE - 1000 copies, to be precise, all lovely and shiny and apparently just the way I wanted them. So I sent off the 50 copies ordered by the wholesaler, plus 30 press review and advertising copies, plus a few that had been ordered by individuals. Then someone - well, two people actually - who were reading it contacted me and said that pages 63 - 85 were the wrong book - someone else's pages bound into my lovely book. FLAT PANIC (I tend to do that). How could that have happened, with all the checking we had done? Then it emerged that the rogue pages were only present in about 40 copies, spread randomly amongst the other 960. And what was most awful was that I DIDN'T KNOW WHICH OF THE COPIES I HAD JUST DISPATCHED WERE GOOD AND WHICH WERE NOT!
Ever spent a whole Saturday afternoon with a frantic author and an equally frantic and furious publisher's agent, checking and re-checking the page contents of 1000 books? It does nothing for the stress levels.
Come Monday morning and the printers (somewhere in Norfolk)at first refuse to believe what has happened then faced by the evidence launch a major enquiry, while I get down to re-mailing my orders with errata slips and many apologetic phone calls.
The matter is still sub-judice with the printers so far as compensation is concerned, though I doubt they have any idea just how I felt about it all.
And what about the author waiting for his book on European politics, who gets 20 pages of cat memoir stuck in the middle of it? If you are out there, do let me know.

Meanwhile I now have 900 lovely copies of Tyfoon's Tale ready for the launch date on 30th June - either through my website or through Amazon, or your local library or bookshop - please read it after all that effort!

Getting serious at the London book fair

I visited the London book fair for 2 days at the beginning of the week. It is the third time I've been there and so far the most interesting and profitable - mainly, I think, because at last I have realised how to use the event as a networking tool, and also because I took the photograph of Tyfoon which I am using as a cover illustration and found that the distributors, advertisers etc nearly bit my hand off when they saw it (even though it wasn't a furry cover - yet!). I've already had a stream of advance orders since I got home. I have to say that I was exhausted by the trip and have spent all the rest of the week recovering from the aches and pains brought on by trying to ignore the Parkinson's. For every high there is a low, but I'm not sure why that has to be. Anyway, hooray for the book fair! Hooray for Tyfoon - I shall have to get the dedicated Blog under way now. And, of course, begin a new book.

Short stories

I have been filling in a time gap between two books, writing short stories. One of my friends says she never knew I wrote short stories - what has she missed! The first ever published was back in 1979 in a literary magazine called "Jennings", which no longer exists. I fished out a copy the other day to fuel my imagination, because there is nothing like a bit of self-plagiarism when the juices dry up, and by the time I'd got to the end I realised it couldn't be better written - my response was "What a Bloody clever story!" It's called "The man who loved his trumpet" if ever you get the chance to find it. To leap forward thirty years, "The Tide is a Little Late Today" will be out early in June in the My Weekly Summer Special. There have been quite a few others in between - one I particularly like is "The Stray" which was published in Your Cat a few years ago, (the Stray in the story being a homeless child). What's happening to the dozen I've submitted during the past fortnight, remains to be seen. It's a great life, isn't it. Keep writing.

Christmas and after

I owe a big apology to my readers (if I still have any!) because I have deliberately neglected this blog in favour of my other projects. One of these has been my promise to myself that I wont even begin to read another book until I have finished the first draft of my new novel - TRUST. In fact I've done better than that because I have finished the second draft and reckon it is ready for some critical reading by my usual panel of friends and family. My opinion of it is that it is better than I expected it to be, but may be incomprehensible to anyone else. Another project had been joining the ranks of members of Youwriteon, by submitting Crocodiles (that novel set in Africa which I had decided I didn't want to self-publish). Actually, the book isn't bad - it got a good review from the Youwriteon - though the fact that they accepted it for their "free" Print On Demand scheme (this means that they don't offer any editorial services) doesn't mean anything other than I was quick and well organised about meeting the submission date in October. I did this by way of an experiment, never having had any experience of POD. I must say they have produced a reasonably nice book from the artwork and layout I submitted. The only down side was that my first personal order of 50 books, whilst being very reasonably priced, didn't arrive before Christmas as promised (contracted, even). I know they will have been rushed off their feet at that time, and probably over-committed themselves, but they have offered me a free slot on their website by way of compensation, so I have to be magnanimous. My opinion is that POD will certainly work for future books, becausd it takes away none of my freedom but is much cheaper then with a conventional printer. However, I shall also try out LULU, which has been highly recommended. NEXT PROJECT Do I need another one? I read in the press that after the success of Marley and Me and several similar books, the next big thing that publishers are looking for are "Animal Memoirs". Now I think to myself that I have lived with many cats in strange situations, and with one in Particular (Tyfoon) for nineteen years through thick and thin - living on a boat, death and disaster etc etc. I had several articles and photographs about Tyfoon (and others) published in Cat Magazines some years ago. So basically I have all the material to write my million copy bestseller this summer, with Tyfoon's help, of course. I emailed several publishers over Christmas with the heading "WOULD YOU LIKE THE OPPORTUNITY TO SELL A MILLION COPIES OF MY NEXT BOOK?" Not surprisingly, only one publisher replied, directing me to the Agents' section in the Writers Handbook (yes, thank you, I have been there, more than once, and do not have enough years left to wade through that process). But of course, I anm not a bit daunted by the prospect of setting it up myself and selling a million copies on my behalf. Just don't say I didn't give you all a chance out there! I'll keep you posted Meanwhile,if you want to read CROCODILES you can find it on Amazon, suitably discounted, and it should be on my website by the end of the month.

TRUST

Hooray! Hooray! I have finishd - yes FINISHED the first draft of my new novel - TRUST. That doesn't mean it's ready for anyone to read yet, but it's a big step forward because it means the whole concept of the story does work, and it's editing from here on to finishing it. However, meanwhile I have other projects to follow up, a couple of which I shall be reporting here shortly - just need a few days to get my head together. By the way, my poetry collection, ECHOES is selling well specialy at the craft fairs I told you about. It shows that it's always worth following up an idea.

Exmouth Library Talk

Last week I gave a talk at Exmouth Library, starting their "Cup of Tea and a Book" series. I talked about "Building a Book" - how I put it together from first inspiration to the book arriving on the library shelves. About 25 people turned up and seemed to enjoy what I had to say, which made it fun. What also made it fun was the positive and pleasant response I had from the library staff from the moment I approached them, and the efficient and welcoming way they organised the whole event. THANKS TO LYNETTE AND LIZ AND ALL CONCERNED.

Poetry Book - ECHOES

I created this little book of my poems only a few weeks ago, mainly to have something cheap and cheerful to sell on my bookstalls. It was deliberately designed to make you want to reach out and pick it up - bright colours, interesting image - and it has done just that. People have picked it up and bought it, and in some cases come back and bought more as presents for their friends. I presume that they must have liked the price (£2.50) and the contents as well. It's so nice to be appreciated! I have managed to put it on my Advantage Amazon stall as well, by dint of discovering how to turn the ISBN into a bar code (I never stop learning).

Selling books

I have just spent a day at our local craft fair sitting behind a table laden with my books (past and present)trying to publicise myself and sell books in one fell swoop. Did I succeed? Well,considering that Exmouth is a "bucket and spade" resort and it was August Bank Holiday Sunday, I think managed bit of both. I sold 4 books and sent people off with my business cards and leaflets, and managed to complete the Observer crossword. I also gathered lots of ideas for when I repeat the process closer to Christmas - "A BOOK MAKES A FANTASTIC CHRISTMAS PRESENT" (and is cheaper than many gifts you might buy) The day wasn't wasted because I had plenty of time for people watching (Oh, go on, Buy the kid something to take home - you've just forked out for that useless table decoration!) The whole scene made me think about what people do fall for as far as impulse buying is concerned and I suddenly realised, watching a nearby jewellery stall very closely, that publishers are right when they insist on dayglo backgrounds with bling effect trimmings. And having watched the rapid sale of fluffy bunnies (stuffed, not real) from another stall I am very tempted...has anyone done a furry book jacket yet?

What my father did for me

This morning I have been reading a feature in The Observer which called on various prominent high achieving writers to discuss how their relationships with their fathers shaped their lives and their success. It's a very interesting feature and it immediately made one thing very clear to me - the reason why I have never punched through that barrier to become a high achieving author myself, despite being a talented writer. The asnwer? My father didn't feature very strongly in my life after the first couple of years. He disappeared into wars, affairs with other women and eventually into a life where I had no relevance. The only contribution he ever made to my writing was to send me a telegram of congratulation when I won a "Children's Corner" competition run by the Daily Express (My pize was a postal order for 10/6d). So I now have permission, via The Observer, to blame my lack of super-sucess on my father? I don't think I'll bother. You see, it wasn't his fault. He had problems with his father too - a demanding, critical Yorkshire businessman by all accounts, who didn't want his talented son to be an artist or musician. However, I do see the seeds of yet another good story emerging from this - WATCH THIS SPACE

TRUST

Apologies for neglecting you for the past couple of weeks. Fact is, I am deeply involved in writing a new novel and i find it hard to write and blog at the same time (I know some writers manage it and I truly admire their output). The new book is called TRUST and, like my others, it is about a family who don't behave very well. I am only drafting at the moment but it is getting stronger and stronger. Here's the first paragraph: The old man is standing beside the window, looking out. He isn’t tall, he looks as though he has never been tall, but his hunched shoulders make him even smaller than he might be. He is thin, but it is obvious that he hasn’t always been so thin, because his tweed jacket and viyella shirt hang off him at least two sizes too large. His fine silver hair is spread as generously as possible across his scalp, almost the same hue as the greying skin that droops in folds towards his crumpled collar. Anybody standing near to him, studying him, might come to the conclusion that once he was a fine looking man. Now he is hardly a man at all, more like a shell that has been emptied of its inner substance, of what once made it alive.

Choosing which books to publish

The best blog in town at the moment has to be by Michael Hyatt, of publisher Thomas Nelson. (www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/) Choosing Which Books to Publish. Such a clear, open discussion of why some books are chosen and others never see the light of day. Pages and pages of posts and replies which I wont try to summarise here (read it yourself) except to copy below the matrix used to predict the likelihood of success of any book being considered. A-Level Projects—The Cash Cows: Projects where there is strong brand equity and a strong competitive advantage. B-Level Projects—The Potential Stars: Projects where there is weaker brand equity but a strong competitive advantage. C-Level Projects—The Question Marks: Projects where there is stronger brand equity but weaker competitive advantage. D-Level Projects—The Real Dogs: Projects where you have neither a strong brand equity or a strong competitive advantage. Michael contends that the most predictability is at the top of this list. Projects become less predictable as you move down the list. So, for example, the best case scenario is a book by an author with strong brand equity and with a strong competitive advantage. Thank you, Michael. As one of your commentators said, you don't have to devote time to educating us, though it must make your job easier if we know what we are doing. http://www.michaelhyatt.com/fromwhereisit/

Candy's Children

Just thought you might like to know that my new book , CANDY'S CHILDREN is gathering some excellent reviews and is obviously being read by people I have never met. (See www.sylviamurphy.com for full reviews.) Thanks, folks, and if you have read it and enjoyed please tell everyone else about it - better still, give your friends a copy for their birthdays. They'll bless you as they sit in those queues at Heathrow.

sylviamurphy.com

London Book Show

Hi folks -
A few days' gap since the last posting, because I have been to London to see the books. Quite an adventure for me because I haven't been to the big city since last year, when I had THAT accident (fell and proke my hip). So I feel great now I've got there and back again without falling down again!

The LBS is always exciting - just like the Boat Show or the Ideal Home Exhibition, but it's all books - you'd never believe how many books - and full of people trying to sell books they are writing or publishing. Each one of them hoping that they have got that special MS in their briefcase or that the next Harry Potter is just round the corner.

I think that this year's show was a bit sluggish compared with last year, partly because the next HP was not in evidence, partly because there were whole stands devoted to the cooking craze, which doesn't excite me at all. A big emphasis on Arabic literature looked interesting but lacked any wholehearted sense of direction. What were they trying to tell us about their wares? That there was plenty of work in future years for translators?

Anyway, amongst all the hype about thousands of books I managed to get a teeny bit of exposure for my book, CANDY'S CHILDREN, and the find out how to go about selling foreign rights - I'll have a go next year.

www.londonbookfair.co.uk

www.thebookseller.com

War without Mummy

Personal experiences during World War II
It's hard to understand what The War was like unless you were there. Thosse of us who were kids at the time thought the world was always going to be like that - bombs being dropped on us, ration books for our food and clothes, pig swill bins on the street corners, home made Christmas presents, parents suddenly disappearing. My sister and I were looked after by our grandmother while our father fought in the army in the Middle East, and our mother joined the WAAF. Our grandmother was Swiss and taught us to speak French even before we went to school. She looked after us very well, but she was often angry (I suppose I would be if I had the struggle she had to feed us every day). It wasn't the same as having Mummy at home.

My Father's story in my latest novel

The real stories are great material for fiction I was born in Palestine before WW2, when it was still an autonomous country, and hadn't been taken oveer by Israel. I am the eldest child of the son of a wealthy Liverpool fruit merchant and the daughter of an army officer. My father represented his father's business in Palestine, buying and shipping oranges to Ireland and Liverpool. Because the couple were expecting their second child in 1939, they went back to Liverpool to stay with my father's family where the baby was born. They fully intended at the time to return to Palestine but when WW2 broke out it was deemed too dangerous - apart from the main thrust of the war in Turkey and Iraq, daily life in Palestine was increasingly punctuated by riots and more serious atrocities, as the Palestinian arabs tried to prevent the Jews from taking over their land. So my sister and our mother stayed in England for the durataion of the war while our father joined the army. When his superiors discovered that he could speak fluent Arabic he was sent back to the Middle East to join a special unit in Syria. My father wrote about all his adventures when he was an old man with an unquiet spirit. For a long while after his death I didn't read it, then I realised that if I didn't read what he had written, and if I didn't find a way of writing my version, the knowledge of the past would soon fade away. So I have used his story, and what my mother and grandmother told me about Palestine, and what I remember about the war days, to write my latest book, CANDY'S CHILDREN. If you are interested I'll tell you more about it later.

A warm welcome to all you readers and writers

A little about this blog Hi there! Is there anyone reading this who is neither a writer nor a reader? No, I thought not. So, would you like me to help you to become a happier writer with tips and anecdotes on how to achieve your goals? And would you like me to share with you my views of the books I read - to save you the trouble of reading something you thought was going to be good but which turns out to be disappointing. In short, I want this blog to be all about books, yours as well as mine. Just so I can convince you that I do know what I am talking about, I can tell you I have had six books published, numerous magazine stories and features. You can find out more about these if you go to www.sylviamurphy.com. I will tell you more about the here from time to time. On the reading side, I read on average two or three books a week (that has increased since I began to lose my health and need a short rest every afternoon - one of the nicer aspects of growing old) so I know quite a lot about the books on the current best-seller lists, which are worth a read and which are not. And I would be pleased to hear from you what you have thought about these books - you might then save me time struggling through books that don't live up to my expectations of them.