Mike Murphy -author

I've been writing for more than sixty years, having had my first short story published between the risque cartoons and nude photographs in the magazine Man Junior in 1963. Since then I've had a lot of short stories published, even winning some competitions, while I was pursuing a full-time career as a journalist, editor, magazine publisher and general writer-for-hire.

I wrote six unpublished novels and accumulated hundreds of rejection slips along the learning curve that led to me writing and publishing A New Era For Manny Youngman. I'm proud of the good reviews and acclamation it achieved. That followed with The Man Who Didn't Like People and A Life In Short Stories.

I live in Mndurah.Western Australia where, when I am not writing, I dabble at painting, play my guitar and try to grow old gracefully.

Have all my tears?

On June 23rd 1959, one month before my eighteenth birthday, I wrote a poem about being a writer. Faded as it is, typed on an even-then ancient typewriter, I publish that original scrap of paper here in the hope I did achieve what that 17 year old boy hoped for