Brian John Murphy

I've been writing professionally since 1973, when the Rock 'n' Roll magazine Crawdaddy started buying my stuff. I've bounced around topic areas until the markets dried up or something better came along. While I was doing computer journalism at several magazines, I wrote a brilliant little tome called "Sorcerers and Soldiers" for Creative Computing Publishing (1984, Ziff Davis). In UN-technical language I describe tactics for wargamers and fantasy gamers that are still valid, even though the hardware has changed beyond recognition since 1984.

I was indulging my passion for American military history, writing for Civil War magazines, when British publisher Brassey's commissioned me to write a military biography of Ulysses S. Grant. I gleefully knocked out close to 100,000 words in a highly interconnected series of carefully structured sentences of high entertainment value.

So... Brassey's asked me to cut 40,000 words so the text would fit in their standard format ("Commanders in Focus"). The result was,I must modestly admit, a wonderfully clear and eminently readable bio of Grant ("Commanders in Focus: Ulysses S Grant," Brassey's in the British Commonwealth and Brassey's and Casemate in the USA, 2004).

God willing, my future plans include the expansion of the Grant book into a 100,000 word informal and entertaining military biography. I also hope to expand an 11,000 word piece on the "Fall of Japan" I wrote for "America in World War II" magazine (Dec. 10, 2010)to a full size book.

Again, it will be informal: It will be storytelling --not material for research papers. History is story telling. The FUN of reading history is often buried under scholarly footnotes. I believe story comes FIRST.

I will collaboratively publish the Japan book(I hope) with 310 Publishing.

Both books will be published exclusively on Kindle and will be competitively priced, in the original Kindle spirit. All this depends on the will of God and the skill of the doctors in continuing to successfully manage my congestive heart failure and end-stage renal disease.

So wish me luck and save your pennies for my books!