Sunday, December 25, 2011

What is J.J. Murphy reading?

The current featured contributor at Writers Read: J.J. Murphy, author of The Algonquin Round Table Mysteries.

Her entry begins:
I love Tina Fey. I love the show 30 Rock. So, I was over the moon when her book Bossypants came out. It’s not exactly an autobiography and it’s not exactly a book of essays. It’s something in between. Personal vignettes, maybe? I don’t care. I loved the book.

(To be perfectly honest, I listened to the audiobook on CD, which is read by Fey herself. That was great. If you could get Mark Twain to read Huckleberry Finn for you, you’d do it, right? That’s not to say that Bossypants is any Huckleberry Finn, but you get the idea.)

Fey talks about growing up being a not-blonde and having body hair like a werewolf. She talks about her early days in the comedy circuit and her battles as one of the few women writers (and the first woman head writer) on Saturday Night Live. She talks just a little about 30 Rock—but not enough about working with Alec Baldwin and Tracy Morgan. (I’d have liked more behind-the-scenes anecdotes about that. Maybe she’s saving it for a sequel.)

One of the things that draws me to Tina Fey is that she’s a lot like my real-life protagonist Dorothy Parker. Both are...[read on]
About You Might As Well Die: An Algonquin Round Table Mystery, from the publisher:
When second-rate illustrator Ernie MacGuffin's artistic works triple in value following his apparent suicide off the Brooklyn Bridge, Dorothy Parker smells something fishy. Enlisting the help of magician and skeptic Harry Houdini, she goes to a séance held by MacGuffin's mistress, where Ernie's ghostly voice seems hauntingly real...
Learn more about the book and author at J.J. Murphy's website and Facebook page.

My Book, The Movie: The Algonquin Round Table Mysteries.

Writers Read: J.J. Murphy.

--Marshal Zeringue