Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Fiona Murphy. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Fiona, appreciate you joining us today. Are you able to earn a full-time living from your creative work? If so, can you walk us through your journey and how you made it happen?

I’m extremely tenacious, almost to the point of painfully so. I have been a reader since I was five years old and by the time I was eight, I was bored with the childrens books. I fell in love with Dean Koontz and the way I could escape into the worlds that were created. They gave me a sense of peace because my home life was pretty bad. I started by reading Dean Koontz but I was drawn to romance because I loved that it ended in a happily ever after. No matter how bad things got, they got to the end of the rainbow and it the pot of gold was love and it was all worth it. So although I started by trying to write a dark thriller, I decided if I wanted to do this for years then I would rather write romance.
It took six years and 16 books before I could go full-time as an author. It was also when I wrote exactly what I wanted to read, men who were extremely possessive and who would do anything to get and keep their women. I do wish I had learned sooner to write in a standalone series to follow a group of brothers, family, friends, to give readers a reason to keep reading your books.
I love that day in and out I’m writing a world where readers can go and fall in love with the characters and the story. There is nothing better than reviews where readers talk about reading my stories again and again because they want to stay in that world. When readers have a to be read list that numbers in the double digits yet choose to read my stories again, there is nothing better than hearing that.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

My niche is writing plus size women and over the top jealous possessive men who love those women exactly as they are. As a plus size woman myself, I got tired of the fat chick only being the best friend, never the one who got the guy. Before I wrote, I had read more than a thousand romance stories, I don’t watch television so a book day often at least four a week for more than twenty years, so more than a thousand stories and there were less than a handful that featured plus size women. Yet there are far more than those women in the real world and they deserve a romance that they can see themselves in. I saw them so rarely I didn’t think I was allowed to write women who look like me in the beginning. Then I realized I’m the writer and I can write whatever I want and now it’s all I write.
I work hard to give my readers the best story I can. People talk about imposter syndrome and I have never suffered from it. Not because of ego because of a lack of ego. I work extremely hard not to have an ego and ask for people to rip my story apart so I can fix it before I release a story. While I’m not always going to please everyone, my singular goal is to at least not have a story be a waste of time for a reader. And my reviews tell that by constantly saying they can’t stop reading until they finish, whether it’s a two or thee o’clock in the morning. Even more so when readers say they feel the need to reread because they love the story so much.

Is there mission driving your creative journey?

My goal has been to make a living as a writer. It’s that simple. It doesn’t have to be a Mercedes in the driveway of a six-bedroom house. I’m content with a Toyota and a three-bedroom. I grew up poor, and my parents did whatever they had to do to put dinner on the table. I wanted to be able to simply do what I wanted, which was create stories where readers could get lost in, a refuge from the not-so-great real world. I was grateful growing up with books to let me escape my reality, and I wanted to do that for others, almost as a payback for what I had and needed. That’s why it’s so important to me that my women are plus size so that women who need to see that have it.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Failing is bad. I’m a bit of a control freak, the need to control what happens in my life due to not having any control growing up in a chaotic household. But there’s no way to guarantee any outcome. Failing helps you see what you did wrong and how to fix that going forward. And sometimes failing helps you find what truly works for you. For several books, I didn’t dare write the stories I wanted to see because I was afraid of offending readers and not selling more books. But when I finally gave in and wrote exactly what I wanted to see in a book, that’s when I had the most success.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.fionamurphywrites.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fionaaina.murphy
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/fionainamurphy