Derek Murphy, PHD

Creative Rebel & Gentleman Scholar

I was reading Plato in Middle School and spent my weekends carrying home piles of books from the library, which I stayed up all night to read, fueled by contraband snacks. Writing was my first love, but I got distracted for a decade with fine art – enthralled by the ability to create scenes with nothing but pigment. When I finished a portrait in high school the night before leaving to Malta for three years to study philosophy, and my painting looked back at me with a fierce gaze, I was smitten.

However after years as a starving artist, supported mostly by a government stipend to study literature in Taiwan, I realized that True Art was more than doing what I loved; and that value was measured by how much my work impacted other people.

In 2012 I started my blog Creativindie, then got into self-publishing – first as an editor, then a cover designer. Finally, fed up with working on good books that nobody read, I figured out sales and marketing – and eventually realized I could do everything myself instead of helping other authors publish. These days, I write my own books, and build tutorials, resources, tools and courses to help indie authors succeed, without getting scammed by worthless author services.

Talking about art… in CHINESE!

SOLIDLY MEDIOCRE

I learned Spanish quickly when I was younger. Chinese was more of a struggle. I got kicked out of Chinese classes because I could speak fine but refused to learn how to draw the traditional characters by hand (rather than just recognize/identify them on the computer). My ability plateaued, and I’m no longer fluent in either language, though I can still understand a lot.