There is another Los Angeles beyond the postcards.
It exists beneath rain-darkened streetlights, behind neighborhood bars, along South Bay coastlines, on the streets of Compton, Gardena, Torrance, Long Beach, San Pedro, and South Los Angeles.
It is a city of complicated people, dangerous friendships, unforgettable women, lost opportunities, cultural contradictions, violence, humor, desire, loneliness, and unexpected beauty.
This is the world Murphy Scott writes about.
His stories combine modern noir, mystery, suspense, romantic realism, poetry, memory, and sharply observed human experience—often finding beauty in places others overlook.
Scott’s writing includes micro-fiction, vignettes, short stories, novellas, freestyle poetry, Japanese Haiku, and Tanka. His themes draw together real-life noir, mystery, suspense, and romantic realism. About-The-Author (1)
Charles “Charlie” Savannah is a bartender who has spent years navigating beautiful women, dangerous friendships, complicated neighborhoods, and late-night conversations.
From behind the bar, Charlie sees people differently.
He hears their secrets.
He recognizes their lies.
He witnesses their heartbreak.
And through it all, he records his experiences in a private journal he calls Cold Blue Rain.
Charlie has built a life filled with excitement, but somewhere beneath the bravado is a man growing tired of the game. The lifestyle that once represented freedom has begun to feel like a cage.
And one question refuses to disappear.
What happened to the girl he never forgot?
Twenty years have passed since Charlie last saw her. He doesn’t know where she is or what kind of life she built.
But memory has a way of returning—especially when the rain begins to fall.
The author’s supplied synopsis describes Charlie as world-weary and surrounded by conflicting cultures, dangerous friends, and dubious situations throughout South Los Angeles County while still thinking about a woman he knew twenty years earlier.
Cold Blue Rain also includes the historical novella Uncle Buddy.
The setting changes from Charlie’s Los Angeles to 1940 America, where twelve-year-old Lou Yarber travels with his family from Los Angeles toward a small Texas town.
Lou already knows something about the mysterious Uncle Buddy.
He knows Buddy is dangerous.
He knows his family doesn’t talk openly about him.
And he knows something even more troubling:
The last time Buddy came to town, people wanted to lynch him.
The supplied book material places Uncle Buddy in 1940 and follows twelve-year-old Lou on the family’s road trip from Los Angeles to Texas, where the possibility of Buddy returning creates escalating tension.
Born in downtown Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo district and raised in Compton, South Central Los Angeles, and Gardena, Murphy Scott writes from a lifelong familiarity with the communities that inspire his fiction. He attended Chapman University and California State University Long Beach before beginning a career in Accounts Receivable.
Today, his writing moves freely between fiction and poetry, combining grit with tenderness and realism with unexpected moments of beauty.
