Writer Profile
Vickie Murphy
by Ariel Wulff

How does an individual become a professional writer when she's not exposed to books much throughout her childhood and when her worst grades throughout school are in English? Ask Vickie Murphy, author of Elfquest WaveDancers, and she'll tell you how discovering Elfquest helped her discover the poet hidden within herself.

Born and raised in Vinton, Virginia, Vickie spent her school years immersed in science and choir and dabbling a bit with writing. She worked for the school paper and on the staff of the school literary magazine. The first thing she ever had published was a poem entitled "I am a Dark Cloud",which appeared in her high school literary magazine, Sketches. Her first paying publication was an interview article she did for the Vinton Messenger newspaper.

Vickie was partial to science fiction and fantasy, and had been first introduced to Elfquest in high school, but it wasn't until she bought the graphic novels after graduation that she discovered the story's depth, complexity and beauty. In 1990, she met Richard Pini at a local convention and showed him some poetry she'd written. Richard liked it, but commented that it had nothing to do with Elfquest, and after all, that was what he dealt in. The following year, at that same convention, Vickie had a few Elfquest short stories to show him. At that time, Kings of the Broken Wheel was in production and Vickie had no idea there would ever be a chance for other authors to join the Elfquest team. Little did she know that New Blood was right around the corner. She gave Richard those stories in October of 1991, and he liked them so well he kept them. Vickie was just happy that he liked them, but then several months later, he called and asked if she would mind him using one for New Blood! That story was "Windkin", which appeared in 1993 as issue #5 of New New Blood.

Currently, some of Vickie's favorite Authors are Anne McCaffrey, Orson Scott Card, Douglas Adams and C.S. Friedman. She doesn't read other comics because she finds them lacking where Elfquest is strong: great and interesting story lines! There is, however, another comic tentatively in the works for her. It is scheduled to be produced by a Canadian company, and it will be based on a fantasy television series, which is all she can say about it right now.

When Vickie is working on a script, she comes up with a paragraph or two which briefly describes what will happen within any given issue. She sends it to Richard for approval, and once approved, she does a page by page detailed description of the action, gestures, facial expressions, camera angles, etc. Sometimes she has specific ideas about the appearance of the panels, and if so, tries to describe them in as much detail as possible for the artist. Other times, she just has a general idea of what action needs to happen, and leaves the panel arrangement and content up to the capable hands of the artist. Comment and input on her panel suggestions, or even on the story itself, is always welcome, and she encourages Wendi Strang-Frost to speak up and let her know when she has ideas. "After all," says Vickie, "we're a team." The artist then takes the detailing and creates rough layouts of all the pages. Once Vickie sees these, she makes any necessary suggestions or changes, then uses the layouts to creat a panel by panel final script.

Vickie says that working with a fairly fresh group of elves who are still in the "virgin state" of the game is her favorite thing about working on WaveDancers. The fact that the WaveDancer characters don't know about other elves, the palace, or any of the other things that the other four elf tribes have come to learn over time, are things that Vickie looks forward to discovering with them.

Sendings Issue #7, Feb. 1999

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