Twelve mildly interesting things you didn't know about me

1. I have a master’s degree in Accounting, which in no way prepared me for the world of fiction writing.

2. I have been to Japan on four separate occasions, yet my language skills are still barely at a preschool level.

3. I once lounged in a natural hot spring pool atop a mountain with thirty naked Japanese guys while it was 25 degrees and snowing.

4. I was a pall bearer in five funerals and attended over a dozen before I was sixteen years old; none of which were a result of foul play on my part.

5. My dad was struck in the face with a chainsaw when I was six. It ripped off most of his upper lip and knocked out the majority of his teeth, but he still managed to smoke a cigarette on the way to the hospital. When I write about bad ass characters there is at least a little bit of my pop in each one.

6. Despite what I have claimed in the past, the “T” in M.T. Murphy does not stand for “Tiberius.”

7. I did not actually grow sideburns when I was eleven. I was twelve.

8. I used to manage the largest men’s college dorm in the state of Alabama.

9. I have dug ditches and shoveled shit, and took pride in doing both.

10. When I let my dog in at night, I close the door behind him quickly so the zombies don’t slip inside. You can never be too careful.

11. My family has owned a cemetery since the mid-1800s and my cousins and I used to play among the tombstones when we were kids.

12. A distant cousin of mine used to play keyboard for Travis Tritt and Joe Diffie. That kind of makes me an honorary roadie for country singers with mustaches and mullets.