My Screen Stories

 

My Screen Stories

  

The following are setups of some of my finished stories. I have divided them

into a few different areas to keep them all organized.

STANDALONE FEATURE STORIES

WHEN I’M SIXTY FOUR 

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2024/02/when-im-sixty-four.html

Joe Maughn is a retired copywriter who needs spinal surgery for an E.coli infection. After his surgery, he starts to notice a real change in his behaviour. He starts having vivid dreams and writing them out into three novels and one screenplay. Through an old advertising buddy who was writing mysteries, he gets introduced to an agent/publisher who just loves his work. So at sixty-three, Joe is suddenly starting a second career, one which pays a lot more than his former one. The only thing that’s bothering Joe is just exactly where all these stories are coming from.  

THE LOCKER KEY 

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-locker-key.html

Jake Morrison is a well-known syndicated newspaper TV review columnist and a radio personality on an ‘all-guy’ station and likes his life just fine. But Jake has no idea what he’s stepped in when he meets up with an old-school acquaintance who gives him a locker key to hold and it very quickly turns his whole life upside down. Because the contents of the locker is something that can make whoever owns it extremely & powerful. And Jake is just a regular guy who is standing in the way of all that. But with a little help from a new friend, he can get through this mess. He hopes.

BLIND SIDE OF THE HEART

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/08/blind-side-of-heart.html

Tony Shaw, a famous mystery writer, was blinded in a car accident. Today, he is just starting to turn the corner off self-pity street, with the help of his wife Olivia and a young friend. But things get complicated when Tony starts investigating the life of a mysterious new neighbour. When his investigation shows signs of backfiring, he calls on an old friend to sabotage his assailant’s life. If he doesn’t do the right thing, it could cost him his marriage and even his life. 

A lot to ask from a blind man.

THE BROTHERS BOTTICELLI

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-brothers-botticelli.html

The three Botticelli brothers, Harry, Angelo and Lou, are the sons of a mafia boss. Their dad has been working to legitimize his businesses, but he dies under mysterious circumstances. The sons are anything but private eyes, but their father’s final wish was to find and punish whoever killed him. The cops think it was simply a tragic accident, but the brothers know better. So they team up to figure and start to figure out the murder. As the pieces of the puzzle come together, they start to see that there is something dark at work here, quite literally a blast from the past.

THE PASSION OF JOHNNY VALLONE
https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2024/01/the-passion-of-johnny-vallone.html

Johnny Vallone is a writer for a crime story publication and a would-be novelist. Through a cousin of his, he wangles an invitation to a drug party where he meets and is very attracted to the dealer’s woman. She is attracted to Johnny as well, because she is trapped in a loveless relationship with the dealer. Together they work out a plan to get her free from him. But Johnny has never done anything quite like this before, and the last thing he wants to do is mess it up. Because that would mean certain death for both of them.

FRANKIE CARLINO'S LEGACY

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/08/frankie-carlinos-legacy.html

Frankie Carlino, a retired hitman for a Chicago crime family, is well hidden in the witness protection program in New Haven, Connecticut. One day he gets an idea for a legacy project and hires a young writer named Ryan Bixby to help him. But there are a few things he needs to take care of at the same time. Including holding onto the money he stole from his former employer, a finder who is on his trail and a crooked US Marshall who knows exactly where to find him.

THE HOMEGROWN ASSASSIN

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-homegrown-assassin.html

Eldon Jarrett is a Marine veteran who comes home to Fayetteville NC after doing his military duty. He takes over the six Jarrett Hardware stores in the area from his father who is retiring. He also meets up with an old girlfriend and they rekindle their romance. All the while, in Washington, the present administration, is doing its best to screw up the country, and Eldon is justifiably concerned for his family business and the people in his community that will be hurt the most by all the draconian changes that are being implemented. But unlike most Americans, Eldon is a warrior and decides to do something about it. Through a carefully orchestrated series of actions, and some help from a couple of very capable people who are sympathetic to his mission, Eldon orchestrates an assassination attempt on the person he considers to be the main cause of all the disruption,

THE FERLINGHETTI TWINS

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2024/12/the-ferlinghetti-twins.html

The Ferlinghetti twins, Jenna and Jason, have been groomed by their dad to take over the family ocean freight business based in Miami. But after the first year of managing the business on their own, they become quite bored because the business is so well run that they have very little to do. Around this time, Jenna meets an old high school classmate named David North, who is an aspiring songwriter and singer. As their relationship develops, Jenna and Jason become interested in starting a music company with capital they had inherited from their grandfather. They want David to be their first artist. David lives with his brother Donnie, who with his friend Raul Vega, is wholesaling Mexican weed up and down the Florida coast. This is the story of how David grows into a recording artist, with help from his girlfriend and her brother and a local music producer and studio owner, Zack Jamison, who has the best way for David to be packaged for success. The story includes lyrics for the songs on David’s first album. 

AKA CHARLIE MCQUEEN

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/11/hurricane-season.html

Charlie McQueen, a mathematical genius and sports gambler, is on the run from a mobster he used to work for in New York. He settles down in a small town in Maine and starts an online sports book there. Everything is going fine until one day, someone shows up looking for him, leaving Charlie with just two options: either pack up and run or, with the help of a good friend, get the issue resolved once and for all and get his life back.

INTO THE HEAT

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/into-heat.html

Bobby Granger, one of the US Special Forces’ snipers, thought he was finished with that life. After his military career ended, he was working as a fashion photographer in New York. But one day Bobby’s past caught up with him. An old associate needed him to photograph an illicit arms deal taking place in the Bahamas. Bobby doesn’t realize it at the time but saying yes to the job will substantially change his life in a couple of different ways.

OUTLAWS

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2025/04/outlaws.html

Danny Freeman, a thirty-two year old career burglar, has just been kicked out of a two-year relationship with a woman in Albuquerque, New Mexico and is heading west in his Dodge minivan. He picks up a twenty-one year old hitchhiker named Jonah White, who is on his way to Vegas from New Jersey to play some poker and win some real money with a mysterious talent he has. Danny, who is ten years older than Jonah, becomes interested because, in addition to being a thief, he also likes to write and after he gets to know a bit about Jonah, decides he would make a good subject for a novel or screenplay.

SENOR MICKEY FARRELL

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/10/senor-mickey-farrell.html

Mickey Farrell is a high school graduate, wannabe writer and a pretty good auto mechanic from Madison, Wisconsin, who is out to see America and gain some life experience that will help make him a better writer, which is his real passion. In central California, he helps out an older man stranded with car trouble and ends up working for him on his massive grape and fruit-growing property. He eventually falls in love with the old man’s granddaughter, becomes part of the family, and soon finds out that he has to grow up much faster than he ever imagined he would. 

Because the growing fruit business is just part of what the family does.

THE MIKALOV CASE

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/08/the-mikalov-case.html

Dale Hogan, a US State Department operative, has blown a major assignment. He had been assigned to safely move a Russian defector, a scientist named Anatoly Mikalov, to Washington for debriefing, in return for political asylum. But something goes very wrong, and Dale, with help from his dad, Jim, a former State Department agent himself, has a strange mystery to solve in order to both salvage his freedom and preserve the balance of power in the world.

JULIET’S GIFT 

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/10/juliets-gift.html

Juliet (Jules) Deacon has a gift. She has the intuitive ability to unlock things. Whether it’s a school locker, a password-protected bank account or almost anything in between. Jules discovered this talent very early on, and kept it to herself. In her early twenties, she fell in love and eventually teamed up with Travis Dupree, a young thief working with an art dealer in New Orleans, breaking into the homes of very wealthy art collectors. Jules and Travis started out simply working to get rich and have a good life with each other. But as they travel that road together, they ultimately realize that Jules’ gift is worth much more than they ever imagined.

TED’S MILLIONS

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2024/01/teds-millions_22.html

Ted Phillips is an accountant in a blue-chip firm in New York. But he was unhappy with his life and was starting to hate the city. One day, for some strange reason, he bought a Powerball lottery ticket. Three days later, his life changed dramatically. It was goodbye NYC, Hello Myrtle Beach, South Carolina with close to eight hundred million dollars in the bank. But he also left with the idea to send a message to some of the more greedy clients he had worked with over the years. With the help of a new friend, he might be able to achieve that. But his overriding challenges were to simply to make the kind of life he wanted and figure out how to do some good with all that money.

THE HUMAN LEAGUE

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-human-league.html

Recent MIT grads, Terry Moorehouse and Shawna Lennox, are working to take Terry’s family marketing business, located in Plymouth Mass., into the AI world. They have a lot in common, including a deep concern about the negative effect that unrestricted and unregulated AI is going to have on the world. And together they are determined to do something about it. The Human League is the company they form. It's dedicated to finding ways to keep AI from wreaking havoc on the world. And with a little help from some very important people, they just might pull it off. As Terry and Shawna are preparing to leave for DC to show their AI fake detection software to a special Congressional Committee on Cybercrime, Terry is asked to investigate a crime being perpetrated on the daughter of a wealthy businessman in Stamford Connecticut. This leads Terry on a mission to stop the extortion, which is not exactly what he signed one for, but something he is more than willing to do with the help of his team in Plymouth.

THE SENATOR'S SON

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2026/01/the-senators-son.html

Henry Feather is the son of a Democratic Senator from Maryland, who has just left the army where he was a sniper in Africa. Shortly after he arrives home, his house in Owing Mills is attacked by a pair of Middle Eastern men. The popular belief is that these men were attempting to assassinate Henry, because of the damage he did in Africa. But the fact of the matter is that something completely different. To get to the bottom of things, Jackson Lyall and Missy Felder, of The Blue Fin Group, come to Maryland to help Henry find the assassins and bring them to justice.

      

MAXWELL’S SILVER HAMMER

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/maxwells-silver-hammer.html

Parker Nash and Victoria Desmond have been drawn together as a result of a mass shooting that claimed the lives of both their parents. Parker is a gifted computer genius. Victoria, or Tori as she prefers to be called, is a young writer. Together they devise a plan to seek retribution for their parents’ deaths and finally bring about some much-needed gun control legislation in the US. This is the story of how they go about achieving this. Having achieved a good deal of success in persuading the major weapons manufacturers to remove semi-automatic weapons from domestic markets, Parker and Victoria set their sights on a new target, the radical Republicans in Congress, who are doing their best to undermine the government. This time Parker has something new in mind, which he hopes will do the job. If not they always have their tried-and-true formula to fall back on. All the while FBI Cybercrimes Inspector Robin Pierce is starting to put things together from her end. This time, however, the pressure is coming from very high places.

CISCO & PANCHO

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2026/09/cisco-pancho.html

This is the story of two twenty-something American guys in New Mexico, nicknamed Cisco and Pancho, who have been best friends their whole lives. Cisco is a market player. His pal Pancho is a computer wizard. They are both politically savvy enough to see that the Republican government is ruining the US economy and doing it with no regard for the people who are being made to suffer from their greed. Cisco has come up with a plan to set the Republicans back quite a distance in the next election. With a good idea, his friend Pancho, and some help from an older hacker in California,  they set about disappearing the most important thing the Republican Party needs to stay in power.

SERIES IDEAS

THE VIRGIN DETECTIVE SERIES

Pilot Story

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-virgin-detective.html

Emil Haven IV genuinely dislikes being a Haven. He has spent most of his adult life doing un-Haven-like things, yet still hoping to win his industrialist father’s approval. A moderately successful writer of crime fiction, Haven decides that maybe his father would approve if he tackled a non-fiction story. In his quest to find a story, he stumbles across an organized crime caper that’s just what he was looking for. But it inevitably opens up a can of worms that Haven just might not be able to handle.

Rollout Episode Stories

 2. The Aronson Case

Contractor and multi-millionaire, Edward Furlong is being blackmailed for twenty million dollars. Through his connection with Haven’s father, he becomes the first client for the fledgling Botticelli & Haven Investigations. But this case is a little more complex than they imagined, due to the strange relationships involved. This story also introduces a new regular character by the name of Wiley Dupree, an ex-American hacker. 

 3. The RedFred22 Case

A lawyer named Frederick Atwater, who has aspirations of being appointed a Supreme Court of Canada justice, hires Botticelli & Haven Investigations to ensure that no one hacks a site he created many years ago when he was a legendary hacker himself. The case is mostly in the hands of their cyber expert, Wiley Dupree. But when Atwater’s site is hacked and the hackers are found murdered, it becomes a whole different kind of case, one that could easily turn out to be quite lethal for everyone at B&H Investigations.

4. The Insider Case 

Haven’s father has asked himself and his partner Gino to investigate a strange series of break-ins at houses on his street, The Bridal Path, which is some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Haven is too busy to work the case himself so he and Gino bring on a new investigator, a newly retired homicide cop named Phil Rosetti. They solve the case quite handily but as a result, it opens up a can of worms, because the items being stolen were actually more illegal than the theft itself. 

5. The Badass Ladies Case

Haven and Gino are asked to investigate a case of embezzlement at one of Canada’s largest banks. It seems pretty straightforward at first until they actually start trying to locate the embezzler, one of the bank’s executives, and can’t seem to find him anywhere. But there are a couple of women, the wife and the mistress, who quickly become persons of interest in the case. It’s a whole lot of educated guesswork until it isn’t. And Haven and Gino follow the crumbs religiously right into the USA.

6. The Shop & Go Case

Somebody is robbing the Shop & Go Variety stores on the east side of the city. The perps are dressed in black and are wearing Hollywood movie star masks. The only clue is that the perps always seem to know the absolute best times to stage their robberies. Through some slick ingenuity from their computer guy, Wiley, and an old friend of his who is a security systems genius, they set a trap for the perps, hopefully to find out exactly who they are. But in the end good old fashioned detective works wins out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BULLETPROOF

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2025/06/bulletproof.html

A wealthy ex-pat America named Jackson Tyler and a British mercenary, Tim Wakefield meet in Naples, become friends after which Jackson tells Tim that he is looking for a business to fund. This gives Tim an idea and together they visit a friend of Tim’s in Sheffield England, Arthur Fields, who has perfected who has designed and perfected a powerful compact laser weapon, which Arthur, a total introvert, is hesitant to take much further. But Jackson convinced him that they can build a great business without Arthur having to travel much at all. While this is coming together Arthurs workshop is broken into, Arthur is badly beaten and his computer with all the construction details for his laser weapons is stolen. So Jackson and Tim need to find Arthur’s computer and punish the people who did this to him, before they can really get their business going.

FINDING ANDREW FLETCHER

 https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2024/08/finding-andrew-fletcher.html]

Dexter Fox is a young man with a gift. He can hear what people are thinking. But he keeps this to himself because he is afraid that if anyone found out about it, they would use him for some evil purpose. So he decides that he will only use his gift to help people. But first he has to be in a secure financial position. So at age 18 and with the money his parents, who both work in Atlantic City, had saved up for part of his college education, Dexter heads up to Canada to play some poker and build up enough of a financial buffer to allow him to concentrate full time on helping people. On his way back to the US with several million in winnings, he picks up a young hitchhiker, Roxanne Doyle who is heading to New York to find work in the computer industry there. But Dexter persuades her to join him in his mission. Shortly after they get settled in Virginia Beach, they get their first project, to help a woman from Richmond Virginia locate her young son who had gone missing a year earlier. The police had investigated the disappearance thoroughly but came up with nothing. But then, they did not have Dexter’s skill set to help them.

THE SWORD OF DAMOCLES SERIES

PART 1

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2025/02/sword-of-damocles.html

1. JACKSON LYALL

This is the story of Jackson Lyall, a former Marine Corps sniper who moves to Richmond, Virginia with a new identity and more than half a million in cash, which used to be jewelry, opium and hashish appropriated from the Taliban in Afghanistan. His aim is to become a photographer, which was a passion he picked up in his travels. Jackson meets up with a lady named Marlena Ross, whom he hires to help him market his photography business. But Jackson finds out the hard way that escaping his past is a lot trickier than he thought. He is recruited into a small clandestine group whose aim is to assassinate the leaders of some of the country's more radical right-wing groups. This a story of love, patriotism and a few secrets. All of Jackson's warrior skills, and some other talents he never knew he had, are put to the test.

PART 2

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2026/08/sword-of-damocles-parts-34.html

2. JULIETTE DODGE

Juliet Dodge, a Democrat and the current Vice-President, has decided to run for President. Of course, there have been a number of death threats from the right. So the Democrats have prevailed upon the Sword of Damocles group to provide some protection for Mrs Dodge, especially in the interior venues where she will be campaigning. Jackson Lyall, who is no longer an active sniper for the group, and Missy Felder are sent to accompany Mrs. Dodge on her campaign, and make sure the venues are free of would-be assassins. On the first stop of her campaign, a Mexican sniper is hired and manages to get himself securely hidden within the venue. It’s up to Jackson to figure out the logistics and hopefully counter them before Mrs. Dodge’s campaign is derailed just as it is starting.

3. JARRETT MORROW

As Juliette Dodge’s first term as president winds down, The Blue Fin Group has been assigned a pair of assassinations of Republican politicians who are among those being considered for a run for the presidency. But with the FBI hyper-aware of the super clean assassinations over the past few years, the Blue Fin group feels the need to import someone from outside the US. Through Blue Fin’s owner Phillip Ross’s international connections, he finds an ex-British Special Forces sniper named Jarret Morrow and recruits him to take out the two leading Republican contenders for the presidency. Morrow accepts the assignment and joins forces with Blue Fin’s Missy Felder to scope out the assassinations, with the goal of executing them cleanly

4. HENRY FEATHER

With Juliette Dodge considering not running for a second term as president, the Blue Fin people became acquainted with Henry Feather, an ex-US Army sniper, when they helped him out with an assassination attempt on his father, a US senator who is being seriously considered as Mrs Dodge’s successor. They were impressed with Henry and always in need of a good sniper, so they leave him with an open offer to join the group. But Henry is determined to make it in the real world, so he teams up with his girlfriend, Lucy and starts working as a writer with her in her father’s marketing company in Baltimore. But after a few months, he finds himself feeling quite claustrophobic. So he decides to take the Blue Fin people up on their offer. 

His first assignment is to take out a major supporter of the Republican Party, a multi-billionaire and industrialist named Elmore Bishop. Unlike the earlier assassinations that the Blue Fin Group had done, there is no ‘protection’ available this time. So the hit has to be timed and executed to perfection. This will be a real test of Henry’s skill and patience.

SCI-FI/FANTASY STORIES

THE VISITOR 

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/07/the-locker-key.html

PART 1.  Ezra & Cindy

The human name he chose was Ezra Birmingham. But he was not a human. He was an alien from a planet more than three light years from Earth. His mission here was to assess and lay the groundwork for an invasion. But his mission parameters changed once he actually arrived he saw the potential for the inhabitants of Earth to evolve and become not slaves but partners with the inhabitants of his world. But in order to make that happen, there were a few things to take care of. And with a little help from an Earthling friend, he should be able to pull it off.

PART 2. The Best of All Possible Worlds

Ezra Birmingham had just cleared the Milky Way galaxy on his way back to his home world when he stopped. His home world had been destroyed and only 106 of his kind managed to escape in a bullet tube heading directly toward him. Once they were all on board his craft, he returned to earth and the woman he had left there three years earlier to start a new life with a much smaller Collective. Ezra was determined to help the world evolve into a peaceful paradise, and, with a little help from his Collective, the prospects for doing that looked very bright, with only a few obstacles to overcome.

A SHADOW ON THE SUN

https://jimmurraysstories.blogspot.com/2023/08/a-shadow-on-sun.html

At some point toward the end of the 21st century, famous anime writer, Jake Sloane, started to get the feeling that he would soon be going through hell. First, he met a beautiful girl, then his whole cozy, entitled little world exploded. Finding himself the key player in a power struggle for world domination, Jake must deal with his true destiny, something he knows he must do, but isn’t looking forward to at all. A Shadow On The Sun is a tale about the future. Not sure it could be called science fiction though. Because the idea for this story came from events that are actually starting to take shape in the world in our own time. At its core, it’s a story about who controls the two most precious commodities in the world today, which are water and energy.