‘The absolute notions on me’: An Irish writer on a year in the city of angels

When rising literary star and TikTok sensation Joseph Murray packed his bags at the tender age of 22 and went in search of adventure in Los Angeles, he decided to savour every moment. He knew his time in the Californian city had an expiry date – he was there on a one-year graduate visa – so the young Meath man soaked up every single experience, from the inspirational to the flat-out surreal.

Take, for example, the time Murray tore ligaments in his ankle and was struggling to walk. “I was walking around with a little cane,” he recalls. At the grocery store, he spotted some mobility scooters and thought they might make shopping easier. “I sat down and was bopping around on the scooter, kind of struggling to operate it and at one stage I whacked into the back of a guy’s foot.”

The man spun round, revealing himself to be none other than Eric McCormack, the actor who played Will in the hit sitcom Will & Grace. Murray immediately said, “Oh my god, Will, I’m so sorry.” To which McCormack deadpanned, “I’m not Will.” But the highly personable Murray turned the situation around and ended up getting a selfie with the actor. “It felt like a fever dream, me on a mobility scooter whacking into [Will],” he laughs.

But Murray’s LA story wasn’t all glitz and rubbing shoulders with A-listers, at least not in the beginning. He touched down in the city of dreams with a degree in drama, a masters in marketing and a hankering for adventure, but he had no job, nowhere to stay and knew not a single person. He admits it was “crazy” but it was something he felt he needed to do.

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“I said to myself, packing my bags heading off to Los Angeles, ‘The absolute notions on me… Here I go.’ Mammy and Daddy were very worried,” he jokes with the Irish wit that has gained him a significant TikTok following.

Murray hit the pavements, taking his mother’s advice to hand out his CVs in person in order to make a good impression. She was right: he landed an interview for a role as social media content specialist. Not only would the job suit him down to the ground, but he would get to work in an iconic building on Wilshire Boulevard with a famous statue of John Wayne outside. “I wanted that real American vibe,” he says. “At the time, I was very inspired by that.”

He wanted it so much that the nerves kicked in before the interview. “I was manifesting non-stop,” he quips. Fortunately, his interviewers were impressed by the fact that he had graduated from Trinity College which, he discovered, Americans view as being on a par with Ivy League universities. They were also impressed by the fact that he had a masters. “In America, to do an undergrad and a masters, you’re looking at about $200,000 [€189,000].”

And so he landed his dream job. “It was fantastic.” From one of the windows in the building, he could see the Hollywood Hills with its famous sign. “I nearly had to pinch myself every day that this was my life.” Admittedly, his colleagues did call him their little leprechaun a few times, but he didn’t mind as long as they kept the pay cheques coming.

He also found somewhere to stay: a spot in a co-living apartment in Beverly Hills. He jokes that this sounds very glamorous and that everyone back home was highly impressed that he was living it up in the famously affluent LA suburb, but “if you saw the room!” Co-living is a “lovely phrase”, but he was one of four people sharing a room with two sets of bunk beds.

If you want to reinvent yourself, it’s a lot easier to do if everyone you know isn’t looking at you

He says his rent in Beverly Hills was a lot less than he currently pays in Dublin, with the co-living spot setting him back $800 (€750) a month as opposed to about €2,500 for an apartment in the Docklands. Of course, the difference is that he has an entire apartment now. “Although every time I check my bank account, I miss my bunk bed,” he jokes.

He didn’t mind the crowded co-living space at the time, as there was never an evening or a weekend when he wasn’t out soaking up LA life. The city is not an Irish hub, so at the start he found himself very much on his own. “But after a week I had loads of friends. The Irish charm goes a long way.”

He never thought he’d be the kind of person who’d go into a bar on his own and start talking to people he didn’t know, but he took a leap of faith and found that people were always interested. In a way, he became the person he wanted to be over there. “If you want to reinvent yourself, it’s a lot easier to do if everyone you know isn’t looking at you.”

He loved meeting up with groups of friends in bars in West Hollywood, an area that he really “clicked” with and that was within a walkable distance of his apartment, although “it seemed a lot longer coming home a little tipsy!”

However, Murray’s very favourite spot was a place that not many people know about: a real, authentic diner called Norms on La Cienega Boulevard, West Hollywood. For him, the diner captured the essence of LA. “I loved the vibe of it. It seemed to really match the place I was in.” He did a lot of reading at Norms, as his room was pretty loud. He would get a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie, soak up the retro vibe and relax with books like Neil Gaiman’s American Gods.

The diner was open 24 hours a day, and some nights when he couldn’t sleep, Murray would take himself there at 3am to read. “It was definitely my little sanctuary. A few times I had little ideas trickle in as I was reading.”

[ Fling by Joseph Murray: A lively and propulsive debut ]

When his visa came to an end, he realised he had bonded with his friends more than he had thought, and that he had in fact built a whole life in LA. He could have looked into getting another visa, but it would have proved a very expensive route requiring an immigration lawyer, so he decided against it.

“I believe in life when you know something has an expiry date, you’re really going to make the most of it,” says Murray, who is now 29. “I really, really made the most of the year. It really shaped me as a person. Unbeknown to myself, it shaped me into the writer that I would eventually go on to be.”

In particular, his job – which involved writing social media content, marketing copy and advertising proposals – helped him come to an important realisation. “I was writing every day… I wasn’t telling stories, but every day I’d probably write 1,000 words,” he says. “It was all leading towards me realising that writing was going to be it. It’s only looking back that I can see that.”

He returned to Dublin with “such a drive” to achieve, though it wasn’t until Covid hit that he got the chance to apply that drive to writing. He lost his job as a social media specialist when the travel company he worked for went into liquidation. He had to move out of his Dublin apartment and wound up living at home with his parents again, feeling like he was “back to square one after all I’ve done”.

However, his philosophy in life – and the theme of his debut novel Fling – is that everything happens for a reason. And so it came to pass with seeing out the pandemic in the family home. “It gave me a chance to say I’ve no more excuses. I know what I want out of life. I want to tell stories. If I don’t do it now, when I literally can’t leave the house…”

As a teenager, Murray developed his storytelling abilities by writing screenplays and making short films. However, Fling – which he wrote during the pandemic – was his first attempt at a novel. “I went straight from screenplays as a teenager to a full novel… That’s why I was so shocked that Marianne just clicked with it.”

‘Marianne’ being the legendary literary agent Marianne Gunn O’Connor who secured him a “very much life-changing” two-book deal on the strength of Fling. “The book deal meant I was able to move back to Dublin,” says Murray.

Funnily, though Murray is now living his best life as a writer in Dublin, he still finds himself on LA time. “I write every night from midnight till 5am. I see the sun come up usually every morning. That’s when the creativity flows. I can’t write during the day. Nothing of value would come out.”

The paperback edition of Joseph Murray’s debut novel Fling is out now