About Us

Murphy’s Mulligan Stew: Hi, I’m Mulligan. My Mommy calls me Mulligan or Pistol when I’m bad. I’m a Miniature Schnauzer Puppy. I like to play and go for walks. I also like to email my friends and go to work with Mommy.

Julie Murphy, PhD: Dr. Murphy is a retired elementary school counselor, working for twenty-three years at the Marine Corps Air Station dependents school. She is now in private practice as a mental health counselor. She works primarily with children and families. Dr. Murphy is an avid golfer and football fan, her loyalties divided between the Georgia Bulldogs and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. She lives with Mulligan on Dataw Island, South Carolina and they work together in Beaufort, South Carolina. Mulligan takes her on long walks every day and they visit with other dogs and cats and see alligators and pelicans eating snakes, for example. Barks and Bytes is their first book but Mulligan is hard at work on their second book.

Barbara McArtor: A phone call to Mom from her high school art teacher encouraged artist Barbara McArtor to gain a degree in art and education, and thus teaching became McArtor's first career in the Arts. An Ohio transplant to the beauty and warmth of South Carolina's Low Country, McArtor taught in public schools both North and South from 1965 until her health forced an early retirement in 2000.

McArtor did take a few years off when each of her two children were born. Commissions for portraits, landscapes, the desire to create the 'perfect' doll, 'junk' jewelry creations, and a whole host of art and craft projects have filled McArtor's spare time. Love of the written word and its marriage to illustration prompted McArtor to first create books for friends, and now commercially. Barks and Bytes is her fourth published work.