Tell us about yourself and how many books you have written.
I am a product of a broken home, an on-and-off again runaway delinquent child, a recovered addict, a hopeless romantic, a road-exhausted gypsy, a loved father, a hated free soul, and a beloved friend… or despised enemy, depending upon who is asked!
This is my first book, but certainly not my last. I’m a walking, talking definition of spontaneity, I am not a very good follower and I have severe authority issues. I’m a clown, yet competent enough to give advice to most individuals on their worst day. I’m street-smart mixed with book-smart, despite the textbooks which were never opened in my college years. I’m wild and unpredictable, yet tame and boring. I love nature, I fear technology. I’m unspoken in opinions and beliefs, yet shy. I’m a loner, yet I have walked amongst many a crowd more times than not. I like to provoke discussions
What is the name of your latest book and what inspired it?
A Footnote for Tomorrow. It is a poetry collection written about my struggles with getting clean and off hard drugs and alcohol. It was written over a twenty-year span about the highlights, the low spots and everything that falls in between from my twenties into my mid-thirties, from college to the road, to the music scene, to sober then relapse and repeat. I felt it would be a solid testament to my peers that anything was possible, and that no matter how far gone we wake up being, there is always hope.
Do you have any unusual writing habits?
I write anywhere and everywhere, whenever the urge hits me. If I can’t get to my notepad, I will text myself the words as I hear them reciting in my head. I prefer to write in a quiet secluded country setting, after meditation and mental elevation, but the craft doesn’t care what you want, it wants to be written when it wants to be written, however, wherever and whenever it decides!
What authors, or books have influenced you?
Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, which in turn turned me onto all of the beatnik writers and set the stage for the earliest cross-country road trips that began this book. Howl by Ginsberg is a poetic masterpiece, so ahead of its time that one not knowing this, could still find endless relevance in its passages. Bukowski, Ferlinghetti, and e. e. cummings fill in the list of my top influences.
What are you working on now?
A second collection set to be released this August, which is two chapbooks put together essentially. Most of the works are third-person narrative, dissections of the decay of today’s civilization, morals and values, as seen through the eyes of those walking the streets amongst it. The second chapbook was following the same theme as told as the tortured love triangle of old souls and narcissistic youth clashed in its discovery. The way we treat each other and ourselves, reflect outwards towards the world we have been for generations destroying, piece by piece…the legacy that we will leave to our children and their children.
What is your best method or website when it comes to promoting your books?
In my experience, it has been Facebook that has assisted in bringing together the grassroots readers and followers I have had since before social media. Beyond social media, everything is still very, very new to me.
Do you have any advice for new authors?
Open your mind to be able to accept criticisms, most will be intended to benefit your growth as a writer, not as personal attacks upon you. Write with your own voice, the world has too much pop culture and the lines are blending so much that it has become difficult to identify most writers from one another. Be you. Stay open. Take chances, there is no reward without risk.
What is the best advice you have ever heard?
Despite whatever hardships we endure, it is our responsibility to overcome those challenges, not be bitter towards the world, but to instead leave in the hardships’ place an easier passage for those walking behind us tomorrow.
What are you reading now?
Presently, I have copies of Wanda Deglane’s Rainlilly, Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass; Yusef Komunyakaa’s Magic City and re-reading Fly on The Wall Press’ Persona Non-Grata, which is so masterfully assembled the compilation feels like more like a collective than a collection of works submitted by random, unconnected poets. Truly a great read.
What’s next for you as a writer?
There is no definitive answer to this question, I will bounce between fifty ideas and will walk a different direction for a few steps each, before deciding at last minute to take a path that was never on the table. I know there will be a cross-country book tour, potentially an overseas book tour, and the rest will have to present itself when the moment is right.
If you were going to be stranded on a desert island and allowed to take 3 or 4 books with you what books would you bring?
Off the Road by Carolyn Cassidy; Howl by Allen Ginsberg; A Devil on One Shoulder and an Angel on the Other: The Story of Shannon Hoon and Blind Melon by Greg Prato and Into the Wild by John Krakauer.
Author Websites and Profiles
James Miller II Website
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