Today, I’m excited to share an interview with author Paul d. Miller. Paul recently published the first installment of his new novel series, Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. As you may recall, I reviewed this highly entertaining book a few weeks ago, here.

Paul recently took some time from his book promotion schedule to share a few thoughts via email. Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. is available on Amazon.com. Follow Paul, here. The delightfully comic-book style grawlix (aka, obscenicons), sprinkled through the interview below, are courtesy of Paul. The Storytelling Blog doesn’t object to swearing, if it’s funny, but I left these grawlix alone. As the Dictionary.com article points out, a row a symbols in print is fucking hilarious.

Disclosure: I have a business relationship with Paul d. Miller’s publisher, Montag Press, which will publish my Sean Joye Investigations novel in the future.

Kathy: What attracted you to writing speculative fiction? What are the challenges and rewards of being a ghostpuncher?

Paul: I don’t think I ever really thought of my work as speculative fiction; I just write the stories as prodded by the poor bastards trying to escape the slipstream of the collective unconscious. They’re all out there somewhere, whispering their boasts and secrets across the void, unencumbered by the strictures and structure of our accepted reality. Sure, I tell their stories, but they tell them to me first, and I just try to make them make sense to you. So, it’s not so much that I’m trying to write any particular kind of fiction; rather I’m telling my characters’ stories as they lived them.

The challenge mostly comes from trying to pin the right tail on my donkey: When someone asks what I write, how do I respond? Is it horror? What kind? Urban Fantasy? Humor? It’s &$#@ing ghostpuncher, man, and that should let you know all you need to know.

The rewards are vast and varied, covering everything from bringing me a deeper understanding  of myself and my world to paying for at least a portion of my booze. I mean, this is what I do, and without my work, there’d be nothing that’s purely me. Writing is what made me a viable companion for my wife, and without said wife, I wouldn’t have my daughter and we wouldn’t have this tiny, late-start family that is my whole universe. So, the reward is my life, and, if I can get this &%$# selling a little faster, a means to its sustained support.

Kathy: Tell us about Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. What inspired this story? How long have you been working on it?

Paul: TV, alcohol abuse, and solitude inspired Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. more than anything else. When you spend a lot of time by yourself, with no human contact and more booze than most would consider safe, you do a lot of thinking. A lot of introspection. You swim in this night-time sea of wondering, just floating and floundering and half-heartedly searching for some island of clarity where you can wait for daylight and maybe make sense of where you are. That’s what I did for about five years after I moved to Alabama. 

A Punchy Question

What finally got me started was a simple question. I’d been languishing in front of the TV, hungover or drunk or maybe a little bit of both, and ended up watching a marathon of Ghost Adventures —you know the show with the frat-boy paranormal investigators? [Ed note: Yes, indeed I do. Travel Channel, here.] Well, alone in a big house with all the lights off, I just asked myself, “What would you do if you saw a ghost right now?” Without even thinking, I answered back in this rotten, broken-glass-and-bubblegum voice, “I’d punch it right in its &$#@ing ghost face.” 

What would you do if you saw a ghost right now?

Paul d. Miller

That voice and those words took hold of me, and that’s when I met Al, the protagonist of my novel. Al’s a part of me, a bad part, maybe the worst parts, but he’s also something else. Once I heard his voice, I found my own, and I knew that I had to tell his story. It just kinda worked out that his story had a lot of parallels to my own, and we kinda worked our &$#@ out together.

I’d punch it right in its &$#@ing ghost face.”

Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher.

You could say I’d been working on Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher. my whole life. Every player and set are inspired by someone I’ve met or somewhere I’ve been, or at least my interpretation of them. I’ve always been writing, always been trying to say things in a way that no one else could. Getting the books on paper was really just a part of that lifelong effort, and I’m still working on getting myself heard through them. So, let’s say forty-four years and counting.

Kathy: I read this novel as omniscient point of view, with a distinctive and hilarious voice. Pulling that off successfully is no easy task. Any tips or tricks on point of view and narrative voice you’d care to share?

Paul: Pick one, a point of view, and stick with it. You’re not telling a new story, because there aren’t any; you’re telling an old story from a new perspective. Find a place from which to write and tell us what you see. There’s no good reason to keep saying things the same way someone else already has. 

My characters have a lot going on inside their heads, and not all of it comes through in their actions. They think and feel, and, like most of us, keep a lot of it inside. But in order to really see someone, you have to try to get inside their head, look through their eyes, and listen to whatever endless Spotify playlist is droning on in the background. To understand the world, you have to see it from all the angles. That’s why I write from a point of omniscience; that or I’m just way too egotistical to paint myself as anything less than godlike.

As far as narrative voice goes, it’s all about wearing your own clothes. You can’t write in a costume. You can’t write in a uniform. And if you try to write naked, they’ll kick you right the &$#@ out of the coffee shop. So, you throw on your sweats or doll yourself up in your finest suit, whatever makes you comfortable, and get to work. 

Kathy: What are you working on next? More ghostpuncher?

Paul: Right now, I’m mostly working on raising my daughter and getting the book out into the world. 

Once Al has some legs to stand on, I’ll start releasing the rest of the books devoted to his part of the story he’s been thrown into. There are five finished waiting to hit the shelves as well as a whole bunch of Al-pocrypha to fill in the gaps.

Up next is Albrecht Drue, Paranormal Dick, which starts about half a year after ghostpuncher. finishes up. Without revealing too much, Al and the Ghost Geeks have been through a lot, and things are lookin’ pretty good, so of course that’s gonna get messed up by the ascension of a delightful &$#@ing Murdergod and his acolytes, because some people just can’t have nice things.

Kathy: What is your writing process? Have other aspects of life impacted your process?

Paul: I think this goes back to the point of view and voice question, because my process is my life, and my life is my process. I learned grammar and composition in grade and high school. Once you have those down, you can be a writer; all you have to do is write. But to write something worthwhile, you must infuse your work with everything you’ve ever done or learned or imagined. My process involved decades of living a life worth writing from; not necessarily worth writing about. I had to develop an understanding of the world we share and my place in it, or at least an understanding that understanding is what I’m trying to do with my life. The act of writing is just me telling y’all what I think I’ve learned in a way you enjoy or appreciate reading. 

A Triplet Process

As far as that goes, I generally start with an idea, turn it into a three-sentence paragraph that tells the story in its broadest strokes, then expand everything. Three sentences become three yellow legal pages. Then it’s time to find your three main characters: your protagonists and antagonists, along with their world. All these threes beget more threes until I have this incomprehensible mess of pen-on-paper that I internalize and rarely even refer back to. Then it’s into the computer to tippitty-tap until the story’s told.

A character appears, he does some stuff in a place, and then deals with the stuff he just did. When those steps give me a beginning, a middle and an end, it’s just a matter of fleshing everything out.

So: decades of examining life in all its indefatigable, oozing mystery, followed by years of tapping it all out so that you can see what I saw.

Or: getting an idea, following to its most logically absurd conclusion, revising, revisiting, and rewriting.

Kathy: What does storytelling mean to you?

Paul: Everything.

Seriously, it’s not our tools or our souls or our clans that make us more than animals or make it possible for us to leave a mark on the world. It’s our ability to pass on our literary DNA to those who come after us that makes society possible. Everything we do leads to some bit of knowledge that didn’t appear on its own, and in order for humankind to function, we have to share with each other what we’ve learned. Storytelling allows us to do that. 

I’ve seen things no one else has, but what do they matter if I don’t tell anyone? My life is a thousand stories, but what value do they have if no one reads them? I mean, it’s all valuable to me, but I’m not the only mother&$#@er in the universe.

It’d be a damn shame to hoard the endless wealth that is myself, so storytelling is how I’m gonna share it.

If you enjoyed meeting Paul d. Miller in this interview, check out my review of Albrecht Drue, ghostpuncher., here. You can purchase the book, here.

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