Featured Interview With Gene J. Miller
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was raised in a small town for my first 14 years ,called Delanco. It is located in South Jersey along the Delaware River, approximately 10 miles north of Philadelphia. In the middle of my sophomore year we moved to Vincentown, a town 45 minutes east of the river within the largest preserved forests and farms of one million acres within the South Jersey Pinelands. Mom bought a toy poodle named Pierre that in high school we nick named “Pirahna.”
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
As an only child there was always a lot of downtime alone. Early on in second or third grade I began purchasing Scholastic Books from order forms in class. Sports books, especially on football, basketball and baseball all drew my reading attention. Later on, my reading expanded into the Hardy Boys series. My favorite book that I checked out of the school library was entitled, “Someday You Will Go to The Moon.” I believe I owe the school library a huge fine-it’s still on my bookshelf today! I began writing stories in sophomore year of high school in a Creative Writing class instructed by my English teacher, Susan Mannion. Later, in college I had another Creative Writing Course taught by Professor Toni Libro and I instantly declared as an English/History major.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
I enjoyed the novels of Steinback, Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as I was introduced to those writers first. Later, I became hooked on Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye, then Kurt Vonnegut. I know it sounds strange, but in my junior year of high school as I was beginning to write short stories and musical lyrics, a baseball teammate, George Spellman, introduced me to two rock albums. George said,” Take these home and turn them up on your turn table. They both will change your life.” One was Greetings from Asbury Park by Bruce Springsteen. I was changed for life. He had ” Spirit in the Night” and “Growing Up” on that first album and I believed in those lyrics and in that story, he had taken me home. Greasy Lake was the Delaware River. His later album “The River” just captured my childhood/teen years and inspired me later to write my short stories connected to growing up and life along the river.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My first book is a collection of 15 nonfiction time capsule short stories from 1965-1970 of attempting to grow up along the Delaware River in South Jersey. I wrote them for my two oldest grandsons (we now have 8) who were about to enter middle school. Those middle school years growing up along the river led to many humorous and unbelievable adventures and experiences. We were alive while in the river, on the river and along the river. We were truly free there, no cell phones, no parents, no computers, no Xboxes and no internet. We discovered there and we created there. My book was designed to share that time period and the challenges of attempting to grow up in the middle school years. Adolescents today can see similarities and the differences in growing up almost 50 years apart.
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