Julie Miliner

Spoiled or Rotten

Julie — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 07:37:31 +0000

In The Magic and the Mayhem every one of John’s children is different. For those of us who have raised a child we know that just one child is capable of demonstrating each of his kids’ behaviors, sometimes all in one day.

Cecelia is the “spoiled” one. She has been raised with all of the advantages. She knows what she wants and wants it now!

Frank Lee

Julie — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:08:46 +0000

My next book is called Frank Lee. It is loosely based on the lives of my parents. My mother was born in South Carolina but raised in Harlem, New York and my father was born in North Carolina and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts. My mother is interracial, her African-American mother and her white father never married. Of course it was against the law for blacks and whites to marry in the 1930’s. Many people married one another out of respect for each other rather than the law, but in the United States, interracial marriage only actually became legal in 1967.

The story spans the time before they were born through the birth of their first two children. I was their third.

The launch of Frank Lee is planned for September 2009.

Mind & Matter

Julie — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 07:39:37 +0000

At a recent book signing someone asked me what my motivations were to write. When I responded in general about where my writing impulses come from she shook her head and rephrased the question. She wanted to know why I wrote this book.

A lot of things inspire writers to write. I explained that when I started on The Magic and the Mayhem I had no idea where the story would lead. I generally write whatever comes to mind and after about a week of writing a story emerges that I can influence to go one way or another. This is perhaps when characters emerge who have a story to tell based on my personal biases. Adding antagonists, which are sometimes people and sometimes situations, help lead the main character through the triumphs and failures of life’s lessons.

One theme in most of my stories has to do with the lonely or abandoned heart. In this book, the abandoned hearts seem to be the children’s or their mothers’ but I hope the idea that John Drake’s heart was at least lacking something based on his actions as a younger man were conveyed.

I do feel a certain and particular need to speak to young men who for whatever reason find themselves absent from the lives of their children. A child depends upon a father obviously for financial support but for emotional support as well. As The Magic and the Mayhem began to take form, I realized that when men walk away they’re virtually cutting part of their life’s growth away. At the end of the day the void turns inward leaving them with an angst that cannot be healed or reversed. The part of the phyche that could have been formed is empty, except that the rest of the world celebrates fatherhood, something that, even though they bore children, they have unwittingly bowed out from the right to participate.

Loose Men

Julie — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 07:05:35 +0000

John Drake, the main character in my book, The Magic and the Mayhem, is what I’d call a loose man. For years he’s been a proud baller and shot caller who handles women like a juggler trains balls to stay in the air. He’s one of those men who knows he probably has children but stays one step ahead by “shredding the letters from social services without opening them”. He thinks that out of sight out of mind means that somehow they don’t exist.

When fathers are not present in the lives of their children the children are left with a void that reverberates throughout their lives. In my story, John learns that there’s more to life than Berber carpet and his prized corvette. He discovers that being a responsible parent is not the worst thing in the world and can very well be the best thing that could ever happen to him.

Do you know any loose men?

Betts

Julie — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 07:39:24 +0000

For an author reviewing a post published work it can be nerve racking rethinking certain parts of the story for which I could have elaborated more. For instance, the Elizabeth Oliver (Betts) character in The Magic and the Mayhem is a single parent by choice. I wonder what her motivations were to have a child out of wedlock when she obviously had so much going for herself.

She has an important and prosperous job, excellent friends, a condo worth half a million dollars and yet she has a daughter on her own, with ostensibly no immediate plans to include the child’s father in its life.

To me, it seems that she is a selfish participant… a greedy mother who wants a mini me… if you will. So many women now-a-days do. They may not have as much going on for themselves as Betts does but still they choose to have a baby on their own whether or not the father is on board or not. The question I ask is whether or not it’s worth it in the end?