William Miller left a photography career after 9/11 to enlist in the Army. He now writes the Jake Noble spy thrillers, a paranormal mystery series built around an autistic FBI agent, and a hardboiled crime series for Aethon Books. He also runs Savage Realms, a sword and sorcery magazine he expected to fold after six issues and still puts out every month. In this episode, he joins us to dig into what actually changed in publishing in the early '90s, why a little gatekeeping might be good for a fandom, and what binge-watching did to the thirty-page chapter.

In This Episode

* William’s love letter to his wife: The Mackenzie and Cole series follows an autistic FBI agent. Miller’s wife is autistic, and he wanted a version of that on the page that includes the hard days, not just the “it’s a superpower” version.

* The fashion photographer who writes fight scenes: Years in fashion photography before the Army, and what visual thinking does to prose. Also his flat instruction to authors: you do not know what cover your book needs.

* Don’t take writing advice from people who don’t sell books: Miller studied creative writing at Eckerd College, where Dennis Lehane taught. His filter for writing programs is one question long, and it disqualifies most of them.

* Men didn’t stop reading, publishing stopped printing: What Miller says changed in trad pub in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s, and why “men don’t read” has the cart in front of the horse.

* Choose your own adventure: Delight Games handed Miller the keys and he wrote Jack Jericho and the Bloody Burlesque Show. It sold, and the content nobody would greenlight elsewhere turned out to be beneath the notice of the people who’d object.

* Savage Realms Monthly and the paperback problem: Miller started it as a favor to writers with nowhere to publish, expecting six issues and a tax write-off, and now ships one a month. The print edition is the one Amazon fights him on, and it’s also the one that sells better.

* “You gotta get rid of all the God stuff”: Trad publishers wanted the faith cut from Noble Man. Faith publishers wanted the guns and the human trafficking cut. He self-published, and the emails started arriving from people who’d done the work for real.

* The agent who pitched him at ThrillerFest: The agent that loved his numbers and wanted to represent him. Four years earlier, she told him that the book would never work.

* Genre hopping is bad business and he does it anyway: Spy thrillers, paranormal mystery, sword and sorcery, plus an unknown number of upscale literary novels sitting unpublished on a hard drive. His advice and his behavior do not match.

* Binge culture broke pacing: Why he thinks the thirty-page chapter is gone, why he has to fight his own instinct to write long, and why he still tells writers to ignore what’s selling. (On the business side, he cites Maxwell Perkins, the editor who shaped raw manuscripts from Hemingway and Fitzgerald into books that sold.)

* Where indie publishing goes from here: AI, universal basic income, and Miller’s standing policy of coming back in six months to eat crow when he’s wrong. Plus the argument that stories outlast whatever format is carrying them, delivered via Reign of Fire.

Guest Links

* Read the Jake Noble series: https://amzn.to/4uhzhB6

* Website: https://williammillerauthor.com/

* Facebook: AuthorWillMiller

Kristin’s Links

* Editing Services: nonsensefreeeditor.com

* Newsletter: https://www.fictionalinfluence.com

* YouTube: https://youtube.com/@nonsensefreekristin

Timestamps

00:00 - Meet William Miller.

00:50 - Writing Autism With Care.

02:28 - From Photos To Prose.

04:34 - Creative Writing Degrees.

07:11 - Do Men Read Fiction.

09:26 - Interactive Fiction Detour.

11:54 - Gatekeeping Geek Culture.

13:51 - Magazine Roots And Aethon.

16:33 - Building Savage Realms.

19:45 - Print Sales And Amazon.

21:23 - Cover Art Censorship.

22:59 - NSFW Internet Flashback.

23:28 - Trad Pub Rejections.

25:26 - Choosing Self Publish.

27:23 - Agent Comes Crawling Back.

28:45 - Genre Hopping Reality.

31:42 - Pacing In Streaming Era.

34:15 - Write Weird Find Tribe.

37:17 - Indie Future With AI.

43:21 - Stories Always Survive.

44:03 - Buckle Up Advice.

45:16 - Where To Find Him.

47:09 - Final Thanks And Goodbye.

About This Podcast

Nonsense-Free Kristin is where independent authors and creators learn to build their platforms, master their craft, and create on their own terms—without begging for permission from gatekeepers who hate them.

New episodes weekly.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit kristinmctiernan.substack.com