Author Robert S. Miller recently released his second full-length novel, Sammy: A Celebration of Innocence. It’s a somewhat sad novel about a father whose young son comes down with cancer, but it also contains a lot of positivity and humor. We decided to ask him a few questions concerning the creation of this work.
Where did you get the idea for Sammy?
As you know (or maybe you don’t know), Sammy was a sequel to As Sparks Fly Upward. That seems odd because I don’t care for most sequels, and it’s pretty much kept me from going to the theater to see many movies for years. But the problem I have with so many sequels is that they have nothing new to say and the characters in the fifth or sixth episode are the same as in the first. Nothing changed. Also, I don’t want to have to see all the other sequels to keep up with the current story or film.
I liked the premise of As Sparks Fly Upward: a young boy’s father dies of alcoholism, the church refuses to hold a service for the father, and the boy never gets over it. But at the time I wrote it, I was more pessimistic about a person’s ability to come back from adversity. I knew a couple of brothers who experienced the same thing, and it almost destroyed them. Instead, they survived. And after I pulled the trigger on publishing Sparks, I began thinking that maybe even this character named Joe could redeem himself. I toyed with the idea of rewriting Sparks, but that seemed cheap. I wanted Joe to prove himself, so I came up with the idea of Joe having his own son – someone he loved and really believed in – who came down with cancer. How would Joe deal with the person he cared for most coming down with cancer? It became a bit of a mess, throwing in the ownership of a bar, Joe’s continued strained relationship with his community, and Joe trying to support his family and all of that. Life is messy. But you put all this messiness into a book and try to make it coherent. It’s one of the toughest things you can do, but it’s wonderfully satisfying if you can pull it off. I feel like As Sparks Fly Upward is a very different novel from Sammy. Sparks concerns Joe, a young man, dealing with anger and resentment concerning an incredible wrong. Sammy shows Joe, more grown up and more noble, trying to cope with a terrible situation.
What was the most challenging aspect of writing Sammy?
I think writing about a child suffering from cancer made the novel, at times, unbearably sad. When you work hard to make the characters full and real, you also begin to care for them. So suddenly, I have a young boy in the book suffering from leukemia. He suffers and his mother and father suffer. And even though it supposed to be fiction, you don’t want to see bad things happen to them. You come to believe in these people like someone you really know. And maybe some readers will think it’s too sad. But it is about cancer.
I was with that person I mentioned earlier when he died of cancer. What is shocking is how quickly the cancer destroys everything. My friend was in his late eighties, served in World War II and lived a full life. One day, he began complaining about back pains, he goes to the doctor, and they tell him he has cancer. They tried treating him, then told him the cancer was too advanced to continue. Knowing how bad it could get, my friend wanted to keep fighting it. Instead, he’s told it wouldn’t do any good and he dies four weeks later after experiencing a lot of pain.
I feel it would be an insult to all the parents out there dealing with a child who has cancer to say it is anything but a horrible ordeal. I felt that needed to be shown. And I could have gone on much longer, but cancer wasn’t the end of the story. The story had something else to say.
And do you think you said what you needed to say?
I hope so. That’s really up to the reader to decide. But I hope the reader understands: it’s every bit as hard on the writer creating characters who go through a hard time as it is for the reader to deal with it. I think I was very successful at cutting away things from the novel that didn’t evoke some sort of feeling. I don’t want a story with such small lives that nobody has empathy for them.
Here's what I hope the reader sees. Sammy is only four-years-old at the end of the novel, and you only see a lot of what he’s like during the last half of the novel. But I think his impact is anything but small on those around him – especially for Joe, who isn’t always an easy person to deal with.
You mentioned the character of Joe. Are there any autobiographical elements you inserted into his story?
Little bits and pieces. I did some of the same stupid things Joe did when I was in high school – which sort of seems ironic. I wonder how much less interesting my life would have been if I’d been a bit smarter at the age of sixteen or seventeen. But in certain ways, Joe is better than me. I often wish I could be less concerned about what other people thought, and Joe never worried about that. Joe also had lots of courage – physical and emotional. But he also had a resistance to growth.
He becomes much more likeable in Sammy than he ever was in Sparks. In Sammy, some fairly dramatic events in his life and an incredible struggle get him to see beyond his own interests. He comes to believe in something.
So what about religious beliefs? A large portion of both Sparks and Sammy concern religion and religious doubts. How much do you and Joe have in common regarding that?
Your right in saying that religion plays an important role. Joe’s beliefs impacted his actions and relationships with everyone else in both novels – though I say that without intending to get in a pulpit and tell others what to believe. I’m also a bit hesitant to talk about religion with any confidence. It could get me in trouble.
In the Book of Amos, it says, “Woe to those at ease in Zion.” It is one of the most ignored verses in all of the Bible. That verse tells us not to be so sure of ourselves – God may not be as impressed with us as we are with ourselves. And I agree with George Washington when he said that religion should be an absolute private relationship between the individual and whatever deity they choose. Too often, we make whatever others believe our own business and for some reason think we know more about what they should believe.
Anyway, saying all of that, I will try to answer the question. I think my religious views resemble Michelle's more closely than Joe's. Joe’s atheism (if you want to call it that) was more about spite than genuine conviction. Joe didn’t so much deny God as be at war with Him. He identified religion with the church and town where he was raised. And obviously, he didn’t think too highly of either of them. The God Joe knew was the old man in the sky who frowned on anyone having fun and who made his father’s life hell on earth. Truthfully, other than occasionally to get a rise out of people, Joe didn’t worry about anyone’s beliefs – so long as it didn’t involve him.
With Michelle, her beliefs were continually evolving. I don’t want to say she’s more pragmatic: that term seems to imply a compromise to please others. Michelle was just sincerely continuing her search and willing to listen to other perspectives. Michelle cared for people too much not to respect what they thought. But she also had a soft spot in her head for Joe and did not like anyone judging him. So she even took what he thought into account – which was like the lamb trying to discuss the right way of life with the wolf or lion. Maybe Michelle was full of self-doubt, but dealing with Joe required much effort and patience. Remember, she was also probably the only one capable of having a successful marriage with Joe.
One of my favorite scenes in Sammy is when Michelle performs the baptism for the little boy – her own son. She conducts the baptism without the annoying certainty that many believers have that they are doing the absolute right thing. Michelle wanted to do her best by Sammy and the rest of her family. Therefore, she is praying that she is not making a mistake performing the baptism when, as Joe told her, nobody else is more qualified to do it.
In writing the novel, how did the revision process go? Did you make a lot of edits?
Yes, lots of edits. Stories never go as you plan. Or if they do go as you plan, maybe that’s because you are putting your thumb on the scale and not letting the story tell itself. None of the best novels and stories I’ve written (or at least what I thought was best) ended in the same way I planned for them to end at the very start. I have a feeling the same thing is true of all good stories.
How about future projects? Anything coming out soon?
Yes. I’m busy with short stories and other ideas for a new novel. I already have a draft novel created called The Uncrowned Champion. It is a long novel – over 120,000 words. The Uncrowned Champion does not end up sad and it can get quite wild. And I also drafted a piece of literary criticism – about 50,000 words. That one requires quite a bit of rework because it’s a challenge. Both works are experimental – though I’m always experimenting with different kinds of narratives, point-of-views and all of that. I also have all sorts of short stories in notebooks. Someday, I have to type all of these stories out because no one can read my handwriting.
By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask: Your narratives for Sparks and Sammy are very straightforward and not a lot of experimenting with style. Though I admit, some of your short stories do take some strange twists. But in all of them, why do you put two spaces between each sentence?
That’s how I learned to type – put two spaces between each sentence. I’m surprised at how many people feel disturbed by that. It seems very minor. And it’s no wonder those same individuals never get around to reading Faulkner or Joyce.
But I also like the effect: it makes each sentence stand out. When Hemingway drafted his short stories or novels, he’d sometimes type two spaces between every word to make each word stand out. I don’t do that because it would waste a lot of paper.
If you haven't yet had a chance to read through Bob's "Sammy: A Celebration of Innocence," you can find it on Amazon in both paperback and Kindle versions.
https://www.amazon.com/Sammy-Celebration-Innocence-Robert-Miller/dp/B0CH2P1JLZ
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