THE STORY THAT BUILT ITSELF Author: Rev Dr Kim Miller
Although I was good with words, school was not a happy place for me.
Raised in Western NSW, I came from a difficult family environment and significant childhood trauma. The after affect of these was that it was difficult for me to engage with people.
Whilst at primary school, I remember everyone was outside playing and I was sitting inside writing an entry for a Kokoda Trail competition. I remember looking out of the window thinking how unfair it was. My teacher recognised the writing potential within me, but it took a long time to mature.
I just made it through primary school on memory and intelligence rather than application. By high school I failed exams because I was not working to my ability.
Although I won a provisional place at university, I failed engineering and wandered through lots of jobs.
I started to achieve academic success in my late 20's. By 40 I had a doctorate.
A motorbike accident at the age of 21 put me out of action for an entire year.
I married at 25, went back to what is now TAFE and trained in structural engineering.
Later, I trained for the ministry and have been an Anglican priest for 25 years. I spent 9 years as the Anglican Chaplain at Bathurst Correctional Centre before taking on the 'Home for Good' project in Newcastle.
This project aims to reduce re-offending. My clients are those leaving a custodial sentence, or those on a community service order or suspended sentence.
Attending school is such a difficult experience for a lot of kids! I was unhappy at school and in my book 'They Told Me I Had to Write This', I wrote about my ideal school.
It took me 5 days to write the first draft of this book but 2 years to make it edgy enough for publication.
The idea, themes and characters for the book came after a sleepless night of drifting in and out of consciousness where the book built itself in my head. The next day I started writing.
During the next 2 years, events and people refined and enriched the storyline.
For example, author Hazel Edwards read the manuscript, mentored me through some of its development, and later suggested Ford Street Publishing, who accepted the book for publication. Hazel is best known for her 'There's a Hippopotamus on our Roof Eating Cake' series that is 30 years old, and read by millions of children in many languages.
In the future there will be more stories and more books. I'm writing another novel, a murder story set in the early Australian settlement, and I'm planning another young adult novel based on one of the characters in 'They Told Me I Had To Write This'.
