Tim Miller: Hacking His Way Into Your Head
Trisha Chambers
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I had the honor of speaking to one of my favorite horror authors the other day, Mr. Tim Miller. If you haven’t heard of him, you will very soon. He is clearly one of the best horror/splatterpunk authors I’ve ever read, and I would even put him up there with author Edward Lee (The Bighead).
Tim is an international best seller, and his book Hell, Texas has recently ranked high on Amazon sales charts since its release in Germany under German publisher Festa-Verlag. He has also been a top seller on Amazon here in America, writing over 20 books so far, all with many excellent reviews.
Tim began writing at a very young age. His love for horror started with weekend movie marathons with his friends with movies like Friday the 13th and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, which “scared the shit out of him,” and he could always be found carrying a notebook around, jotting down ideas for his next story to tell his friends. I guess you could call him a writing machine.
Tim: In my freshman or sophomore year, my teacher had us write a story on Davy Crockett and to include members of our class in the story. I wrote a story that Davy Crockett got shot and killed by some Indians and then he came back to life as a re-animated zombie and he’s going around killing my classmates one by one. One girl who sat across from me, I had her killed by Davy ripping out her guts and strangled her with her own intestines. The kids knew what I was up to and so I started getting requests from them on how they wanted to die in my story. Back then the teacher thought it was really funny and I got a good grade on it, but now they would probably have men in white coats come and take me away. You’d never be able to get away with writing a story like that in school today.
As an adult, Tim’s stories have evolved. One of his first books, Hand of God, was something Tim wrote when dealing with some personal demons. He had gone to Bethel College and received his degree in Bible and Religious studies, and along the way he met some preachers who were also dealing with their own personal demons but couldn’t really talk to anyone about them because they had to portray themselves as perfect. After talking to a few of them, and one night while sitting and watching “Dexter,” Tim came up with the idea of using a preacher to rid the world of the bad. Who would ever expect a preacher to be a serial killer, right? He released it in 2011, but not without skeptics and haters having their say.
Tim: I got a lot of hate messages from some religious people that thought it was a religious book because of the title and then they read it, and it wasn’t anything close to that and so they were very offended and sent me messages telling me such.
Since then Tim’s books have become a lot more violent and gory. Like Hell, Texas (which was banned by Apple) and one of his latest, Hacked, for which Tim is currently writing a screenplay.
Hacked (synopsis)
Rodney thinks he is a true ladies’ man on the internet. He is also a sociopath. He spends his days talking to women on social media and wooing them with his internet prowess. Except most women are not impressed. When he meets Abby on a site, he decides immediately that she is the one for him. Abby, however, doesn’t see it that way. When she kindly turns him down, Rodney takes matters into his own hands. He kidnaps Abby to teach her the consequences of refusing his advances. Over the next twenty-four hours, Abby learns a new definition of pain and suffering. Using conventional tools as well as some homemade devices, Rodney will stop at nothing to get his point across. What will Abby do to keep from becoming Hacked?
Tim says he sometimes gets some hate mail about the violence towards women that he writes about, but surprisingly the majority of his fans and readers are women. Tim is in no way like his writings, and I found him to be quite charming and pleasant.
Tim: I read some of my reviews sometimes, and people will say things like, ‘This guy on his bio says he’s married; I sure feel bad for his wife and his family to have to live with somebody who would do these kinds of things.’ I mean, come on. It’s not a fucking journal; it’s a fictional story.
Tim also has his own version of fairy tales, which he calls his Twisted Tales, such as his new release The Big Bad Wolf. It has all the makings of a great splatterpunk book: violence, cannibalism, human sacrifice, and all sorts of torrid things going on that we love.
I for one am looking forward to seeing what Tim has in store for us in the near future. You can find Tim on his website timmiller.org or on his social media sites like Twitter and Instagram where he regularly converses with his fans. He will also be making an appearance at the Dallas Fan Expo on May 29th, Indie Book Fest on July 12th, Alamo City Comic Con September 11th, Monster Con on September 26th, and much more which you can find on his web page under appearances and events.
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