We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Joyce Miller. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Joyce below.
Alright, Joyce thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Can you talk to us about a project that’s meant a lot to you?
Writing my memoir, Look! You’re Dancing, A Memoir of Dogs, Dance and Devotion, has been my most meaningful project. I spent twenty years volunteering for a greyhound adoption group and I adopted six greyhounds over the course of that time. I trained two of those greyhounds to do a dog sport called canine freestyle, also known as dog dancing. To improve my dog dancing skills, I began taking an adult tap and jazz dance class at 50 years old. The women I met in that dance class have become my best friends, my tribe. The memoir tells my story.
Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.
When I was a young girl, I loved to write and draw. My parents were not supportive of my artistic endeavors and my dad told me that I needed to “learn a trade.” So, I went to drafting school and became a mechanical designer. In my mind at least I was drawing something. I worked for over 30 years as a designer at a nuclear physics laboratory. It was fascinating work but not my true passion. When I retired, I finally had time to write stories as I had loved doing as a child. My first novel was historical fiction based on the true story of my granduncle who played baseball in the 1910s/1920s. Titled, Joe Harris, the Moon, it follows my granduncle from his childhood in a mining town to the trenches of France in the Great War and finally to the World Series in 1927 when he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates against Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig of the New York Yankees. My second book was my memoir, Look! You’re Dancing, A Memoir of Dogs, Dance and Devotion about my time volunteering for a greyhound adoption group; and how I trained two of my greyhounds to do a dog sport called canine freestyle. I’m most proud of the fact that I self-published both of these books. I’m now working on my third novel. It is historical fiction based on the true story of Corinne and Gari Melchers, American Impressionist artists at the turn of the century, told from Corinne’s point of view.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
The mission driving my creative journey now is to tell the stories of women who worked in the same field as their husbands and did not receive the credit for their work that they deserved. For example, Albert Einstein’s wife, Mileva Maric or Jackson Pollock’s wife, Lee Krasner. Having dealt with sexism and being passed over simply because I was a woman in a male dominated field, I can identify with these stories. Every woman has had an experience where she’s pitched an idea or a solution to a problem and been put down, only to have the man next to her relate the same idea and get full credit. Women in the past have had it even worse with societal expectations thrust upon them. I want to tell their stories, one at a time.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
I built my audience on social media by picking a medium that I was most comfortable with; and for me, that was Instagram. I started by posting on a regular schedule and that’s my advice to those just starting to build a social media presence. On Tuesdays, I posted updates about my writing projects and on Fridays, I shared other things that allowed people to get to know me. I shared books I was reading, interesting places I visited or posts about my greyhound, By using hashtags, I was able to follow people with similar interests to mine. I also shared and promoted other authors’ work and made some great, new friends in the process.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.joyceamiller.com/
- Instagram: @joyceamillerwriter
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joyce.miller.1804