Millie Florence Official Press Kit
For interview inquiries, additional material, or questions, please contact me directly at:
author@millieflorence.com
Main Headshot
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Author Bio
Millie Florence’s earliest memories are of lying under the covers at night, whispering stories to herself long after her parents had told her to go to sleep. She published her first book, ‘Honey Butter’, at age 13 and hasn’t stopped since!
Millie lives in a picturesque blue house in the woods of southern Illinois. She loves adventure, good food, and just about all things yellow. The Balter of Ashton Harper is her third novel.
Follow her on Facebook or Instagram, or see what she’s up to at millieflorence.com
Social Media Links
Instagram: instagram.com/millieflorenceauthor
Facebook: facebook.com/authormillieflorence
YouTube: youtube.com/millieflorenceauthor
Website: millieflorence.com
Sample Interview
When did you start writing?
I don’t know. For as long as I can remember I’ve known that I wanted to be an author and tell stories. Some of my earliest memories are of laying under the covers at night whispering stories to myself long after my parents had told me to go to sleep. Before I could type on my own I told my stories aloud, to my siblings, to my stuffed animals, to the recorder I got for Christmas. I collected spiral-bound notebooks (usually yellow) and turned them into stick figure comic books. When my parents had the time, they typed down my stories for me, doing their best to spell all my made-up words.
When you’re little, people often ask you “what do you want to be when you grow up?” That question always annoyed me. I wasn’t going to wait until I grew up, I was going to be an author right now!
What inspired your debut novel, Honey Butter?
Around the age of twelve, my parents were painting part of our house, and my siblings and I were dragged along on errands to the paint store a lot. While my parents discussed paint and brushes, my four siblings and I were confined to the paint card section – a corner filled with tiny cards bearing the sample color of different paints for sale.
Somewhat bored, I began reading the names of the paint cards. Vivid jungle, cherry soda, bubble bath. I was amazed how, with only two or three words, the titles painted a picture in my mind (pun intended) I began to take the cards home with me until I had a small collection sitting on the edge of my bookshelf.
Looking through my paint cards one morning, I had a lightbulb moment. The hobby was quirky and a bit strange, but paint cards were undoubtedly cool.
“What if I wrote about a person who was obsessed with collecting paint cards?”
From this question, the character of Jamie Johnson began to take shape, and the story of Honey Butter slowly formed around her.
What’s your favorite part of writing?
As a writer with way too many ideas, I love first drafts! Anything goes. A dragon could burst into the scene, and a piano might be found beneath the kitchen floor. The first draft is your opportunity to play and have fun, and you can worry about it all making sense later.
What’s your advice for aspiring authors?
I have a lot of advice for aspiring authors, and if you would like to go more in-depth, you should check out my YouTube channel.
My main tip would be “quantity over quality”. When you’re just starting out, often you’ll outgrow your current project, skill-wise, before you have time to finish it. Write lots of short stories, poems, freewrites, and writing exercises. There’s nothing wrong with attempting that novel you’ve been dreaming of, but I noticed a major improvement in my own writing when I started incorporating more short writing “challenges” into my day-to-day routine, which helped me a lot with those longer projects.
Tell a story in five words, write a page describing your garage using all five senses, create a poem where every line must begin with the letter C. Just like athletes have warm-up exercises to make their physical muscles stronger, as writers, we should give our creative muscles (our brain) some warm-ups too.