August 13, 2026 • 37 mins
On the eve of D-Day, the fate of the world hangs not on the beaches of Normandy, but deep within a secret Nazi facility in occupied France. Here, in a claustrophobic, slave-driven mine codenamed Noball 109, German scientists are racing to perfect a terror weapon that would render the Allied invasion obsolete: atomic-tipped V-2 rockets aimed at the heart of London
Enter Miriam Maduro, a ghost haunted by her past. A brilliant and courageous Dutch-Jewish SOE agent, she has already been captured, tortured, and escaped the Nazis once. Now, the British pull her from the shadows for an offer she can't refuse: undertake a suicide mission to infiltrate and destroy the rocket facility, and they will guarantee safe passage for her young son and sister from Palestine to England.
John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist. The Lexington, Ky., native was a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal/Europe based in Rome, Italy; a reporter and editor at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader; executive editor of the Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.) and the Tallahassee Democrat; and was publisher of The Olympian in Olympia, WA., and The Concord (N.H.) Monitor. He also helped produce four independent feature films: “Hitting the Cycle” with Bruce Dern; “Armed Response”; “Band of Robbers,” written and directed by Adam and Aaron Nee, and “Ghost in the Family.” Miller and his wife Margo live in Lexington Their daughter Allison Miller is an actress-screenwriter-director who most recently starred on the ABC series “A Million Little Things.”
Enter Miriam Maduro, a ghost haunted by her past. A brilliant and courageous Dutch-Jewish SOE agent, she has already been captured, tortured, and escaped the Nazis once. Now, the British pull her from the shadows for an offer she can't refuse: undertake a suicide mission to infiltrate and destroy the rocket facility, and they will guarantee safe passage for her young son and sister from Palestine to England.
John Winn Miller is an award-winning investigative reporter, foreign correspondent, editor, newspaper publisher, screenwriter, movie producer, and novelist. The Lexington, Ky., native was a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and Wall Street Journal/Europe based in Rome, Italy; a reporter and editor at the Lexington (KY) Herald-Leader; executive editor of the Centre Daily Times (State College, Pa.) and the Tallahassee Democrat; and was publisher of The Olympian in Olympia, WA., and The Concord (N.H.) Monitor. He also helped produce four independent feature films: “Hitting the Cycle” with Bruce Dern; “Armed Response”; “Band of Robbers,” written and directed by Adam and Aaron Nee, and “Ghost in the Family.” Miller and his wife Margo live in Lexington Their daughter Allison Miller is an actress-screenwriter-director who most recently starred on the ABC series “A Million Little Things.”
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome in between the pages of James Jr. That's me.
I'm James Junior. We'll go in between the pages. So
Miriam Maduro is, you know, is a brilliant, courageous Dutch
Jewish agent. You already in two books previous to this.
This is the third book. She's been through all kind
of stuff. She's been captured, tortured, to escape the Nazis,
(00:30):
all kinds of stuff. But now we're in book three
and it's D Day and the eve of D Day.
So he is finishing up this Peggy c saga, saga
as we call it, half five times fast. It's volume
to be called Miriam in the Shadows. And so we're
gonna talk to you about this. Help me welcome before
I do that, if I even say, let this at
more him too. He's a three named person like me.
(00:51):
We like that, I do. I like that, award winning,
a vestigator, reporter, a foreign courseponding editor, newspay publisher, screenwriter
where you produce her novelist. I mean like he's he's
a multi hyphenet in the business. He's through the Associated Press,
Wall Street Journal. He's like big big, you know, big names.
He's in lexic kan Tucky. He's there. He I guess,
(01:13):
I guess you. You also have done four produced four
independent films. Yes, the one behind if you see body
is called Bandon Robers up there. He's like, oh, armed
respond toff. So I mean he's he is somebody who
has hit different aspects of this business, and he's an author.
Let's congratulate John Wynn Miller.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Hi, John, Ah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
My pleasures. Okay, I'm gonna ask you. I I'm actually
gonna have a question I've never asked anybody else befo him. Oh,
get ready, get ready, get ready? You're ready? No, okay,
since this is because we do we go in between
the pages. That's that's that's our whole point. We go.
We're not gonna gonna give way the spoilers of the book.
We want you to want you to go out and
buy and all stuff. Well, folks, and what we're gonna
(01:58):
talk about aspects of this and part of it is
how he came up with this. So my question I've
never asked about he's done trilogies or anything. You're now
a book three for this particular three part trilogy. Was
it the degree of how was the degree of difficulty
(02:21):
or easiness to write this last book.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Interesting? The whole thing started from a dream, which I'll
explained later. But when I turned the first book in
after finally finding a publisher, he said, well, you need
to just keep writing, and I went, what I wasn't
planning on doing more than one.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Book, okay?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And the second book came out of a series of
books I stumbled across about the Nazis during World War
Two and resistance movements. The third book, I thought, there's
no way I can do a third one, and then
I stumbled across some again. So I do tons of
(03:07):
research and read lots of history, and so I stumbled
across a couple of books that said, Wow, maybe I
can make her do this and how do I get
her involved with preventing the Nazis from having a nuclear
weapon in a way that is scientifically and historically accurate.
(03:27):
And then I started doing research on six Britain spy
agency and a lot of reading about Britain's Special Operations Executive,
which I'd never heard of. Churchill created at the beginning
of the war. He said to set Europe ablaze, so
(03:47):
they were saboteurs, and the spies that were parachuted into
the occupied territories not necessarily despired but to coordinate with
resistance groups on sabotage, collecting intelligence that they could then
send back to England via wireless communications or pigeons carrier bingees.
(04:13):
So it actually it was surprisingly pretty easy. I have
no idea why, because it just just sort of flowed.
It took me about seven months for the first rendition,
and then another couple of months of editing and going
back and forth with the publisher. One thing that really
(04:37):
helped me with this is by coincidence, I have a
GUIDs group that we go out once a week or
so and for a meal, and one of them is
a Dutch geologist who worked in coal mines in Europe
and in Appalachia in Kentucky, and talking to him gave
(04:59):
me all of these plot twists I never would have
come up with, no matter how much research I did,
because he had worked in mind was able to tell them.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So that's a.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Long answer to say, it wasn't as hard as I
thought it would be.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Great answer because I bringing up trilogies, series, book series,
you know, it all come out differently sometimes somebody like
I said, I had one book in mine. It led
itself to continue the story. Some people have it like
I want to write five books of this, you know
(05:36):
what I mean? Like, all right, but I'm just waiting
for you that was gone to know, like this is
the third book. You are't thinking that. You just basically
told us each one kind of came about from the
zone for how you why is this the ending of
this saga? It may not be ok.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not to give away anything.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I like that, Okay, but but it is book three
of three, so I'm yeah, but I'm saying this what
I like that? Actually, but we can always change the
book three or four four four? I say, but this one, well,
because presumably was going to be kind of the end
of the telling of this story. So how did that?
How did you figure that out? Uh?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
When I write in the novels, I know generally I
know the opening scene, I know sort of the middle,
I kind of know some themes that are going to happen,
and I almost always know the last scene. So I'm
working towards a goal and they will have all sorts
of roadblocks and setbacks and things along the way. With this,
(06:46):
I kind of had an I had a pretty good
idea of how it was going to end, and I
typically end the books with sort of an ambiguous ending. Uh.
So that's why I say maybe it's not the end,
because you that's the way I set things up. If
(07:09):
I feel like write another book there.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well the thing is I mean, so we can also say,
just for sake, it might even be as it could
be a spin off, it could be another story attested,
I could be anything. It's could be anything, right right.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, So yeah, I'm I try to write every day,
and so I'm working on something or the other. I
am working on a fourth book, but that's going to
take a while, you know, you just never know. Yeah,
that's great, and particularly because my books are based on
(07:46):
a whole lot of research.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Uh And I.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Tell people that if you if you read the first novel,
you'll come away knowing how to drive a U boat
because we spend a lot of time on a U
boat chasing merchant ship. And the second book you'll know
a lot about parts of history that you weren't really
(08:10):
aware of, including a serial killer, a real serial killer
in Paris during World War two. So I love finding
stuff like that out and using it, and I tell
people that the crazier my escape scene for my characters,
the more likely they are to be true.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Oh yeah, real crazy intervition, right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So I based mirror them on a lot of resistance
and SOE agents that had actually done these things. So
I wanted to buy crazy plots to be plausible and
technically and scientifically accurate.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
He said, real life, be crazy, raise arise. Yeah, yeah,
what's happening in real life? So I get that. What
is it about this genre, this kind of historical fiction
and historical thriller? I mean, how would you describe this
book genre?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It's a historical Spiona's thriller. All three of them are
based in World War Two. The first one starts shortly
before Pearl Harbor and the third one ends on D Day,
and it's chronological follows the same characters, at least the
(09:30):
ones who survived from one book to the other, primarily
Mary Maduro and her American lover, Captain Jake Rogers, who
was captain of the cargo ship that rescued Miriam and
her family from Nazi occupied Amsterdam in the first book,
(09:52):
called The peggyc And that's why it's called the PEGGYC
saga because most of the main characters are members of
the Peggy C crew or were involved in that. So
that's how that all comes about.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Well for you, what is it about that time period
that just used? Oh uh, you feel called to write about?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, as I mentioned, it all came out of a dream,
so I it didn't. I didn't pick it. It picked me.
So years ago, I was watching a really bad movie
on TV with my wife Margo and my daughter Alison,
who is now an actress, and I kept saying, I
know I can write a better screenplay than this. This
(10:36):
is just terrible, you know, like every writer in America.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I know, I exact right exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So that night, uh, I had a dream and the
next day when I woke up, I knew the first
scene of the screenplay, I knew the last scene, and
I knew the name of the ship, the Peggy C.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I have no idea where it came from. I have
no nautical ability or knowledge. I've never been on a
U boat, I've never been on a merchant ship, hadn't
been to most of the places that I write about,
so I had to do tons of research. So out
of that dream, I started putting together the story, but
(11:19):
it was back before pretty much before the Internet. There
was no Google, there was no Amazon. Wow, so you
to do research you had to actually go to Librares's.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Crazy encyclopedia and yeah, yeah, articles and things.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
My god, it's crazy, oh it was, and so it
I wrote the screenplay. I actually had some meetings in Hollywood,
didn't go anywhere, and so I put it aside because
I had a regular job as a journalist. And then
during COVID, you know, I really I've always wanted to
(11:59):
write a novel. The reason I got into journalism many
years ago was because I wanted to write a novel.
But I didn't know how to write, and I didn't
know I didn't have any interesting adventures to write about.
So that's well, become a journal let's not get all
I'd done. So during COVID, I had nothing else to do,
(12:21):
and so I watched some videos, took some online classes,
read a bunch of books, and wrote the novel. And
after fifty rejection letters, I finally found a publisher who
believed in me and bought it and been with him
ever since through all three books. So it's it's kind
(12:44):
of crazy. It's a dream that came true.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Literally literally, No, I have you don't. I know you
have to answer this. I was like you a movie
that was that was so bad? What do you remember
what movie it was that was so bad? No?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I don't. That's most of them are that bad. That's
come on.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, I can be better than I can write some
better than that. Yeah, that's reads very true.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Although it's very hard to do. And it's easy to say,
but it's really hard to do.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So did you feel because you're in this world? You
create this world, you're creating it, you're following it along
as it goes to this conclusions, You're doing the research,
the real life research and everything, knowing this is the
third I mean at the time, knowing it was the
third or three and the answer the question for either
act about these things. Did you feel a sense of
(13:47):
sadness or a were you glad because you were gainst
the conclusion of like this part of the story, like
how'd you feel? Interesting?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Originally it was pretty sad about it because it's at
it was the way it was going to end originally,
but and I didn't know if I'd be able to
pick it back up or write anything else, because it's
all been kind of a miracle that I've gotten three
books done. So when I finished it and turned it in,
(14:18):
I thought, well, I'm done. My publisher and I are
going to try to sell it as a TV series,
so I'll focus on that and work on a screenplay,
another screenplay to pitch it to Hollywood. And then while
we were doing that, I said, you know, I have
an idea maybe if I did this or that, that might.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Make a book.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And so again I stumbled across some novels or histories
or biographies that gave me an idea about how to continue.
So I was ambivalent about it. I was thrilled that
I finished, but you know, it's like given birth, had
a little postpartum.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it is like it's one of those things too,
because writing is it's a very solitary thing, right, if
you write by yourself, it's like you sometimes you're doing
and you're like, I don't know why am I doing this?
What's correct? Right? Like you're like being pregnant, and then
you get birth, You're like, okay, thank god it's done.
(15:21):
It a will forget oh get pregnant again. So to speak,
Like I want to write it, but I got a
crazy so. I mean, I feel like I've read a
few books. I just know it. That's it's a natural thing, like, yeah,
the emotions when you write a book, correct? Is that correct? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And it's kind of what am I going to do
with myself? Because I write every day, I don't write
a lot. I don't set a goal. I don't have
a quota. I'm not like Stephen King who insists on writing,
you know, ten thousand words to day, or others who
say a thousand. If I write a good paragraph, I'm happy.
If I write a couple of good pages, I'm happy.
(15:58):
Or if I just do research on a particular aspect
that may only end up being a paragraph or a sentence,
I'm fine with that. That is kind of a problem.
You go down rabbit holes. It's a good problem. You'll
just stumble across and say, wow, I've never heard of
that before. What's that mean? So I'll start doing research
(16:19):
on it and how do I work that into the plot?
Which is part of the fun, but it also slows
you down lot.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Do you usually write in the same place.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yes, I'm here in my office. I have a desk
that actually belonged to my grandfather and my father in
their law firm and in a small room in my
house in Lexington. So now I have if I travel,
I will take a computer with me and if I
(16:51):
feel the urge, i'll write there. I'm not limited, but
generally it's the same place, pretty much the same time.
But again I don't set a goal. I can write
all day or write just for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Right, Yeah, that's right, that's that's very cool. You have
a couple chair, very comple chair.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yes, yes I do. I have an expensive Uh I
don't know what it is, but uh that yes, that
it's very adjustable and I can sit in it all
day and not suffer from it.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Little these days sometimes you need to make that chair
is comfortable. Let's maybe we sit for a long time
and that I want to ask you something about the
journalism days, because so I got a minor in journalism
in college back in the eighteen hundreds when there were newspapers. Yes,
(17:48):
my first job was at a newspaper Sacramental Union. It's
not it's not even there anymore, but a sac union.
So I have all your younger viewers at home. It's
like there where they call newspapers and stuff. I really
enjoyed journalism. I enjoyed you know, we have a I
have a podcast on my network for Ernie Pyle. I'm
(18:09):
sure you heard of who is a journalist, very famous one,
and we do. We have a body we can show
off his on my network and it's very popular. And
and why do you think war especially World War two, Vietnam?
I mean, I guess Korea on some level, and I
guess you now count Iraq, right, So I want to
(18:38):
ask you why do you think they are popular subjects
for not just because you're because you're a journalist and
an author, not just journalists in facts, but also book scenery,
book scenarios. I mean, there's a whole World War two
a conference my friend goes to every year and she
(18:59):
us losing outlasts. It's huge. So why do you think
it's a it's a place people like to mine from.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, it's it's sort of a composition or of all
the struggles that life is, but on steroids, because the
danger is so much higher, the stakes are so much higher. Uh,
the chance of being a hero or a coward. Uh,
(19:30):
you know what would I do in that situation? It's
easy for the reader to feel the emotion of what's
going on. Particularly mine novels aren't about battles or war itself.
It's about the set, the resistance fighters, the intelligence, the
(19:51):
people who drop in behind the lines and deal with
the Nazis. So it reveals a lot about character, it
reveals a lot about human nature. The scary thing about
my books is every country that the Nazis occupied had
(20:11):
a large group of cooperators, collaborators who agreed with the
Nazis and willingly, you know, prosecuted or persecuted the Jews
or imposed horrible restrictions. So it's surprising what you learn,
both from history and from novels about how humans can
(20:35):
become so inhumane and how Nazis can have a flicker
of humanity. That so it's not black and white. I mean,
there are just horrible Nazis and horrible people, but some
of them think they're doing the right thing. Well, as
(20:56):
they say, the villain in every movie always thinks he's
the hero. Yes, because he's doing the right thing right.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's the reason why he's doing he has he has
a legitimate reason why he thinks he's doing this, Why
this should happen. Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, so it's it's an endless canvas of human drama
with incredibly high stakes and with elements of bravery and
human emotion that you just don't get, I guess, and
other situations and other types of books.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense. It's it's uh, it's
just it's just there's so many books that are being
used as a backdrop too for it. That's what I was,
a backdrop backdrop. It's not it's not just you get
you have the books that actually have the war books
that but there's like there are people who are really
and you're right, you know. I mentioned Ernie Pyle because
he was one of the first journalists who talked about
(21:56):
the actual soldier that was Yeah, it made it made
a human, and so your book's also making a human.
You're making a human. But it's extraordinary d day, that's
extraordinary moments in history.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah. And Miriam is not really a super spot even
though she was trained in sabotage and silent killing by
the SOE. She is a young mother haunted by survivor's
guilt from the people she had had to leave behind
in previous missions and the child that she had to
(22:31):
leave behind. So it's not just you know, James Bond
type of macho character. She's a very tortured individual who
thinks she's doing the right thing, but it struggles with
doing it because she has to do horrible things if
she wants to save a lot of people, right, and
(22:54):
how do you live with that? As part of her struggle.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Is that thing? You're right, it's that thing. It's it's
it's you want you It's that you know, we have
to kill many to save a few, or kill a
few to save many. That's like, that's a theme that
people love, right, that's a theme that people to. It's that.
It's the it's the Sophie's Choice thing, child cheese. It
(23:23):
was so bad. It was like, oh my god, I
think that that those scenes. I mean, if you guys
have males, it's it's it's like gut wrenching thoughts. That's
the thing when you think about it, right.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh, it's horrible. And that's the way when people ask
me what the book's about. So my my log line,
my short pitches, it's it's about a Dutch Jew turned
lethal British spuy who infiltrates a Nazi plant manufacturing radioactive warheads,
only to face an impossible choice save dy Day or
(23:58):
the man she loves. So and it's so it's a
personal story, but it's a bigger, broader story that tells
you a whole lot about what was going on around
D Day and the true fear that the Nazis were
developing a nuclear program ahead of the Americans, which they
(24:19):
should have because they had all the scientists that they had.
They were way ahead of the Americans. Fortunately, Hitler wasn't
a big fan of it. He didn't think it was
worth spending all that money. So, oh, but there's some
belief that they got close.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well I believe why why why? Why would we not
believe it? They didn't vent there's I always say, how
we say this? There are things that came out of it, Yeah,
are in use today. I would say, there's the things
that they're used obviously for different reasons. Oh yeah, but
there are things.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Well, you know, after the war was over, the Americans
had a called Operation paper Clip. It was a secret
operation to get all the nuclear scientists or the top scientists,
even if they were war criminals, even if they had
witnessed war crimes or had kind of been involved with
(25:15):
like Werner von Braun, the head of NASA. He ran
the V two program, the rockets that killed a lot
of people V one and V two, and he worked
in slave camps. He knew what was going on, but
he was part of this Operation paper Clip where they
snuck them into America, gave them jobs, and kind of
(25:38):
ignored their Nazi past. So a lot of the things
that we benefited from were from that program that came
out of kind of came out of a fear that
the if we don't do it, the Soviets will get them,
and then the Soviets will get the jet planes or
the rockets or the bombs or the uh the poison
(26:01):
gas programs. So we were able to overlook.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Them, not to say we have Remember the Soviets were
our enemy after that. So it's like something saying if
you almost forget that we were really we were really
scared about them. I mean there was, I.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Mean absolutely, yeah, good reason, with good reason. Yeah, they
were as bad as we thought they were, right, So
we did a lot of bad things to prevent them
from from winning.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
The thing about war it self, and I don't think
I've talk about this for anybody Uh. The thing about
war it self, it's just it's it's such a complex
thing because it's based on belief of something. That's why
you're in war, right, and but you're using regular human
beings to perpetrate and fight the war. And either they
(27:00):
have to believe in it too or they don't, but
they're following what their country is telling them. Like there's
so many different layers Oh yeah to war and war.
When they say war is hell and stuff, it is, right,
It's it's all those things. And at the same time,
sometimes war seems almost necessary to for a good cause, right,
(27:26):
and sometimes you found there was no cause. You know,
there's like a political on it. But it's like there's
just it's just wasn't a very complicated thing. Uh. I
come from I come from a veteran families. I'm very
much all about veterans and and give what they want
and the whole thing. Yeah, yes, I mean they did
it so right. I was you're gonna say something.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, I was just gonna say I do. I read
a lot of histories and uh, listen to historical podcasts. Uh,
if you talk about motive for war, you know, like
World War One came out and nowhere. I mean, it
was the stupidest war of all time and was one
of the deadlist because they didn't realize that, well, we
(28:08):
got submachine guns down, we had tanks, and we had
long range artillery. It's not like you know, Napoleon with
cavalry charges, although there were lots of cavalry involved, right, So,
and it just kind of went from this minor crisis
over the assassination of of an heir to the throne
(28:32):
in Austria Hungary to a world war that just was
absolutely devastating and ended in a way that guaranteed it
was going to start again in about twenty years that
you did. Yeah, it was like a twenty year armistice,
and we tried to prevent that from happening again after
(28:56):
World War Two. But it's just it seems to we
always find a reason to.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Get involved with.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
A failure of foreign policy, to use arms instead to
try to intend in negotiations.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
War is an insane process. It's supposed to be an
extension of of politics, but sometimes it's just ego and insanity.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And you need to learn some of these leaders in
the world. You find out how insane they are.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, yeah, you're like really, like.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's why that happened. Okay, God, it was like because
you just looked at me wrong, Okay God, And they've
got to win a war. Yeah, it's like it's kind
of I know, you have the whole allied ship and
if there's a whole bunch of that goes into because
my friends those like my best friend hates you and
I hate you too, Like this is kind of that kid.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, then they suck you in when you didn't really
have a particular interest in it, and so then the
next person gets someone else in our next country. And
it's just that's what happened in World War One and
then again with World War Two. Although world War Two,
at least from the American perspective, we did the right thing.
(30:15):
We were trying to do the right thing, and I
don't think we had any choice but to get into
the war, particularly after japan A tactics at Burl Arbor.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Let me ask you a question of World War One.
It's that that was not talked about enough. I feel
I feel like world War two because obviously because you
have Hitler, this big, larger than life, evil figure. But
World one, You're right, we don't talk about that enough.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Oh it was the first really big technological war, and
the generals in particular were still fighting the last war,
so they would, you know, dig trenches, Okay, we're gonna
do a full frontal assault, and not paying attention to
the machine guns and the artillery, and and over and
(30:58):
over and over doing that. I mean, just millions of
people without gaining a yard of territory, and with kind
of this leadership that couldn't figure out how to stop
this loop attack to retreat, attack, retreat, sacrificed millions of men.
(31:22):
I mean England, they there's some like twenty thirty percent
of all men between the ages of eighteen and forty
five died in that war. So they just had this
and in France, France suffered horribly. In part of the
(31:44):
result of that is they weren't willing to stand up
to the Nazis. Led to World War two. So it
had all sorts of evolutions. But it's well worth people
reading about just because of the insanity of it.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I think I's one of those things where it's all connected.
And that's the thing. It's like, each each one is,
each war is connected, everything's connected. Every world leader praise all.
It's all connected to where we are today. It's just
it's and the world's connected. We're more connected. People think,
like I said it terms to eyelin ships, who we
trade with, we work with, who, who we've been friends
(32:27):
with for years. I say, it's a whole It's a
whole thing, not just geography. That's part of it too.
Geography is a major war order also, as we know.
But I just always I just think, boy, this is
a war, and then how we cover wars and that's
a whole other thing too, And it's just you know,
it's all. But I know it's very pop back to
my original thing. I know, it's very it's a popular
(32:48):
subject still. It's a popular thing still, and it's been
used in batchhops for movies and for books and for
radio and everything. So I just think it's a it's
one of those genre. I think that will never go away.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I wish more politicians would read those history books so
we didn't keep repeating the same thing over and over.
I mean, there's a famous story, but during the Cuban
Missile crisis back in the sixties, where we were putting
Cuba under an embargo and the Soviets were trying to
(33:25):
ship missiles there that it became very close to World
War three, And John F. Kennedy kept referring to the
book The Guns of August Barbara Tuckman, which talked about
how World War One happened because of all of these
miscommunications and misunderstandings. So they used that as sort of
(33:47):
a strategy to prevent World War three. Now, very few
of our presidents would have read that book been able
to subtle enough to realize the nuances of how value you,
how history can get out of control.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, it's it's it's very true, very true. I thought,
you Rare, this is great. I just so I want
to end this with why should people read this book series,
including this new book book three? In your in your opinion?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I think they're fun reads. Uh, they're very educational.
It will teach you a lot of things about World
War two and the the people in the behind the
lines that you wouldn't necessarily know about, about the courage
that it took to stand up to the Nazis, about
(34:45):
the technology and the history. But really it is about humanity.
How do you how do you fight in humane evil
and preserve your humanity? Even using their tools against them.
So I think readers will enjoy sort of being put
in this situation of thinking what would I do if
(35:07):
I had to make these choices? And the characters. I
think that hopefully I've been able to develop them, whether
or not. Uh, you know, cardboard cutouts of superspies. They're
real people, based on real stories.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
So folks, get this book. It's out. It's called Miriam
in the Shadows. It's it's part three. But then.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Well to standalone.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, it by itself. Yeah, you know if you want
to get the other.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Two yeah, uh yeah, and it's available in uh the
edition hard copy audibles coming out soon, so all three
of them have an audible version and the edition that
you can download. Uh, and my publishers about to launch
a special deal for all three books e books, but
(35:59):
it's not happened yet.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Okay, so it's coming. Well, where can they follow your website? Anything?
Can they follow you? Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
My website is my name, John Wynn Miller j O
H N W I N N M I L L
E R dot com. I'm also on uh, Facebook and
Instagram and threads. But not not.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
X very good, he said, he said, not X. You
said that, Yes, I like that conviction.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yes, I do have standards. Okay, what Graucho Marx used
to say is that and and those are uh, those
are my standards and they don't like them. I got others.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I like that. I like that though. Yeah. On Facebook,
thank you John Win Miller for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Well, thanks, James, I appreciate. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, this is good. This is really good. So if
you do a spin off for another book, you have
to come back on the show and we'll see it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
What I We'll definitely do that, folks.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
This is in between the pages. We're on Facebook, ourselves,
a lot of help dot coms, the website, jail JBD
is everywhere. We are on YouTube, we're on all the streaming.
This will be on everything. So it's like iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple,
all those different things. Just look in between the pages
with James on Jr. And look for John Win Miller
and you'll see it on there. Everyone. Books aren't going nowhere.
We are reading. People are reading and doing an audio.
(37:31):
They're doing either're doing hand physical copies, they're going with.
So I suggest reading is a good thing. It takes
you out of your real life. Takes you places you
never get to go. We'll see you next time.
Welcome in between the pages of James Jr. That's me.
I'm James Junior. We'll go in between the pages. So
Miriam Maduro is, you know, is a brilliant, courageous Dutch
Jewish agent. You already in two books previous to this.
This is the third book. She's been through all kind
of stuff. She's been captured, tortured, to escape the Nazis,
(00:30):
all kinds of stuff. But now we're in book three
and it's D Day and the eve of D Day.
So he is finishing up this Peggy c saga, saga
as we call it, half five times fast. It's volume
to be called Miriam in the Shadows. And so we're
gonna talk to you about this. Help me welcome before
I do that, if I even say, let this at
more him too. He's a three named person like me.
(00:51):
We like that, I do. I like that, award winning,
a vestigator, reporter, a foreign courseponding editor, newspay publisher, screenwriter
where you produce her novelist. I mean like he's he's
a multi hyphenet in the business. He's through the Associated Press,
Wall Street Journal. He's like big big, you know, big names.
He's in lexic kan Tucky. He's there. He I guess,
(01:13):
I guess you. You also have done four produced four
independent films. Yes, the one behind if you see body
is called Bandon Robers up there. He's like, oh, armed
respond toff. So I mean he's he is somebody who
has hit different aspects of this business, and he's an author.
Let's congratulate John Wynn Miller.
Speaker 2 (01:33):
Hi, John, Ah, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1 (01:37):
My pleasures. Okay, I'm gonna ask you. I I'm actually
gonna have a question I've never asked anybody else befo him. Oh,
get ready, get ready, get ready? You're ready? No, okay,
since this is because we do we go in between
the pages. That's that's that's our whole point. We go.
We're not gonna gonna give way the spoilers of the book.
We want you to want you to go out and
buy and all stuff. Well, folks, and what we're gonna
(01:58):
talk about aspects of this and part of it is
how he came up with this. So my question I've
never asked about he's done trilogies or anything. You're now
a book three for this particular three part trilogy. Was
it the degree of how was the degree of difficulty
(02:21):
or easiness to write this last book.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Interesting? The whole thing started from a dream, which I'll
explained later. But when I turned the first book in
after finally finding a publisher, he said, well, you need
to just keep writing, and I went, what I wasn't
planning on doing more than one.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
Book, okay?
Speaker 2 (02:45):
And the second book came out of a series of
books I stumbled across about the Nazis during World War
Two and resistance movements. The third book, I thought, there's
no way I can do a third one, and then
I stumbled across some again. So I do tons of
(03:07):
research and read lots of history, and so I stumbled
across a couple of books that said, Wow, maybe I
can make her do this and how do I get
her involved with preventing the Nazis from having a nuclear
weapon in a way that is scientifically and historically accurate.
(03:27):
And then I started doing research on six Britain spy
agency and a lot of reading about Britain's Special Operations Executive,
which I'd never heard of. Churchill created at the beginning
of the war. He said to set Europe ablaze, so
(03:47):
they were saboteurs, and the spies that were parachuted into
the occupied territories not necessarily despired but to coordinate with
resistance groups on sabotage, collecting intelligence that they could then
send back to England via wireless communications or pigeons carrier bingees.
(04:13):
So it actually it was surprisingly pretty easy. I have
no idea why, because it just just sort of flowed.
It took me about seven months for the first rendition,
and then another couple of months of editing and going
back and forth with the publisher. One thing that really
(04:37):
helped me with this is by coincidence, I have a
GUIDs group that we go out once a week or
so and for a meal, and one of them is
a Dutch geologist who worked in coal mines in Europe
and in Appalachia in Kentucky, and talking to him gave
(04:59):
me all of these plot twists I never would have
come up with, no matter how much research I did,
because he had worked in mind was able to tell them.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
So that's a.
Speaker 2 (05:09):
Long answer to say, it wasn't as hard as I
thought it would be.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
Great answer because I bringing up trilogies, series, book series,
you know, it all come out differently sometimes somebody like
I said, I had one book in mine. It led
itself to continue the story. Some people have it like
I want to write five books of this, you know
(05:36):
what I mean? Like, all right, but I'm just waiting
for you that was gone to know, like this is
the third book. You are't thinking that. You just basically
told us each one kind of came about from the
zone for how you why is this the ending of
this saga? It may not be ok.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
Not to give away anything.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
I like that, Okay, but but it is book three
of three, so I'm yeah, but I'm saying this what
I like that? Actually, but we can always change the
book three or four four four? I say, but this one, well,
because presumably was going to be kind of the end
of the telling of this story. So how did that?
How did you figure that out? Uh?
Speaker 2 (06:22):
When I write in the novels, I know generally I
know the opening scene, I know sort of the middle,
I kind of know some themes that are going to happen,
and I almost always know the last scene. So I'm
working towards a goal and they will have all sorts
of roadblocks and setbacks and things along the way. With this,
(06:46):
I kind of had an I had a pretty good
idea of how it was going to end, and I
typically end the books with sort of an ambiguous ending. Uh.
So that's why I say maybe it's not the end,
because you that's the way I set things up. If
(07:09):
I feel like write another book there.
Speaker 1 (07:12):
Well the thing is I mean, so we can also say,
just for sake, it might even be as it could
be a spin off, it could be another story attested,
I could be anything. It's could be anything, right right.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
Yeah, So yeah, I'm I try to write every day,
and so I'm working on something or the other. I
am working on a fourth book, but that's going to
take a while, you know, you just never know. Yeah,
that's great, and particularly because my books are based on
(07:46):
a whole lot of research.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
Uh And I.
Speaker 2 (07:49):
Tell people that if you if you read the first novel,
you'll come away knowing how to drive a U boat
because we spend a lot of time on a U
boat chasing merchant ship. And the second book you'll know
a lot about parts of history that you weren't really
(08:10):
aware of, including a serial killer, a real serial killer
in Paris during World War two. So I love finding
stuff like that out and using it, and I tell
people that the crazier my escape scene for my characters,
the more likely they are to be true.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Oh yeah, real crazy intervition, right, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
So I based mirror them on a lot of resistance
and SOE agents that had actually done these things. So
I wanted to buy crazy plots to be plausible and
technically and scientifically accurate.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
He said, real life, be crazy, raise arise. Yeah, yeah,
what's happening in real life? So I get that. What
is it about this genre, this kind of historical fiction
and historical thriller? I mean, how would you describe this
book genre?
Speaker 2 (09:10):
It's a historical Spiona's thriller. All three of them are
based in World War Two. The first one starts shortly
before Pearl Harbor and the third one ends on D Day,
and it's chronological follows the same characters, at least the
(09:30):
ones who survived from one book to the other, primarily
Mary Maduro and her American lover, Captain Jake Rogers, who
was captain of the cargo ship that rescued Miriam and
her family from Nazi occupied Amsterdam in the first book,
(09:52):
called The peggyc And that's why it's called the PEGGYC
saga because most of the main characters are members of
the Peggy C crew or were involved in that. So
that's how that all comes about.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
Well for you, what is it about that time period
that just used? Oh uh, you feel called to write about?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
Well, as I mentioned, it all came out of a dream,
so I it didn't. I didn't pick it. It picked me.
So years ago, I was watching a really bad movie
on TV with my wife Margo and my daughter Alison,
who is now an actress, and I kept saying, I
know I can write a better screenplay than this. This
(10:36):
is just terrible, you know, like every writer in America.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
I know, I exact right exactly.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
So that night, uh, I had a dream and the
next day when I woke up, I knew the first
scene of the screenplay, I knew the last scene, and
I knew the name of the ship, the Peggy C.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
That was it.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
I have no idea where it came from. I have
no nautical ability or knowledge. I've never been on a
U boat, I've never been on a merchant ship, hadn't
been to most of the places that I write about,
so I had to do tons of research. So out
of that dream, I started putting together the story, but
(11:19):
it was back before pretty much before the Internet. There
was no Google, there was no Amazon. Wow, so you
to do research you had to actually go to Librares's.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Crazy encyclopedia and yeah, yeah, articles and things.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
My god, it's crazy, oh it was, and so it
I wrote the screenplay. I actually had some meetings in Hollywood,
didn't go anywhere, and so I put it aside because
I had a regular job as a journalist. And then
during COVID, you know, I really I've always wanted to
(11:59):
write a novel. The reason I got into journalism many
years ago was because I wanted to write a novel.
But I didn't know how to write, and I didn't
know I didn't have any interesting adventures to write about.
So that's well, become a journal let's not get all
I'd done. So during COVID, I had nothing else to do,
(12:21):
and so I watched some videos, took some online classes,
read a bunch of books, and wrote the novel. And
after fifty rejection letters, I finally found a publisher who
believed in me and bought it and been with him
ever since through all three books. So it's it's kind
(12:44):
of crazy. It's a dream that came true.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
Literally literally, No, I have you don't. I know you
have to answer this. I was like you a movie
that was that was so bad? What do you remember
what movie it was that was so bad? No?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
I don't. That's most of them are that bad. That's
come on.
Speaker 1 (13:07):
Yeah, I can be better than I can write some
better than that. Yeah, that's reads very true.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Although it's very hard to do. And it's easy to say,
but it's really hard to do.
Speaker 1 (13:22):
So did you feel because you're in this world? You
create this world, you're creating it, you're following it along
as it goes to this conclusions, You're doing the research,
the real life research and everything, knowing this is the
third I mean at the time, knowing it was the
third or three and the answer the question for either
act about these things. Did you feel a sense of
(13:47):
sadness or a were you glad because you were gainst
the conclusion of like this part of the story, like
how'd you feel? Interesting?
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Originally it was pretty sad about it because it's at
it was the way it was going to end originally,
but and I didn't know if I'd be able to
pick it back up or write anything else, because it's
all been kind of a miracle that I've gotten three
books done. So when I finished it and turned it in,
(14:18):
I thought, well, I'm done. My publisher and I are
going to try to sell it as a TV series,
so I'll focus on that and work on a screenplay,
another screenplay to pitch it to Hollywood. And then while
we were doing that, I said, you know, I have
an idea maybe if I did this or that, that might.
Speaker 1 (14:39):
Make a book.
Speaker 2 (14:40):
And so again I stumbled across some novels or histories
or biographies that gave me an idea about how to continue.
So I was ambivalent about it. I was thrilled that
I finished, but you know, it's like given birth, had
a little postpartum.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, it is like it's one of those things too,
because writing is it's a very solitary thing, right, if
you write by yourself, it's like you sometimes you're doing
and you're like, I don't know why am I doing this?
What's correct? Right? Like you're like being pregnant, and then
you get birth, You're like, okay, thank god it's done.
(15:21):
It a will forget oh get pregnant again. So to speak,
Like I want to write it, but I got a
crazy so. I mean, I feel like I've read a
few books. I just know it. That's it's a natural thing, like, yeah,
the emotions when you write a book, correct? Is that correct? Right? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (15:35):
And it's kind of what am I going to do
with myself? Because I write every day, I don't write
a lot. I don't set a goal. I don't have
a quota. I'm not like Stephen King who insists on writing,
you know, ten thousand words to day, or others who
say a thousand. If I write a good paragraph, I'm happy.
If I write a couple of good pages, I'm happy.
(15:58):
Or if I just do research on a particular aspect
that may only end up being a paragraph or a sentence,
I'm fine with that. That is kind of a problem.
You go down rabbit holes. It's a good problem. You'll
just stumble across and say, wow, I've never heard of
that before. What's that mean? So I'll start doing research
(16:19):
on it and how do I work that into the plot?
Which is part of the fun, but it also slows
you down lot.
Speaker 1 (16:27):
Do you usually write in the same place.
Speaker 2 (16:30):
Yes, I'm here in my office. I have a desk
that actually belonged to my grandfather and my father in
their law firm and in a small room in my
house in Lexington. So now I have if I travel,
I will take a computer with me and if I
(16:51):
feel the urge, i'll write there. I'm not limited, but
generally it's the same place, pretty much the same time.
But again I don't set a goal. I can write
all day or write just for a few hours.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
Right, Yeah, that's right, that's that's very cool. You have
a couple chair, very comple chair.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Yes, yes I do. I have an expensive Uh I
don't know what it is, but uh that yes, that
it's very adjustable and I can sit in it all
day and not suffer from it.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
Little these days sometimes you need to make that chair
is comfortable. Let's maybe we sit for a long time
and that I want to ask you something about the
journalism days, because so I got a minor in journalism
in college back in the eighteen hundreds when there were newspapers. Yes,
(17:48):
my first job was at a newspaper Sacramental Union. It's
not it's not even there anymore, but a sac union.
So I have all your younger viewers at home. It's
like there where they call newspapers and stuff. I really
enjoyed journalism. I enjoyed you know, we have a I
have a podcast on my network for Ernie Pyle. I'm
(18:09):
sure you heard of who is a journalist, very famous one,
and we do. We have a body we can show
off his on my network and it's very popular. And
and why do you think war especially World War two, Vietnam?
I mean, I guess Korea on some level, and I
guess you now count Iraq, right, So I want to
(18:38):
ask you why do you think they are popular subjects
for not just because you're because you're a journalist and
an author, not just journalists in facts, but also book scenery,
book scenarios. I mean, there's a whole World War two
a conference my friend goes to every year and she
(18:59):
us losing outlasts. It's huge. So why do you think
it's a it's a place people like to mine from.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, it's it's sort of a composition or of all
the struggles that life is, but on steroids, because the
danger is so much higher, the stakes are so much higher. Uh,
the chance of being a hero or a coward. Uh,
(19:30):
you know what would I do in that situation? It's
easy for the reader to feel the emotion of what's
going on. Particularly mine novels aren't about battles or war itself.
It's about the set, the resistance fighters, the intelligence, the
(19:51):
people who drop in behind the lines and deal with
the Nazis. So it reveals a lot about character, it
reveals a lot about human nature. The scary thing about
my books is every country that the Nazis occupied had
(20:11):
a large group of cooperators, collaborators who agreed with the
Nazis and willingly, you know, prosecuted or persecuted the Jews
or imposed horrible restrictions. So it's surprising what you learn,
both from history and from novels about how humans can
(20:35):
become so inhumane and how Nazis can have a flicker
of humanity. That so it's not black and white. I mean,
there are just horrible Nazis and horrible people, but some
of them think they're doing the right thing. Well, as
(20:56):
they say, the villain in every movie always thinks he's
the hero. Yes, because he's doing the right thing right.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
It's the reason why he's doing he has he has
a legitimate reason why he thinks he's doing this, Why
this should happen. Yes.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, so it's it's an endless canvas of human drama
with incredibly high stakes and with elements of bravery and
human emotion that you just don't get, I guess, and
other situations and other types of books.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Yeah, that makes that makes sense. It's it's uh, it's
just it's just there's so many books that are being
used as a backdrop too for it. That's what I was,
a backdrop backdrop. It's not it's not just you get
you have the books that actually have the war books
that but there's like there are people who are really
and you're right, you know. I mentioned Ernie Pyle because
he was one of the first journalists who talked about
(21:56):
the actual soldier that was Yeah, it made it made
a human, and so your book's also making a human.
You're making a human. But it's extraordinary d day, that's
extraordinary moments in history.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
Yeah. And Miriam is not really a super spot even
though she was trained in sabotage and silent killing by
the SOE. She is a young mother haunted by survivor's
guilt from the people she had had to leave behind
in previous missions and the child that she had to
(22:31):
leave behind. So it's not just you know, James Bond
type of macho character. She's a very tortured individual who
thinks she's doing the right thing, but it struggles with
doing it because she has to do horrible things if
she wants to save a lot of people, right, and
(22:54):
how do you live with that? As part of her struggle.
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Is that thing? You're right, it's that thing. It's it's
it's you want you It's that you know, we have
to kill many to save a few, or kill a
few to save many. That's like, that's a theme that
people love, right, that's a theme that people to. It's that.
It's the it's the Sophie's Choice thing, child cheese. It
(23:23):
was so bad. It was like, oh my god, I
think that that those scenes. I mean, if you guys
have males, it's it's it's like gut wrenching thoughts. That's
the thing when you think about it, right.
Speaker 2 (23:35):
Oh, it's horrible. And that's the way when people ask
me what the book's about. So my my log line,
my short pitches, it's it's about a Dutch Jew turned
lethal British spuy who infiltrates a Nazi plant manufacturing radioactive warheads,
only to face an impossible choice save dy Day or
(23:58):
the man she loves. So and it's so it's a
personal story, but it's a bigger, broader story that tells
you a whole lot about what was going on around
D Day and the true fear that the Nazis were
developing a nuclear program ahead of the Americans, which they
(24:19):
should have because they had all the scientists that they had.
They were way ahead of the Americans. Fortunately, Hitler wasn't
a big fan of it. He didn't think it was
worth spending all that money. So, oh, but there's some
belief that they got close.
Speaker 1 (24:39):
Well I believe why why why? Why would we not
believe it? They didn't vent there's I always say, how
we say this? There are things that came out of it, Yeah,
are in use today. I would say, there's the things
that they're used obviously for different reasons. Oh yeah, but
there are things.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Well, you know, after the war was over, the Americans
had a called Operation paper Clip. It was a secret
operation to get all the nuclear scientists or the top scientists,
even if they were war criminals, even if they had
witnessed war crimes or had kind of been involved with
(25:15):
like Werner von Braun, the head of NASA. He ran
the V two program, the rockets that killed a lot
of people V one and V two, and he worked
in slave camps. He knew what was going on, but
he was part of this Operation paper Clip where they
snuck them into America, gave them jobs, and kind of
(25:38):
ignored their Nazi past. So a lot of the things
that we benefited from were from that program that came
out of kind of came out of a fear that
the if we don't do it, the Soviets will get them,
and then the Soviets will get the jet planes or
the rockets or the bombs or the uh the poison
(26:01):
gas programs. So we were able to overlook.
Speaker 1 (26:05):
Them, not to say we have Remember the Soviets were
our enemy after that. So it's like something saying if
you almost forget that we were really we were really
scared about them. I mean there was, I.
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Mean absolutely, yeah, good reason, with good reason. Yeah, they
were as bad as we thought they were, right, So
we did a lot of bad things to prevent them
from from winning.
Speaker 1 (26:35):
The thing about war it self, and I don't think
I've talk about this for anybody Uh. The thing about
war it self, it's just it's it's such a complex
thing because it's based on belief of something. That's why
you're in war, right, and but you're using regular human
beings to perpetrate and fight the war. And either they
(27:00):
have to believe in it too or they don't, but
they're following what their country is telling them. Like there's
so many different layers Oh yeah to war and war.
When they say war is hell and stuff, it is, right,
It's it's all those things. And at the same time,
sometimes war seems almost necessary to for a good cause, right,
(27:26):
and sometimes you found there was no cause. You know,
there's like a political on it. But it's like there's
just it's just wasn't a very complicated thing. Uh. I
come from I come from a veteran families. I'm very
much all about veterans and and give what they want
and the whole thing. Yeah, yes, I mean they did
it so right. I was you're gonna say something.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Well, I was just gonna say I do. I read
a lot of histories and uh, listen to historical podcasts. Uh,
if you talk about motive for war, you know, like
World War One came out and nowhere. I mean, it
was the stupidest war of all time and was one
of the deadlist because they didn't realize that, well, we
(28:08):
got submachine guns down, we had tanks, and we had
long range artillery. It's not like you know, Napoleon with
cavalry charges, although there were lots of cavalry involved, right, So,
and it just kind of went from this minor crisis
over the assassination of of an heir to the throne
(28:32):
in Austria Hungary to a world war that just was
absolutely devastating and ended in a way that guaranteed it
was going to start again in about twenty years that
you did. Yeah, it was like a twenty year armistice,
and we tried to prevent that from happening again after
(28:56):
World War Two. But it's just it seems to we
always find a reason to.
Speaker 1 (29:01):
Get involved with.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
A failure of foreign policy, to use arms instead to
try to intend in negotiations.
Speaker 1 (29:11):
Yeah, it's.
Speaker 2 (29:15):
War is an insane process. It's supposed to be an
extension of of politics, but sometimes it's just ego and insanity.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
And you need to learn some of these leaders in
the world. You find out how insane they are.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
Yeah, yeah, you're like really, like.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
That's why that happened. Okay, God, it was like because
you just looked at me wrong, Okay God, And they've
got to win a war. Yeah, it's like it's kind
of I know, you have the whole allied ship and
if there's a whole bunch of that goes into because
my friends those like my best friend hates you and
I hate you too, Like this is kind of that kid.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Well, then they suck you in when you didn't really
have a particular interest in it, and so then the
next person gets someone else in our next country. And
it's just that's what happened in World War One and
then again with World War Two. Although world War Two,
at least from the American perspective, we did the right thing.
(30:15):
We were trying to do the right thing, and I
don't think we had any choice but to get into
the war, particularly after japan A tactics at Burl Arbor.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Let me ask you a question of World War One.
It's that that was not talked about enough. I feel
I feel like world War two because obviously because you
have Hitler, this big, larger than life, evil figure. But
World one, You're right, we don't talk about that enough.
Speaker 2 (30:37):
Oh it was the first really big technological war, and
the generals in particular were still fighting the last war,
so they would, you know, dig trenches, Okay, we're gonna
do a full frontal assault, and not paying attention to
the machine guns and the artillery, and and over and
(30:58):
over and over doing that. I mean, just millions of
people without gaining a yard of territory, and with kind
of this leadership that couldn't figure out how to stop
this loop attack to retreat, attack, retreat, sacrificed millions of men.
(31:22):
I mean England, they there's some like twenty thirty percent
of all men between the ages of eighteen and forty
five died in that war. So they just had this
and in France, France suffered horribly. In part of the
(31:44):
result of that is they weren't willing to stand up
to the Nazis. Led to World War two. So it
had all sorts of evolutions. But it's well worth people
reading about just because of the insanity of it.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
I think I's one of those things where it's all connected.
And that's the thing. It's like, each each one is,
each war is connected, everything's connected. Every world leader praise all.
It's all connected to where we are today. It's just
it's and the world's connected. We're more connected. People think,
like I said it terms to eyelin ships, who we
trade with, we work with, who, who we've been friends
(32:27):
with for years. I say, it's a whole It's a
whole thing, not just geography. That's part of it too.
Geography is a major war order also, as we know.
But I just always I just think, boy, this is
a war, and then how we cover wars and that's
a whole other thing too, And it's just you know,
it's all. But I know it's very pop back to
my original thing. I know, it's very it's a popular
(32:48):
subject still. It's a popular thing still, and it's been
used in batchhops for movies and for books and for
radio and everything. So I just think it's a it's
one of those genre. I think that will never go away.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
I wish more politicians would read those history books so
we didn't keep repeating the same thing over and over.
I mean, there's a famous story, but during the Cuban
Missile crisis back in the sixties, where we were putting
Cuba under an embargo and the Soviets were trying to
(33:25):
ship missiles there that it became very close to World
War three, And John F. Kennedy kept referring to the
book The Guns of August Barbara Tuckman, which talked about
how World War One happened because of all of these
miscommunications and misunderstandings. So they used that as sort of
(33:47):
a strategy to prevent World War three. Now, very few
of our presidents would have read that book been able
to subtle enough to realize the nuances of how value you,
how history can get out of control.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Yeah, it's it's it's very true, very true. I thought,
you Rare, this is great. I just so I want
to end this with why should people read this book series,
including this new book book three? In your in your opinion?
Speaker 2 (34:21):
Well, I think they're fun reads. Uh, they're very educational.
It will teach you a lot of things about World
War two and the the people in the behind the
lines that you wouldn't necessarily know about, about the courage
that it took to stand up to the Nazis, about
(34:45):
the technology and the history. But really it is about humanity.
How do you how do you fight in humane evil
and preserve your humanity? Even using their tools against them.
So I think readers will enjoy sort of being put
in this situation of thinking what would I do if
(35:07):
I had to make these choices? And the characters. I
think that hopefully I've been able to develop them, whether
or not. Uh, you know, cardboard cutouts of superspies. They're
real people, based on real stories.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
So folks, get this book. It's out. It's called Miriam
in the Shadows. It's it's part three. But then.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Well to standalone.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
Yeah, it by itself. Yeah, you know if you want
to get the other.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
Two yeah, uh yeah, and it's available in uh the
edition hard copy audibles coming out soon, so all three
of them have an audible version and the edition that
you can download. Uh, and my publishers about to launch
a special deal for all three books e books, but
(35:59):
it's not happened yet.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Okay, so it's coming. Well, where can they follow your website? Anything?
Can they follow you? Yes?
Speaker 2 (36:08):
My website is my name, John Wynn Miller j O
H N W I N N M I L L
E R dot com. I'm also on uh, Facebook and
Instagram and threads. But not not.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
X very good, he said, he said, not X. You
said that, Yes, I like that conviction.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yes, I do have standards. Okay, what Graucho Marx used
to say is that and and those are uh, those
are my standards and they don't like them. I got others.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
I like that. I like that though. Yeah. On Facebook,
thank you John Win Miller for being on the show.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Well, thanks, James, I appreciate. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (37:02):
Yeah, this is good. This is really good. So if
you do a spin off for another book, you have
to come back on the show and we'll see it.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
What I We'll definitely do that, folks.
Speaker 1 (37:11):
This is in between the pages. We're on Facebook, ourselves,
a lot of help dot coms, the website, jail JBD
is everywhere. We are on YouTube, we're on all the streaming.
This will be on everything. So it's like iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple,
all those different things. Just look in between the pages
with James on Jr. And look for John Win Miller
and you'll see it on there. Everyone. Books aren't going nowhere.
We are reading. People are reading and doing an audio.
(37:31):
They're doing either're doing hand physical copies, they're going with.
So I suggest reading is a good thing. It takes
you out of your real life. Takes you places you
never get to go. We'll see you next time.
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