John Milas

John Milas is the author of the new novel The Militia House. He enlisted in the US Marine Corps at age nineteen and subsequently deployed to the Helmand Province of Afghanistan in support of OEF 10.1. He was honorably discharged from active service in 2012.

After his discharge, Milas earned both his BA and MFA in creative writing. As a student, he studied with writers such as Marianne Boruch, Roxane Gay, Brian Leung, Robert Lopez, Terese Marie Mailhot, Julie Price Pinkerton, Donald Platt, Sharon Solwitz, and others.

My Q&A with the author:

How much work does your title do to take readers into the story?

There's inherent tension when you have an obvious, literal title but the phrase isn't used immediately in the text. In the case of "militia house" not being seen as a phrase until chapter three, I hope the reader is wondering, "What is the militia house? Why is it important? Where is it? What's inside?" Things like that. The title implies a question for the reader, which establishes early, page-turning momentum. I love studying James A. Michener and Philip K. Dick as their titles range from inadequate to ridiculous. Between the two of them, they've come up with Space, Alaska, The Novel, VALIS, Ubik, and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. I mean, what do I do with a title like Space? As a reader, I'm wondering beforehand, is this a book that is about cosmic space, interior space, space in an abstract sense? I'm not sure the title pulls me into any of that in a way that generates inherent tension in a compelling way. On the other side of the coin, you've got Ubik, a made up word, which merely causes me to ask, what now?

What's in a name?

My only strategy is to find names that my family and close friends do not go by. I'd rather spend time solving plot problems. I was told by an instructor in college that every character should have a name and I've always disagreed with that. Leaving characters unnamed is neither a contemporary craft choice, nor is it an edgy one. I see it as merely a choice. I know some writers will lean into symbolism, but that doesn't interest me so much. As Matthew Salesses emphasizes in Craft in the Real World, it's important for a reader to understand what makes each character different from the others. A character's name doesn't necessarily describe how a character is different or more sympathetic than other characters. The writer needs to work to achieve that.

How surprised would your teenage reader self be by your new novel?

He would be surprised by such an understated war novel where no one ever fires their rifle.

Do you find it harder to write beginnings or endings? Which do you change more?

The opening of my book has changed many times, mostly in the interest of getting to the point earlier. For my tastes, the book is now scary from page one. With endings, I try to know them before I get started on a first draft, so this tends to change less frequently, but I'm neurotic about selecting the right opening sentence, which makes it difficult to settle on something. My theory is that the opening sentence should make the reader feel obligated to read the second sentence as if they have no choice, and so on and so forth. As a reference, I like Amy Hempel and Robert Lopez for their opening sentences. Full disclosure, I learned opening sentences in a workshop with Lopez, so I'm biased.

Do you see much of yourself in your characters? Do they have any connection to your personality, or are they a world apart?

I think there's some of me in all the characters in The Militia House. There's the side of me in the narrator who's tired of institutional BS, which is how I authentically am. There's the side of me like Johnson who is shy with people he doesn't know well. There's the side of me who likes to read books like Vargas and the side like Blount who complains a lot about work. Staff Sergeant Rynker is frustrated by people who don't know what he's capable of, which is a type of frustration I've often felt.

What non-literary inspirations have influenced your writing?

I suspect I have a three-act structure embedded in my brain from watching so many American films when I was younger. I'm focused on plot and causality now because of that. The Militia House draws significant influence from the films The Blair Witch Project, Combat Obscura, and the music of Disasterpeace, particularly his score for It Follows. The graphic novel The White Donkey by Maximilian Uriarte is essential in understanding the 2010s Marine Corps and was another important influence as I wrote. My friends Josh, Mike, and James, who I deployed with, are better storytellers than any writer I know. The longest phone conversation I've ever had was about five hours with all of us merged on the same call telling stories. I live for that type of communion.

Visit John Milas's website.

--Marshal Zeringue