D. R. Miller has been writing since the age of five, when he would open the story book at school to the underwater page and write about divers, sharks, submarines and octopi.

The rest of his school career really went by in a blur. They were not enjoyable days and he dropped out of university after only a year. From a writer’s point of view, he would say those days did introduce him to one of his all-time favourite novels though: ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’. Can anyone argue that Atticus Finch is not one of the greatest characters in literary history?

He became much more serious about writing many years later, after his first marriage ended. Some friends wanted to make a short film for their Halloween party, and he agreed to write it. The story was called ‘13 Minutes To Midnight’ and was essentially a 10-minute house invasion horror with a twist at the end. The key to the writing was to make sure it could be made with no budget, so he wrote the story based in his own home, then created a script and shot list from the story. The film was so well received that he began a new production every year. Each one became longer, more ambitious, both in storytelling and production value.

He was soon writing for himself. Fantasy had always attracted him, especially being a big fan of pulp novelists like Robert E. Howard. Over a few years, he had created a new fantasy world discovered in several stories about two siblings: Strom and Brasa. He took inspiration from the likes of Edgar Allan Poe when writing poetry and drew on his love of H. P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Dennis Wheatley and Robert Louis Stevenson when writing horror.

Victorian Gothic came about as a similar short story. When he asked his wife if she would like to know what happens next, she said “absolutely, yes!” and the world of Victorian Gothic was born.