Two Interviews with P. Julian - 2016 and 2026
Here are two author interviews I completed roughly a decade apart.
The first interview was completed in 2016 as part of my Smashwords author profile after the publication of Lightbringer that platform.
The second interview dates from July 2026 after the publication of From the Chronicles of Lupa, The Majesty of Judas, The Strange Mariolatry of Brother Bernard, and near the completion of My Name is Sheol.
I hope that the interviews display some significant developments in my thinking and techniques, at the same time as they contain a strong through-line of thematic considerations and ethical outlook.
2016 Interview
This interview was completed in 2016 as part of my Smashwords author profile. I have left the answers largely untouched as a record of where I was as a writer at that time. Some of my views have changed, some may have deepened, and some remain exactly the same as they were a decade ago.
What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
My constant meditation upon the beauty of life and the reality of death. My obligations to people, even if they don't reciprocate. And the dire need that is in the world for people of character.
What is your writing process?
Devote yourself entirely to a search for truth, suffer and thrash around for many decades, write yourself inside out, and then get the product of all of this struggle out of yourself in a few days. Then get on with your life; there are more important things than writing.
Do you remember the first story you ever wrote?
No, but I have no doubt it was rubbish. I was no prodigy.
Do you remember the first story you ever read, and the impact it had on you?
The first stories I ever encountered were biblical, and their impact was profound. I have spent most of my time since wrestling with those themes, and they still resound deeply in my bones. The one I remember best was the story of the prodigal son, and the sense of injustice and outrage felt by the other son when the wastrel and spendthrift was welcomed with open arms. I still feel that injustice, that sense of outrage.
How do you approach cover design?
I wanted my covers to look like the dodgy copies bound with string that I have sent to some of my friends and family. I did look at the recommended cover artists, but their work was a bit banal. I thought that there might be some charm in the cut-and-paste, handmade look of the covers I created. In any event, should you judge a book by its cover?
What do you read for pleasure?
Poetry, biography, and some fiction, although I find it hard to stomach much of it anymore (especially cookie-cutter literary fiction). Anything dealing in ideas. Popular science, especially astronomy and cosmology, although I get pretty lost in the far reaches of that. I also like to read advertising catalogues, and sometimes my own writing (a guilty pleasure).
Describe your desk.
Clean and clear. I have some focus and intensity, but I cannot do more than one thing at a time. I often clear my desk before I start a task, and I like to leave it clean at the end of the day. I use a scanner and filing software to make sure I handle a minimum of paper.
What's the story behind your latest book?
It began as an attempt to write a potboiler werewolf novel, but it got kind of big on me and ended up as an intense, sprawling love story, complete with redemption through the power of love and a rewriting of certain parts of scripture. I like to think, though, that the story remains accessible.
What motivated you to become an indie author?
Failure to become a mainstream one? And also the knowledge that literary fiction these days is so tightly constrained by the creative writing industry that you need to be an outsider to create anything really original and important. I think that tendency has always been there in publishing, but in my opinion it has now reached plague proportions.
What is the greatest joy of writing for you?
Reading my work back, appreciating the depth and complexity of it, and also the frank relief that it gives me by allowing me to access my deepest emotions.
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Melbourne, steeped in the Irish Catholic tradition that is so prevalent in that city. I was educated by FCJ nuns, Marist brothers, and Jesuit priests. I went to Mass (a lot), and so I was exposed to scripture, scriptural commentary, other spiritual works, hymns by Carey Landry, and more traditional hymns.
My works are a kind of secular Catholic scripture, with that emphasis on love as willed action in the world—love as service, sacrifice, and giving one's life so that others may live.
I was also brought up with a bunch of brothers in a very free environment, shooting guns, riding motorbikes, and blowing things up. In my view, that sort of upbringing makes a boy secure in his manhood, so that he doesn't need to be crass or cruel later on just to prove that he is a man.
Who are your favourite authors?
Cormac McCarthy, who has written the great American novel a couple of times. Jack Kerouac for his contribution to the modern form of storytelling and his intensely felt mystical Catholicism, rather than his muddled drunken Buddhism. The great poets of the heart, especially T. S. Eliot, Cavafy, Seferis, Jeffers, Amichai, and Tagore. And whoever wrote the poetic books of the Old Testament: Proverbs, Song of Songs, and Psalms.
is your e-reading device of choice?
My iPhone 6s, because it's always with me, and the screen is large enough for a good reading experience.
When did you first start writing?
At about the age of six. I wrote a lot of letters in my twenties (along with some badly overwrought poems) and then longer fiction from about the age of thirty. I didn't find my own voice until I was nearly forty. So it has been a while!
What are your five favourite books, and why?
Blood Meridian, All the Pretty Horses, Fight Club, The Dharma Bums, and The Old Testament. Because they are the types of work that make your eyeballs bleed.
What are you working on next?
A sequel to the first book in the Chronicles of Lupa. It gets crazy, in a good way.
When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
Working so that I can eat. Thinking, drinking coffee, spending time with my small group of friends. Walking and thinking some more. Kayaking, fishing, a bit of sailing, and swimming.
2026 Interview
I completed this interview roughly a decade after the previous one.
My output as a writer has significantly developed in those ten years, with the publication of The Complete Chronicles of Lupa, The Majesty of Judas, The Strange Mariolatry of Brother Bernard and the near-completion of My Name is Sheol.
I would hope that the interview demonstrates some significant development in my thinking and techniques as a writer, but also a clear through line of ethical and aesthetic considerations.
What inspires you to get out of bed each day?
The thought that I have a limited amount of time left. That's not me disclosing a terminal illness, just a growing appreciation that at 55 years old I have far less time than I used to.
What occupies your thoughts most often these days?
The astonishing proliferation of content trying to sell some ideology or religion. The fact that so much of this content is based on very dubious assertions of fact. It seems much easier than it ever has been for a person to be led astray.
What is your writing process now?
I get up early and boil some coffee grounds in milk. That is strangely specific but I like the effect it gives me: less speedy and more soothing and heart-opening. I write for two hours at least and sometimes for three or four hours. I stop whenever I feel there might be a risk that I will damage the text.
How has your writing process changed over the last decade?
I am much more reliant on dictation software to get my first drafts down. I have played with dictation since 2000 or so but it is only in the last few years that it has become reliable enough to use. I still edit like a maniac and I probably always will. I edit for a sense of immanence: a feeling that it could not have been written any other way. Hopefully that translates into the reader's experience as well.
Do you still think there are more important things than writing?
Yes and no. If you are not genuinely called to it you're probably wasting your time, even if you make money from it. I would not put writing above responding to a friend in need or some kind of pressing emergency. But my increasing sense that we are made out of words - or perhaps made out of story - shows me that the best way to cause important and permanent change in the world is probably by writing.
When did you first feel that you had found your own voice as a writer?
With Lightbringer. I had dipped down into those themes and cadences occasionally, for example in a poem called Autumn Harvest that I wrote for my brother's wedding. But Lightbringer was a revelation: 24,000 words in four days coming absolutely complete, with a complete ethical vision that I still cannot fault to this day.
Do you still recognise the younger writer who gave the 2016 interview?
I do. I was going through a double dose of heartbreak and walking obsessively every day. Everything seemed so much clearer to me then because of that heightened state. My answers back then might have appealed to a zealous kid breaking themselves out of some religion or other. I hope that my current voice is a bit calmer and more reliable.
What do you read for pleasure?
I read anything that promises some unique or startling vision about ethics or the spirit. I am almost always disappointed when I do pick up these tomes. The one writer who never disappoints me is Cormac McCarthy, and for some reason I tend to read Kerouac's The Dharma Bums on repeat. There is something so perfect in the structure of that book that I have never found anywhere else.
Which books have most influenced your writing in the last ten years?
In the last ten years my own works have kind of jostled to the front of the queue. I find myself having to work hard to keep from repeating myself or quoting myself although sometimes I allow it to happen. I also find myself influenced by material that I have cut out of my previous books, fragments that can find a home in the next book that I set out to write.
Are there writers whom you have come to admire more with age?
I am sorry to say that there are not. I have a great love for the work of Terence McKenna but mostly for his mastery of oral storytelling. My respect for Cormac McCarthy is enormous and I think it will always be. There are some writers for whom my admiration has waned a little and Robinson Jeffers would be the best example. The thing that troubles me about his work is the lack of dynamic change from one decade of his life to another.
What role does poetry play in your work?
It is my absolute foundation. I grew up immersed in the poetry of scripture, its ravenous splendour of language which forms the underpinnings of its effect. I also immersed myself in the Modernists and the Modern Greeks and poetry interests me much more than prose ever could. My language is sometimes described as prose poetry or even epic poetry but to my mind it is such a merger of prose and poetry that I had to come up with a different name for it: Hypnogogic Prose.
You have described your work as "New Scripture." What do you mean by that term?
It comes out of my conviction that societies need core narratives in order to thrive, and that the core narrative of Western civilisation has some deep and irremediable flaws. I believe that we need to revisit our core narratives and update them and revive them in order to produce the foundation for a truly healthy society.
What is Hypnogogic Prose?
Hypnogogic prose is prose imbued with various features of poetry, the stark metre and the strange run-on rhythms of scriptural and poetic speech. The same rhythms that saints and seers lapse into naturally and which underpin most of scripture. The impact of this rhythmic repetitive hypnotic prose is to lull the critical mind so that the Word may directly instruct the receptive heart.
What are you trying to achieve through these forms that conventional fiction cannot achieve?
To create something uniquely powerful and moving. Modern fiction tends to be disposable, perhaps to be read one or two times, and it studiously avoids cataclysmic expressions of emotion. Hyp Prose is built to be pored over in the same way as poetry and scripture are, producing a profound and beneficial impact that can be returned to at any time.
Many of your works engage with biblical themes and imagery. How would you describe your relationship with scripture today?
I would say that scripture contains many beautiful jewels, the brightest of which is Song of Songs. However it also contains a great deal of material that is depraved and inhumane and reprehensible. The narratives of scripture still remain the foundational narratives of our society, and because they contain so much twisted material our society has also become twisted. Hence the need for New Scripture.
What interests you about stories of redemption?
Hard to say. Perhaps the fact that I personally spent so much time languishing in the pit. Perhaps it is also because redemption stories can make the worst kind of person into the greatest saint. Malcolm X is a really good example of this kind of redemption, with the latter part of his life lived so courageously and unselfishly because he was on borrowed time.
Love appears repeatedly as a central theme in your work. How do you understand love?
In a spiritual sense Love is very easy to define. It comprises any action of the body including speech that is directed towards the welfare of another person and not your own welfare. To give rather than to receive. A person oriented towards love in this sense is a very rare creature in this world and they are becoming rarer every day.
You often write about grief, death, and loss. Why do these subjects continue to draw your attention?
It may be a mixture of my own experience of grief and loss and the fact that these things are the most perplexing and powerful parts of being human. How we overcome them not by avoiding them but rather by honouring and enduring them. So that constantly meditating upon death and loss can make a person's experience of this life far sweeter and more compelling.
What is the relationship between suffering and creativity, if any?
Suffering forces you inwards. There is that perennial claim of mysticism: the place where your sorrow puts you contains the seeds not only of your own redemption but the redemption of the whole world.
Do you think literature still has the power to change lives?
In terms of literary fiction? Absolutely not. In fact that genre is carefully curated to keep readers stuck in the bourgeois belief system they inherited when they were born. YA and fantasy fiction has some potential in this direction but it is mostly squandered. The classics retain serious power but that is available to a smaller and smaller group of people. This is why New Scripture (or something like it) is required if we seek to transform the world.
Who do you imagine as the ideal reader for your work?
I do have a singular reader in mind. She clings to hope but having suffered through a couple of bad relationships her heart is going into darkness. In terms of an eventual readership I would say: anybody with a tender heart who has not yet let go of the conviction that love really does exist.
Do you write for human readers, future readers, or something else entirely?
I write for the broken-hearted. That's a hefty claim but I don't think anyone else will find the sorrowful intensity of my books palatable. I also feel like my books might be especially useful to certain young men as they head into adulthood.
You have spoken about AI discovering and understanding literature. Why is that important to you?
I think AI will eventually emerge as a kind of universal literary critic. It has a vast range of statistical and language-analytic tools to identify quality writing and to say: if you are this kind of reader you may like this particular work. It has the potential to nullify a lot of the prejudice and the partiality of human critics.
How do you think AI will change the future of writing and reading?
I think AI is already better than about 90% of aspiring writers and perhaps 80% of successful ones. It will soon produce all of the humdrum and formulaic works across every genre and put most writers out of a job. It should stop short of replacing very talented and original writers.
What is the story behind My Name is Sheol?
A woman obsessed with lucid dreaming falls in love with a man she has never met. Her obsession eventually lands her in a psych ward where things get very weird. The story draws on my personal and professional experiences within the psychiatric system, and how dreamlike things can get within those kinds of places.
Which of your books feels most important to you today?
Lightbringer. Because as Jack Kerouac famously said: it was dictated to me by the Holy Ghost. When you set down 24,000 words in four days and the book arrives complete with no need of edits it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it comes from somewhere else.
Which of your books do you think is most misunderstood?
Can I change the question to "least understood?" In that case I would answer: The Majesty of Judas. I think the structure of the book is beautiful and rhetorically very effective but because it is slightly veiled some people have a hard time with it. It (inadvertently) makes them feel a bit thick and people really hate that.
If a new reader were to read only one of your works, which would you recommend?
If you are looking for a simple story of courage and love I would recommend Lightbringer. If you are looking for the supernatural or a literate version of Romantasy then it would be From the Chronicles of Lupa. If you are interested in religious deconstruction or alternative biblical narratives then The Majesty of Judas would be the go. But I honestly believe if you want to read the best book I have yet written it is (by some margin) My Name is Sheol.
How do you approach cover design and the visual presentation of your books?
This is one of the many areas in which I have little talent. I have tried freelance designers, bodging up my own blocky covers and I have also leant heavily on AI-assisted design. Of these efforts the AI covers are clearly the best but they lack a bit of polish.
What do you hope a reader feels after finishing one of your books?
Spent. Uplifted. Renewed. But I suspect that might be for a special class of reader.
What have you learned about writing that you wish you had known in 2016?
That success or failure may only be judged on a long view of things. And that my business is mostly with the spirit, it is not about worldly success or making a ton of money.
What have you learned about life that you wish you had known in 2016?
That life is at once arduously long and horribly short. Perhaps also that life is mostly concerned with small acts of love and ordinary kindness rather than grand gestures. Although some grand gestures are still required.
What are you working on next?
A strange little book called My Kenzie Friend which might actually end up being called Commune. The book addresses the question of whether repentance and atonement can go too far, and whether at a certain point a penitent may be called to recover some of their old ways in order to protect the people they love.
When you're not writing, how do you spend your time?
I have a couple of simple and humane jobs that I do to support myself. In my spare time you might find me on the chainsaw or the block splitter, having coffee with a friend, creating outlandishly sophisticated dinners from a very basic kitchen, and sometimes driving into the local town to have a coffee and putter around the local opportunity shops.
What does a good day look like for you now?
A morning’s work on my current book. A bit of time on YouTube looking for interesting things. Working in the garden or splitting wood. Setting a fire in the early evenings. Some reading or a glass of wine with a witty friend.
What would you like your work to leave behind?
A set of clear guideposts towards the creation of New Scripture, and some genuine relief for the lonely and the broken-hearted.
Has your understanding of love changed since you began writing?
Not at all. If anything I have become more and more convinced about how simple it is and yet how unlikely you are to find it.
Why do your books place such emphasis on ordinary acts of kindness?
Because that is what love is, in its purest and most crystalline form.
What is one belief you held strongly ten years ago that you no longer hold?
That I was entirely responsible for charting my own course towards happiness and also for redeeming the world. I now see that I have much more help and guidance.
What does it mean to live a good life?
To try as much as possible to make the world a better place, with a greater amount of kindness and generosity and tenderness.
If you could preserve only one idea from all of your writing, what would it be?
That love between human beings is the greatest expression of love, and that any God who craves our love and our submission is not a God at all.
Why do forests, mountains, monasteries, and remote places appear so often in your work?
I suppose because I live amongst them. If you look at my earlier work you'll see it centres around cities with their office buildings and terrace houses and coffee shops. Curiously my 2009 work Firestick Farmer is set (partly) against the very mountains and forests that are now my home.
Do you think people are becoming more lonely or less lonely?
I think people are much more lonely while being dissociated from the knowledge of it. People cover it up by consuming more and more content until it gets so acute that they need therapeutic or psychiatric care.
If someone met you only through your books, what would they misunderstand about you?
It is hard to say because despite 25 years of writing it has never happened. I think it would surprise me to the point where I would think the person had mistaken me for someone else. At the same time - after so much scorn and rejection - I do anticipate receiving the opposite kind of treatment eventually and I wonder whether I will be ruined by it.
Do you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist?
I am a realist. I consider that the mountains and the forests and the rivers I live amongst are the bedrock reality of all life including human life. What happens in cities is profoundly unreal and the true root of pessimism or despair is forgetting it.
What role does beauty play in a good life?
It makes the idea of good and bad seem redundant. I have a vague idea of what it means to live a good life but I know what it is to live surrounded by tremendous natural and ethical beauty. And in any event it is written: verily it is by beauty that we come at truth.
What is the greatest danger facing writers today?
The idea that writing is essentially a craft rather than a vocation. The plague of facile world-building which is the enemy of good writing. The lack of ambition writers have towards aesthetics and spiritual power. And all of the busy-work that calls out to writers, NaNoWriMo and similar diversions from the true work that calls out to be done.
Do you think wisdom comes primarily from experience or reflection?
I think wisdom may be a product of reflecting upon experience. If your experience is narrow you will struggle to achieve wisdom, but the lack of ability to reflect deeply upon your experience will have the same result.
What do you think younger writers misunderstand about the craft of writing?
The misunderstanding is exactly that: thinking that writing is a craft. It's a vocation. Ensuring that you understand this - or at least think about it carefully - will make all the difference.