Paul Phillip Peters. We were very disappointed when we learned Paul Peters’ middle name was not “Mary” but this graphic was nearly complete.
The Daily Quarterly: How did you hear about thedailyquarterly.com?
Paul Phillip Peters: Either when a former colleague of mine, Jay Haffner, was featured a few years back or it could have been aliens. Not actually sure.
TDQ: How excited are you that The Daily Quarterly asked you for an interview?
PPP: I’m not going to lie. I’ve lost sleep over it. I won a chocolate bunny at a corner store raffle back in 1976 and this was so much better! Unfortunately, once I came down from the excitement, I entered a dark period where I was unable to feed or bathe myself.
TDQ: Would you categorize the writing on The Daily Quarterly as “history-making” or “ground-breaking?”
PPP: I’d have to go with “history-making.” My secret identity as a history teacher makes me partial to that one.
TDQ: Who was your favorite teacher growing up?
PPP: Not an easy question. My parents moved around a lot and the longest I was ever at a school was for two and a half years. I went to eleven different schools and dropped out in 10th grade. Mr. Robert Marsh and Kay Cramer McKamy formerly of the Springstead High School (my almost alma mater). I was fortunate to have them both as instructors again in community college. They had faith in me.
TDQ: Who was your favorite writer growing up?
PPP: J.R.R Tolkien
TDQ: What made you want to be a writer?
PPP: The total creativity that the process of writing gives you with no budget or idea boundaries. The ability to entertain someone. Once you’ve created a novel, it is unique. No one has ever produced those exact words in that exact way before.
Author Paul Peters, center, shares some words with friends. (We’re talking about books, not that smartphone game.)
PPP: I didn’t know I wanted to be a teacher until I was 21. I had dropped out of high school as a sophomore and never looked back. At a party, a girl who worked for the community college told me that with a GED, I could attend community college, and after that, the sky was the limit. That information, along with seeing the movie “Dead Poet’s Society” a few weeks later, inspired me. I came out of the theater and turned to my best friend and said, “I’m supposed to be a history teacher.” Then we laughed for a minute. A month later, I got my GED.
TDQ: What’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten?
PPP: I don’t know about advice, but I can tell you about the words that changed my life. I borrowed money from my mother for my first classes in the community college. Financially things were tough and my dad wasn’t working. He was none too happy when he found out about the money and it caused problems between my parents. When mom gave me the money, she told me my father had said, “Why did you give him the money? He never finishes anything.” In my father’s defense, he was right, but my mother had faith. My father’s words fueled me through six years of higher education.
TDQ: What’s the worst advice you’ve ever gotten?
PPP: To tell the truth, I can’t remember. Either I just have good friends who never produced inferior advice or my brain has squirreled it away for self-protection. If this worst advice thing exists in my head, it probably involved a girl.
Orange Groves By Paul Peters
PPP: It’s about a fictional high school, in a fictional town, in a fictional county, in Central Florida. The big picture would be “Outside the sleepy and tight-lipped town of Bedlam, Florida, the bells of rural Orange Groves High School sing of murder, lies, and secrets.”
TDQ: Who are your influences?
PPP: I know this is an odd grouping, but I am different. I would say J.R.R. Tolkien, Douglas Adams, John Grisham, and Ernest Hemingway.
TDQ: What project are you working on now?
PPP: I am feverishly working on the prequel/sequel to my novel “Orange Groves.” It’s called “Pastel Orange.”
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