Today I received the sad news that one of my longtime online friends, the Scottish writer/librarian Joseph Mills, passed away recently from unknown causes, at the age of... well, he was born in 1958, so I'm guessing he was 64?
I met Joe through Dennis Cooper's blog around 2006, and we quickly became friends, perhaps because we both had a lot in common: both of us were lapsed Catholics, we both had an obsession with anything related to Andy Warhol (in fact, we even both considered Edie Sedgwick our favorite Warhol Superstar), and we were both writers. We also shared an interest in music in some ways. He was really into groups like ABBA, The Velvet Underground/Lou Reed, David Bowie, Chic, Liza Minnelli, the Beatles, Kate Bush, The Smiths/Morrissey, and so on, but he also liked newer stuff as well, like Amy Winehouse (who he really adored, to the extent that I can't hear any of her songs without instantly thinking of him) and Lady Gaga (he especially liked her song/video for "Judas"). He didn't publish all that much but was a damn fine writer: in 1989 he published his first (and only) novel TOWARDS THE END (an autobiographical gay coming-of-age affair), and in 1998 he got published his first (and only) short story collection, OBSESSIONS (of which I have a personally autographed copy). I highly recommend both these books, and wish he had done more! I think he might have had an unpublished novel or two lying around, but for whatever reason he seemed to lose interest in being published as the years went by. In 2006 he also wrote a short film, EDIE'S P.O.V., though I've never seen it.
A lifelong Glasgow native, I sadly never had the honor of meeting Joe in real life, though we did Skype a number of times at one point (and was always charmed by his accent), and always kept in contact via e-mail and Facebook messaging. He was a very loyal reader to me, always buying/reading my books as they came out and getting back to me to what he thought about them, and he made sure that the library he worked at would get a copy of them as well. He was also one of the only people in this world who read my unpublished Trinity fantasy trilogy. Sadly, a few years ago he began to isolate himself more and more and post less frequently on social media, and our correspondence became very erratic/sporadic: my last DM to him on here was late December 2021 (when he thanked me for the Christmas card I sent him, and we briefly talked about Anne Rice's recent death: he was an admirer of her work). Our last Facebook interaction was February of this year, when he posted the Lady Gaga "Judas" video and I suggested he check out her more recent album CHROMATICA. This seems eerily characteristic... I know he had been drinking a lot this year (well, more so than usual), and had spent some time in rehab/a psych ward (when I found out about this, I joked to a friend, "I didn't think it even WAS possible for a Scotsman to become an alcoholic!"), so I guess things got pretty rough for him by the end. I hate the idea of him dying alone, but he will always be remembered by his friends, and perhaps will hopefully live on through future generations of readers... well, one can only wish! I just hope he's finally getting the chance to meet most of his heroes and heroines in the afterlife.
requiescat in pace
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