Episode #290: It's Been Traveling Like A Car With Four Square Wheels

This is pretty much how last week went: crashing hard after surfing through the dullness of reality.

The picture pretty much sums up the past week that was, in that there wasn't much of newness to it, just a leveling off from the plateau of freshness into the mesa of staleness.

The only thing of note that I was consistently working on, besides finally getting to the last stage of publishing the print version of my novella, which was fraught with serious examples of self-inflicted obtuseness that created extra work that didn't need to happen, was my post fantasy chapter outline/bullet points for my recently completed series.

One of my little quirks that will sometimes raise its fugly head is that I can be extremely....focused on certain peripheral items that are related to the original project that I would be working on. This chapter outline/synopsis is one such item.

This soon to be 150+ page monstrosity allowed me to go into further detail with my note taking, in that allowed me to properly plan out how certain chapters should be rewritten and/or revitalized. For example, some time during the second volume of the series, I decided to refocus on how I wrote chapters. Instead of writing a chapter with competing plotlines between two main characters (that ultimately became three) that would occasionally meet up throughout the series, I decided it would be easier to alternate chapters between each of the main characters.

This made things so much easier for me to handle, as each character would have their own chapter devoted to their particular plot line, plus all of the various tangents within that plotline, with the occasional crossover to the other plotlines, until the final three chapters.

So this is how I've been keeping myself occupied in the morning/afternoon/evening: churning out what I will predict to be 105+ pages of pure, unadulterated, board certified doctor scribble. And I do mean doctor scribble. My printing is bad to begin with, and my note taking has ramped up the scribble to the point of being undecipherable, like a court reporter's note taking.

Like it's now turned into a hybrid mix of printing/cursive handwriting, complete with words that are supposed to be, say seven letters long for example, being chopped down to maybe four, with no vowels and letters that could masquerade for six others (yes, my scribble is just. that. bad.). My scribble is what doctors should aspire to and what pharmacy techs should loudly curse to the bowels of hell over.

So....that's been my basic to-do list for the past couple of months, but up until last week, I was able to do other things around it so that I would break up the monotony of a dreaded, but highly necessary addition to the laborious proper editing of this series.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Absolutely....in 2026, after I publish one final re-re-re-write of a previously published novella that I was severely disappointed with mere days after it went live.

Have a fantastic start to your month of September!

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #289: We Be Reviewing & Promoing Local Authors

Today we offer an interesting two spot for books: one for promo and one for reviewing, both by local authors.

Up first, the promo

After many years of writer's angst spread across multiple rewrites (and multiple computers and printers), we have finally published our latest novella To Live Is To Die Young as an e-book through KDP and Books2Read, with the print edition to follow in the first week of September.

It really was very much a labor of love to produce this fast paced urban/city crime fantasy novella, as this is the second of four writing projects that I had decided to work on when I had retired in 2020 (man, coming up on five years now) to be successfully published (first was The Mortality of Familial Love in 2024) and I do hope you find the opportunity to check it out in the near future.

~~~~~

And now, the review.

This author, A Wilson Steele is from Connecticut, and I had the pleasure of running into her at our town's annual Extravaganza as a vendor. I often try to purchase something every year when I visit and this year I have succeeded. 

Ms Steele writes historical mysteries set in the mid 1990's, and she also writes non-fiction books on horses (If I recall correctly, she's involved with a local horse rescue organization). This particular book, called The Trap, is volume one of a mystery series called The Griegg/Eastwood Mysteries.

Here's a snippet of the back cover blurb:

"It's 1995, and American Alana Eastwood's grandfather has fallen ill at his home in Germany. She immediately travels to be by his side. While staying in his home, Alana finds a box that contains family heirlooms and, to her amazement, an unopened letter postmarked Berlin 1945. The letter is addressed to her granduncle, who she believes died in the war. Even so, why was the letter still sealed? Opening the envelope thrusts her into one of the most notable unsolved mysteries of WWII."

I found this book to be very well written and intriguing enough to keep me engaged from cover to cover. I was very impressed by the way she handled both time periods involved: WWII and the 1990's, with an excellent eye for historical detail, especially with the way the entire story revolves around one of the more intriguing and enduring mysteries of WWII.

If you like well-crafted historical or time period mysteries, this introductory volume to the Griegg/Eastwood Mystery series is for you. Available as a paperback, e-book and audio book from Amazon. And you can find her on Facebook as well.

Thank you for stopping by and I do hope you check out not only my latest published work, but this wonderful introductory volume to what seems to be a very good mystery series.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #288: We Be Reviewing A Pop Culture Icon

Found this at my local Savers store (thrift store that's a slight cut above the Salvation Army) for about $6. This was the best of a not so good shopping expedition that day.

Even if you've never read the books, not seen the animated series (2006-22) nor the movie, chances are that you've heard of Curious George and his "owner" the Man With The Yellow Hat in some way, shape or form.

Curious George is a pop culture icon, much like Bob Ross is, in that all you have to hear is a particular phrase and presto! you instantly know who they're talking about.

On a personal level, I have very mixed feelings about Curious George. On one hand, I do believe I made a genuine attempt at reading the school age books  but quickly realized that while the illustrations were good, the story simply didn't keep my interest (I think at that point I was already reading way above my age level). But on the opposite side of the equation, the name was used as a bullying epithet that was directed at me during my late elementary/middle school years.

The end result of this potpourri of feelings is that as an adult, I've been very....meh...about Curious George. I mean, I don't go out of my way to be nasty about it, I haven't the need to defend it like Babar (another pop cultural icon), because most of the world doesn't have a problem with him on a cultural/revisionist basis. I certainly don't regress back to my childhood when other things are created from the IP like other types of IPs (e.g. Harold and the Purple Crayon cartoon series springs to mind).

But I do find it to be quite the blast from the past whenever I come across something that involves the IP, like the aforementioned commercial lithograph that was originally part of series carried by Target. Because even to this day some 50+ years later, it still strikes a (mostly) positive chord whenever I see or hear something about Curious George.

In conclusion, while I remain mostly ambivalent about Curious George, I have no qualms in recommending this particular blast from the past to others who might be curious, in a gentle George kind of way, about children's literature from their parent's childhood. After all, everyone needs to revisit something that was considered to be magical when they were a kid, right?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #287: We Be Reviewing Library Books

I've always been an avid reader as far back as I can remember. Not really having many friends as a child/tween/teen/young adult/adult, I would turn to the one thing that gave me comfort: reading. Didn't matter what the material was (start with newspapers and you'll pretty much have an idea on what I liked to read), I devoured it voraciously. Eventually, and probably due to the amount of newspapers that I read, I narrowed down to two polar opposites when it came to favorite reading material: true crime and memoirs/biographies.

I've always enjoyed reading the life story of well known people from all walks of life. I've more than read my fair share of good/bad/fugly bios/memoirs over the preceding decades, but maybe for the past 10+ years I've been more discerning. After reading two good bios that didn't have the participation of the subjects involved (Paul Simon & Robert De Niro), I decided that reading bios that didn't have the participation of the subject involved weren't for me (example, bios of Ringo Starr and John Prine).

I've read good bios/memoirs from an eclectic group of people such as Erik Roberts, R.E.M., John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Tom Petty, Freddie Mercury, Sissy Spacek, Dean Butler (Little House on the Prairie) and Steve Boone (Lovin' Spponful). I've also read a few that left me either confused (Michael Neismith) or highly annoyed (Neil Patrick Harris did his as an "choose-your-adventure" book).

This past week at my library, I found this memoir by one of the founding members of The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell. 

He does an incredibly fantastic deep dive into his friendship with Tom Petty as well as his music career, and leaves no stone unturned nor untossed, either at others or at himself.

One of the events that I was really interested in finding out, was the entire story surrounding the band threatening (not actually) to file bankruptcy in order to get out of a truly bad contract. For those of you who may not listen to regular commercial radio anymore, most jocks would always lead in with the tired tidbit of the band filing for bankruptcy. He gives the entire complex backstory and tells it in such a way that makes you take what little rose colored glasses about the music industry you may have and destroy it to smithereens. Highly, highly recommend this memoir.

~~~~~

True crime was the other go-to genre of mine, now going on 50+ years. After I had gotten tired/over-exposed to books that covered the same 40 people, I started branching out to other sub-genres of true crime to satiate my thirst for true-crime knowledge. Eventually, even those sub-genres weren't doing it for me anymore, so I moved on to getting my fix to other sources that covered crimes that MSM didn't cover. I now listen to podcasts such as The Casual Criminalist (covers true crime from around the world), Park Predators (covers true crime in the US National Park System), Dark Down East (covers true crime in New England) and Small Town Dicks (covers true crime in the smaller areas of the US, as well as Canada and Scotland).

At the age of 60, the only way I now dip my toes into revisiting a historical true crime (e.g. serial killers) event, is if the event is approached from a different angle that hasn't been covered before. I came across two such books in the month of July, one is about serial killer Dean Corll, which was written by a forensic researcher who is trying to identify his remaining unknown victims.

The other is pictured on the left. There have been a lot of books written about the man in question, but this one was written by the daughter of the woman who was childhood friends/co-worker/classmate with his very last victim, and was the one that helped jump-start the investigation that led to his arrest/conviction/execution.

This was quite the poignant read, as it does an extensive deep dive on not only how her mother was affected, but how the entire community was affected by this man. She does a great job of interweaving here mom's teenage years with her young adult/adult years as she revisits her mother's hometown with her.

I highly recommend this book, as there aren't too many true crime books that are written from the p.o.v of the victim's family/friends in such a personal way. Added bonus is that a Netflix documentary was done from the p.o.v of her mother and the last victim's family as well.

I hope to make this a semi-regular feature in the coming weeks, as the bulk of my book reading involves the extensive collection of my local public library, with the remaining sliver involving actual purchases of books from people that I've either met online or have talked to in person (like at a local fair). 

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved