Episode #335: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {3}

Had another visitor in the backyard the other day (7/10). This was one of three pics and a seventeen second video clip that I took that day. About a minute later, they made an exit to the neighbor's back yard with a graceful leap over the fenxe.

I certainly do love living next to a mountain.

~~~~

This last post was, at the time, acknowledging something that I initially thought would never really happen to me: genuinely caring about the characters that I had created for a given novel.

to be perfectly frank, with all of the stories that I had previously written, the level of caring about my characters shown by me in this series, was basically non-existent. Don't get  me wrong, I cared about the characters in my stories, but not to the lever that I had with these characters.

So, without further ado, here is part three of our original FB series covering how I chose to kill off a few major characters.

Let me tell you, killing off characters that you have grown to love as a writer is hard. It's doubly so when the story requires you to show that sometimes the consequences for a particular action can have a spidering effect.

I can safely say that the aftermath of both characters' deaths affected everyone profoundly, both in the story and the person who had to write it. For me personally, even though I considered these two specific story arcs (out of the estimated fifteen the entire series contained) to be some of my best writing, nearly three years later, and numerous re-reads for editing, it still moves me to tears.

I think as a writer, if you can write something, like an entire storyline that makes you emotional, you should high five yourself. Because if you can become emotional at the deaths of two major characters, imagine how your readers will react to it.

I'm not sure if I'll be pulling any more of my unpublished FB posts for my blog, because I'm nearly certain that the topics that I had wrote about for FB were covered nearly two years ago on this blog. But I did want to pull this unpublished posts and publish them here, as I don't believe I've read anywhere about killing off a major character in a story before.

But I did want to share my thoughts on how difficult of a decision it was, and the aftermath of that decision, and how deeply it has affected me, and continues to affect me some three years later.

A fantastic Monday (or Tuesday and beyond) to one and all.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #334: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {2}

This pic was taken nearly a week ago, after I had finished my morning walk and was in my backyard refilling the bird feeders. If it looks washed, it's because while we and the deer were in the shade, the backyard was bright and sunshiny. About a minute later, they had gently hopped over the fence and back into the mountain.

Part two of our series about death, talks mostly about the process I had used in order to make an informed decision on who (singular and plural) I should kill off in the series.

I am one of those writers who's a mix between a pantser and a plotter. I used to be a 100% pantser, but I soon realized with this series, I was going to have to add a little planning into the mix.

So what I did next, I really wouldn't recommend, especially if you're a planner: I stopped writing book #3 so I could properly plot out which character(s) were going to be kill outright; which would determine the direction that the rest of the series would go in order to achieve the pre-determined ending.*

*note: at the very beginning of this series, back to when it was a nearly four dozen page dreck of a novella, I had a definitive ending in mind. So we're talking nearly a dozen years holding onto an ending for this story.

So I waited until I was at the midway point with a chapter completed, before temporarily putting the book to the side. I then pulled out my handy-dandy clipboard, pen/paper, and spent the next two days charting out which character could be participating and their relation to others.

Then I worked out what I felt was the most important aspect: Once dead, do they stay dead?

I also sketched out a few different scenarios that would reasonably answer both of those questions. By the next day, I had made my decision on how I should answer the important question of "once dead, do they stay dead?", by selecting a character from both sides.

Was I 100% comfortable with my decision making process? Yes, I was. I am one of those people who, upon realizing that making informed decisions about a particular scenario, whether real world or the fictional world, likes to gather upon as much info as humanly possible.

Was I 100% comfortable with the choices that I decided to make once I had all of the information needed? Not entirely, but those choices were, in my honest opinion, the easiest to write to a satisfactory conclusion, because they both lived up to the expectation of the title of book #4, and we hope to the expectation of whatever the title of book #5 will be.

I would like to point out that this particular series of posts were originally written back in March/April of this year, which is why it states that no title was picked for book #5. As we all know, a title was picked prior to editing book #5, just like I had done with the previous four books.

(to be continued)

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #333: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {1}

This pic was taken the day after the juvenile bear invasion. At least once a year we find deer in our backyard chilling out.

Today's post features a topic: killing off a major character, that I had originally written for Facebook, but due to circumstances beyond my control (hack/scam attempt using Meta's own services, among other things), I decided to hold it and a dozen others at bay for the time being.

This will be a three part series, as I had specifically designed it to be on Facebook. In fact, I have gotten pretty good at keeping within the specific parameters I had created for myself: nor more than seventeen lines per post, which translates to about 220 +/- words. Without further ado, here is part of one of how I went about killing off a major character.

~~~~~

I never really had an issue with killing off minor characters in my stories, since they were mostly disposable pieces that primarily moved the story along (see my novella "The Mortality of Familial Love"), nor did I suffer emotionally when killing a major character as a realistic consequence for the life he was living (see my novella "To Live Is To Die Young"). I think the main reason for my reaction to them boils down to that they were simply stand-alones.

However, killing off a major character(s) in a series is always a risky proposition. You don't want a series of any length to not have someone suffer the consequences of their actions, but by the tail side of the coin, you don't want to have someone die without it have a lasting effect on the story.

In this series, it was inevitable that at least one major character was going to die and their death was going to affect the rest of the story in a myriad of ways.

My issue at the time, was deciding which major character(s) I was going to 1} kill off; 2} how I was going to present the immediate aftermath; and 3} how the story would unfold for the remaining two books.

Note: the climatic battle scene takes place in book #3, which sets the stage for the remaining two volumes.

(to be continued)

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #332: Let's Get Commercialized!

Tuesday morning, June 16th 2026, my wife stepped outside on the back porch deck and snapped this photo of two juvenile bears snacking on my bird feeders in my front yard. I'm pretty sure that mama bear was somewhere nearby in the woods.

Suffice to say, after this 2nd visitation in the span of one calendar month, has caused the following things to happen: my neighbor from across the street is now upset with me for bringing bears into the neighborhood (note, we've had an uptick in bear sightings in my town this year) and I had to relocate my bird-feeders to the (fenced in) backyard, where the bears (hopefully) will not get to them.

Commercials are the bane of our digital existence. Love them or loathe them, you can never truly get away from them, no matter what platform you use.

Television? While there are some good ones, most offer the stimulant needed for channel surfing. Gaming apps? 100% unavoidable, and they're one of the few platforms that can hold you hostage until they're done showing. YouTube? There are infomercials that you can definitely skip, but the six to fifteen second commercials are the master class of memorable advertising.

I know this because I'm one of those frugal souls who epitomizes the old "beggars can't be choosers" axiom, because I don't want to drop around $12.99 per month for ad free videos. Yes, I'm on YouTube nearly six total hours per day, but I'm not going to spend money unwisely.

There are times where I automatically skip the fifteen second commercials, simply because the product doesn't interest me (cancer meds, anyone?), but there are times where I'm intrigued enough to watch the entire fifteen second ad (and the occasional thirty second ad/movie trailer), even though I will never use the product/see the movie.

Let me give you a good example of memorable advertising. Apartment-dot-com has a memorable set of six second ads featuring Jeff Goldblum stating if you advertise on the website, you will have people crawling out of the woodwork to look at your property. Those people who come crawling out of the woodwork, so far include:

1. someone masquerading as a raincoat hanging on the corner of a door;
2. someone appearing primed for action after one of the closet beds springs open;
3. someone masquerading as a standalone bathroom sink.

Jarring? Absolutely. Effectively getting your attention? Absolutely. Is it getting extra eyeballs to the website? Probably.

It's funny how people's viewing habits have changed over the decades. Back in the day, you had people regularly glued to various t.v. and cable t.v. channels, so you could (mostly) justify spending your hard earned money on fifteen to thirty second commercials.

But now, with viewership so incredibly splintered digitally (regular t.v., streaming platforms and even YouTube), you have to go where people are now congregating. On the upside, on digital platforms, your advertising dollars can be stretched a little further than normal. On the downside, you have to make damn sure that your six to fifteen second commercial is memorable enough not to be ignored/skipped by those eyeballs you're trying to lasso in.

And I mean memorable in a good way. Raising Cain has new six second commercials that make absolutely no sense: a guy yelling at an employee for telling them to "eat it"; a well known gardening company featuring Martha Stewart pouring a bag of potted soil into a large pot while saying, "I'm a dirt nerd." Like, what?

The only reason why I remember these two examples, as well as countless others, is that they were exactly six seconds in length, so you had no choice but to watch them. At my age (61) and viewing habits (no television/streaming platforms beyond YouTube since 2019), this is what my short attention span can handle now.

And that's a good thing, because advertisers are coming to the ugly realization that the average consumer has the attention span of a gnat, so they got exactly six-to-seven seconds to get their point across in a way that sticks with them days/weeks/months from now.

I just wish that the professional sports would learn that lesson, especially when you have a 40 minute MLB pregame show, which is at most seventeen minutes that's actually related to the fame, with the remaining time related to advertising.

Have a fantastic Monday or whatever day you happen to be reading this on.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved