Episode #313: Re-Visiting, Re-Reading and Re-Examining

Got a bit of those winter blahs, so here's a little something from last summer.

Back in the day I used to participate in a monthly writing related blog hop sponsored by the Insecure Writers Support Group, a writing community that supports new and established writers. They have their own blog and have a killer newsletter that is jam packed with all kinds of writing related info, both of which I highly recommend.

In the newsletter, they always offer a question that you can answer during the monthly blog hop (which is always the first Wednesday of the month). I thought that this month's question was so up my alley that I decided to give it a whirl for my weekly blog post.

"Have I ever re-read any of my early writing, and what was that experience like?"

The short answer is: I have and to quote an old song, "oh boy!"

The long answer, which is this post is: It has definitely been an eye opener. When I re-read the stuff that I wrote early on and compare it to what/how I write now, I cringe so hard that I sometimes pull a facial muscle.

While a lot of it has been all kinds of level of cringe, a good chunk of it has been salvageable to the point where I've been able to successfully rewrite and either publish/re-publish or have it soon to be published.

A few examples spring to mind:

1} Both of my recent novellas, The Mortality of Familial Love & To Live Is To Die Young, are re-imagined versions of previously poorly written stories of the kind that would forever languish in a slushy pile never to see the light of day.

2} My current fantasy series was re-imagined from the ashes of a (very) badly written novella that went  nowhere fast over a dozen years ago until I changed the way I write my stories and decided to revisit that cringey story.

3} I have a novella that I plan on republishing this year, because the original version that was published over a decade ago was not up to my current standards as a writer. I realize it shouldn't have been and I'm now trying to rectify that. I've already did this with a previous short story collection, because the mid-2020's me absolutely hated the late 2000's version me.

4} And finally, I was able to successfully re-write nearly a dozen short stories because again, this version of me was severely disappointed with that version of me's mediocre writing (and it was).

So yes, I have spent the past half dozen years pulling all kinds of Calvin & Hobbes faces when reading all of my early writing, but during those same half dozen years, I've also been channeling my inner Calvin & Hobbes can-do attitude when it comes to re-imagining those admittedly bad stories into something 20x better.

I think perseverance is a must have quality for a writer, especially when you're able to find a few good pebbles in the proverbial sandbox of badly written stories, no matter how old those stories happen to be.

Life as a writer is often good, but it's better when you can resurrect an early badly written story into something that you can be proud of.

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

Episode #312: I Want My (Sugar Free) Candy!

This was taken the week prior to the snow bomb that dropped over a foot of snow that ultimately shut down the state for a day and a half.

Like most normal intelligent people, I love candy. When I was able to eat normal candy, more often than not my faves were 3Musketeers, Snickers, Milky Way and Mars Bar with Almonds. I tried a whole bunch of others (thru the age of 21, so about 15+ years), but these are my top four.

Fast forward forty years and although I still love candy, it does not love me like it used to back in the day when I was a sugar junkie. Instead, it loves me like a plan "B", in that the only way to get some loving out of me is to go sugar-free, which we all know is not conducive to living a good sugar junkie life.

Now I have eaten a lot of sugar free candy since 1985 (this is when I was officially diagnosed as a diabetic), and for me they fall into three categories: good but expensive; average for the price point; and slop not worth the money. So without further ado, let's begin at the beginning.

1} Good but expensive:

There aren't too many candy companies that I've come across, either highly commercialized or niche regional, that can produce a quality sugar-free product. In fact, I know of only  two that I can personally offer my positive opinion on.

Russell Stovers: Now we all know that Russell Stovers makes a quality chocolate product that you do pay a premium for. But their sugar-free product is something that you pay a premium price for because it's a quality product.

I often go out of my way to buy their sugar-free product because it's a quality product, and honestly, a quality sugar-free candy is hard to come by.

Muson's Chocolate: Is another example of a good quality product that is worth the premium price if you can find it, as most stores do not carry a large selection of sugar-free chocolate. 

2} Average for the price point:

Most sugar-free mints and gums fall into this category: they get the job done and don't make you sick if you go overboard consuming them. And really, this is what you basically want out of your sugar-free mints or gums: to fulfill that craving without making yourself sick in the process.

Granted, there are some candies that should not have a sugar-free version if the company has a regular version. Let's face it, most confectioners should not make a sugar-free version when there is no call/clamor for one, because why expand your market when you feel there isn't one.

Which brings us to the last category: slop that isn't worth the money.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Hershey's chocolate is mediocre.

Now it was never this bad throughout most of their history, because if it was, you wouldn't see the vast economic empire that is Hershey's today. Instead, you would see maybe a niche chocolate company that was swallowed up by their rivals.

Some thirty plus years ago, Hershey's radically tweaked the process in which they made their chocolate. The end result of this tweaking is a product that those outside of the US would only consume as an absolute last resort.

I was a so-so fan of Hershey's as a child, with their offers being a top fifty choice unless they were launching a new product. As an adult, I am not even remotely a fan of their sugar-free product.

I used to be in the beginning, because sugar-free candy was often a crapshoot and when you can find one to add to your very short consumable list, you do. But it eventually became apparent that their product was not worth the higher price tag (on average, sugar-free chocolate is up to 50% higher than normal chocolate).

Compared to others, most notably Russell Stovers, the taste was off and the contents inside (e.g. peanut butter cups) was roughly textured (sometimes when you bake with a sugar substitute, the quality can be...off).

Hershey's, in my personal opinion, is a mediocre product to begin with and has devolved into one of those companies that everyone knows about due to their oversaturation of their product (think any Kraft product or Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce) and buys based on that oversaturation and not on taste or price point.

There are few other sugar-free chocolates that I've found over the decades, but the ones listed above are those who I've had extensive experience with. I sincerely thank you for allowing me to offer my five cents (no pennies as they've been discontinued) about sugar free chocolate and other assorted sugar-free options.

Remember, sugar free doesn't always mean it's better, it just means it doesn't have the sugary taste that you crave and love. So consume your sugar free products with your eyes wide open, your taste buds wide open, and most importantly, that bottle of Imodium within arms reach.

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

Episode #311: My Bookcase {4}-Capitalizing Thy Punishment

A kindly heads up to my readers: I rarely talk about hot button issues on this blog, simply because of the amount of static I would receive and the fallout afterwards. This is one of those hot button issues that has divided the nation into two distinct camps: pro-criminal/anti-victim and pro-victim/anti-criminal, and you can probably guess which political party today is the former and which is the latter.

I am a very strong proponent of capital punishment. Always have been, always will be. I always believe that if you commit a heinous crime that involved multiple people or certain types of people becoming a fond distant memory for others, then you should suffer the ultimate consequence. This philosophy has made me a very usual person in my very blue state of Connecticut, as the pro-criminal/anti-victim Democratic party eliminated the death penalty in the early 2010's.

I won't go further into the weeds or how broken the system is and other assorted tangents, because this post is not about the (mostly) factual rantings of a "senior citizen". This post is about a book whose topic of choice is Texas's death row.

~~~~~~

I'm not entirely sure when I had picked up this book beyond narrowing it down to the late 2000's. I've always been interested on how death rows work in the states that do have them, so I figured, 'why not?'.

The book itself is an interesting read, as it first spends a few pages talking about how the death row in Texas is run; the rules and regulations, and the like (fun fact, no tobacco products are allowed with your final meal). The rest of the book is set up encyclopedia style in chronological order (but not in the way that you think).

In short, each entry contains the following:

1. The name of the criminal(a);
2. Brief synopsis of the case;
3. Brief bio of the inmate;
4. The amount of time spent on death row;
5. Last meal, if any;
6. Last statement, if any*.

*There is an appendix for some of the inmates who gave very lengthy (usually one to two book pages) statements.

I should note that this book covers the modern era of the Texas Death Row, when the lethal injection was the standard method of execution, starting in December 1982 through the publication date of this book,  April 2007.

I will say that this book is a good read, although not terribly enjoyable for the average person or even true crime aficionados. People who are into criminal justice or social justice may find it a very good read, as well as those who enjoy reading about the history of capital punishment in the U.S.

This book does not sugarcoat the heinousness of the crimes the inmates were convicted of, and the author presents a well balanced look in at capital punishment in Texas.

As I stated in the beginning, there's a lot of things wrong with how capital punishment sentences are carried out, and this post isn't about the end result of a deep dive through the internet (among other things), just a book review/recommendation for those who are curious about the death penalty and how it's applied in the U.S., with a specific focus on Texas.

Thank you for coming to my blog today, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

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

Episode #310: Time Now, For The Editing Portion Of Our Program

An oldie but still a goody from last summer. Sunflowers for a sunshiny day. A harbinger of a cool spring this year, perhaps?

And so it begins that zero day is upon us. Or to be more precise, over one thousand three hundred pages spanning five books totaling one hundred twenty chapters are now officially knockin' on my front door.

On February 6, 2025, I wrote the proverbial 'the end' to my fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Besides deciding on the overall title of the series and coming up with the necessary sub-titles for all five volumes, along with the previously mentioned page edit note taking, I spent the rest of 2025 performing the following:

Front-to-back-to-front note taking and reviewing.

Basically, on that first read through, I performed another round of editing and making sure there were no continuity issues going forward. I then did the exact same thing again going backwards from the end looking for the exact same issues.

After that particular read through and letting it rest for a few weeks, I turned my attention to fixing a few characters so that they were consistent all the way through. In other words, a few characters started off being portrayed a particular way, but by the end had evolved into something completely different.

For example: The Pod Queen's hair spirit started off in Book #2 as being her bff, but by the end of that book had morphed into being her sister. Thus a continuity issue that needed to be addressed.

I found another continuity issue with another character that was portrayed one way and as the story progresses performed a one-eighty by the end.

Overall, I found about five character/plot continuity issues, of which a couple were actually fixed while I was writing the series. So while I have my work cut out for me, it's not as bad as it could have been.

I say "not as bad as it could have been" because I made a concentrated effort to be clear and concise with my note taking. As most of you know, my handwriting is garbage, so my printing has to be clear enough for me to decipher. Believe it or not, this is a serious on-going issue for me. If I become too tired, my printing becomes just sloppy enough not to be legible, which has created problems over the years.

So this is my life for the next year, and just like in 2024, I will publish the third of my four projects (revamped/rewritten novella) sometime in the spring while working on these edits. And just like previously, I will be journaling my continuing adventures with my fantasy series, with a brief summary here and a slightly more detailed post on Facebook. If you have Facebook, please check out my author's page (link on the right hand side of the front page).

Have a good rest of your week.

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