Episode #323: How To Respectfully Write A Hot Button Topic {1}

We all need a little flashback to our childhood when life was a little magical and whole lot innocent.

As long as I could remember, I was always ambivalent about religion. I do believe there is a higher power of some kind, and I do believe in the concepts of Heaven, Hell, Limbo and Purgatory.

But I was always inquisitive about those concepts, to the point where I would often search out books and articles, both hard copy and digital, about those very concepts. I think I spent the better part of a decade researching those concepts until my curiosity was (mostly) satiated.

Fast forward to the tail end of the '00s. I watched an old movie that basically changed the way I viewed concepts and cultures as it applied to my writing. The movie in question was Defending Your Life, starring Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep, who plays a man defending his life in the AfterLife so that he can be reincarnated.

That movie inspired me to re-imagine how I wrote about certain concepts and cultures: basically, I turned them into small conglomos/business entities.

While I made a good solid attempt at turning the few religious concepts mentioned above into conglomos that were deeply intertwined with each other in a novel that ultimately fizzled, I spent the next decade or so refining and adjusting that particular concept into something that once could consider to be commonplace.

Fast forward to 2022.

I'm two years into a happy retirement and I'm starting the fourth of five writing projects that I had originally set up for myself in the spring of 2021: this fantasy series.

I had decided early on in the story that I was going to turn the Aztecs into a modern day crime family , thus they have their fingers/hands in all kinds of illegal pies. And just like a modern day crime family , they are judge, jury and executioner, all of which ties in perfectly with their real world application of human sacrifices.

The other modern day reality: during my belated research, I was not able to definitively ascertain what the Aztec's cultural views were on homosexuality, either through the real world or their mythology. So I decided to have them implement the infamous (in some quarters) "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the US military in the 1990s. I won't bore you with the gruesome details of the policy, but I did apply a vicious little twist to the policy that would satisfy even the most ardent opponent of the policy.

The olden day reality: Now if you take into account, and you really should, because if you know anything about common sense, you should never apply today's often warped societal mores. So because we are dealing with a world where certain customs were just done until modern times, we decided that although the Aztecs did believe in the concept of marriage, they did not believe in the concept of divorce. But they did believe in a concept called 'unmarriage', which I would venture to guess (which is odd, because...yeah) it would be similar to what an annulment is.

Another olden day reality that I touch upon is slavery. For those of you who believe that slavery was just a White European Thing, then you deserve the ridicule for how you voted in the last three presidential elections. Slavery was a worldwide multi-millennia hardcore economic realty (and in some places, still exists). Slavery is what the victors do to the vanquished after war/reading parties.

This is also touched upon in a very realistic way, as I drew upon my knowledge of world history and U.S. history, in order to create a very real background for one of my main characters. Which is something I'm very proud of because if you're going to write about a particular culture, you need to showcase everything, warts and all.

Thus ends part one of this two part post. Tune in next week when we cover how I chose to work in the concepts of Hell, Purgatory and Limbo into my fantasy series.

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

Episode #322: The Grooviest Groove That You'd Ever Groove To.

Just before sitting down at this now full screen, I was jamming to a song by Blues Traveler that was going through my head because of the title of the post. Thus, we have Winnie The Pooh chilling on the bench in the bright sunshine.

T he writing groove.

Many have searched for that elusive state of being, where the words keep flowing and that you're churning out stories at a continuous pace. Some have found it and are quite happy with their lives. Others have not. They suffer through bouts of not being able to put the proverbial pen to paper on a consistent basis and become completely aggravated with the process.

And then there are people like me, who have extended peaks and valleys with their writing. In other words, Johnstown Flood and Arizona in the summertime. I know, odd analogy, but it's an apt descriptor. You have peaks where the worlds and stories pour out at a frenetic pace until you suffer from epic burnout and you're scrapping the bottom of a tapped out vein looking for sentences.

A good example would be my blogging. I started with two posts every other day; then dropped to one post every other day; then dropped to three posts per week; then dropped to two posts per week; then finally dropped to one post per week. Oh, and I've been blogging since 2008, so...yeah.

But, as a former blogger used to say, I blogress.

I was definitely going through a medium sized valley with my writing prior to my retirement in late 2020. But after digging out the previously mentioned (repeatedly I might add) manuscripts, I started working on them in 2021, and I slowly started digging myself out of the valley that was my current writing home.

By 2022, when I was hip deep in year one of writing my fantasy series, my writing groove was mostly back. Although I wasn't doing any original writing of stories, I was enjoying blogging once again, and I was a Happy Boy.

Later in 2022, I got bit by the short story bug, and for the next several months, I wrote there short stories. I didn't write anymore after those initial three because I didn't want to get too sidetracked while writing my fantasy series.

Fast forward to 2025. I had written the last sentence of my series in mid-February, and I eventually hit that small rut that everyone goes through after completing a novel. But I wasn't terribly worried, in that I was busy getting this novella published and that usually takes me four to five months to complete.

Oddly, or strangely enough, depending on your viewpoint, I got bitten by the short story bug again. This time, in addition to writing original stuff, I thought I would take a crack at rewriting old stuff. Now if you're like me, you never really toss old stories away into the circular file, you just stash them inside a three ring binder and pray you don't forget them.

Now I do want to point out the underlying reason why his short story bug came back to bite me after being dormant for three years: I had forced myself to take a one year sabbatical before I got back to the serious business of editing the final master draft of my series.

So I dug out several extra stories to rework and rewrite, which is what I spent all 2025 doing. With one of the stories, after I had reworked/rewrite to my satisfaction, I made four different attempts at turning it into a novella.

After that fourth attempt, I decided that I didn't want to spend months researching and writing a novella that would have taken time away from my fantasy series.

Fast forward a few months to 2026. I decided that I would document my journey to publication on Meta (aka Facebook), like I've been doing on my blog. I initially wrote about 15 posts from Dec '25 through Jan '26, then once I got in a good editing groove, kept stockpiling more posts (I publish twice a week on Meta), as well as writing updates.

Now we're here in mid-April and not only am I still stockpiling posts and writing updates to my editing (still slogging away on book #3), but now I've also started stockpiling posts for a novella that I wanted to re-publish this summer. So I can definitely say that once again, I've found my writing groove.

Or, as the Blues Travelers opines, "it's all in the groove!"

Happy Monday and may your week be a dream on your reality check.

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

Episode # 321: The Family Bookcase {5}: Encyclopedias

Items that you can buy with bubble gum comics: bobbleheads!

If you're somewhere in the general vicinity of my age (60 1/2), you didn't grow up with the Internet to use for research purposes; you grew up with ye olde fashioned public library, which contained among other research items, encyclopedias.

Or perhaps, your house may have contained a semi-up-to-date set of the (usually) Encyclopedia Britannica, or some other quality encyclopedia set.

If perhaps you're a member of the younger generation, your definition of "encyclopedia" is probably just an actual encyclopedia, but more to the point of having it attached to a pop culture item.

Today's post is going to focus on both types of encyclopedias: those that have now turned into a search engine as Google, Bing, FireFox and Opera; and those which are connected to the genre of pop culture along with all of its sub-genres.

Regular encyclopedias:

While I no longer have that original set of Encyclopedia of Britannica from my childhood, I do have a 2,500+ page monstrosity called The Columbia Encyclopedia. Yes it was published by Columbia University, and yes it is one volume. (about 4 1/2 inches thick, cover-to-cover), and it was published in 1969.

Here are some examples of some long articles you can find. I should note that the font size in this book is around 4-5. For comparison, newspapers is around 8. To confirm, open any blank document and drop the font size to the aforementioned size for a better understanding.

1} The Hussites: religious movement.

2} Writing and the alphabet: complete with examples like cuneform.

Then we have non-traditional encyclopedias. We have quite a few complete sets, courtesy of my brother, who likes to salvage while performing home improvements for others.

1} Funk & Wagnells Wildlife: and you thought they were just a Carnac the Magnificent bit.

2} Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals.

3} l Want to Know: what would considered to be Middle Grade.

4} Our Living World: published in conjunction with the Dept Of Interior.

Then we have the non-non-traditional encyclopedias. These are primarily oddball/pop culture collections that people would slap the "encyclopedia" label on to make it sound really interesting and a lot more expensive to purchase.

I have found the following types in our family bookcase:

1} A half dozen different types of baseball encyclopedias.

2} Various music encyclopedias.

3} A Cliff Notes version of Britannica.

4} Pro Wrestling.

5} Horror Movies.

6} Gun Design.

7} Antiques.

8} Boxing records.

As you can see, it's very much quite the eclectic haul of encyclopedias we have in this house. And rest assured, they will be treated like the last days spent with the previous owner: unwanted, unloved and most importantly, unread.

Now I will admit that the pro wrestling books are mine, and one of them is remarkably out of print (having come out around five years prior to the explosion of Hulkamania), but the other as previously stated, were not acquired by me, nor would they be something acquired by me.

My speed has always been the oddball collection like the Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, coffee table books like on the Rolling Stones, or extended collections that I had touched up on months ago from the now defunct Time-Life Imprints, or even one on Warner Bros Cartoons. Most importantly, the books I decide to acquire, I will actually read.

I know, imagine that, spending one's hard earned money on books that you enjoy reading, sometimes repeatedly. It does boggle the mind (a game I have played only once in my life) though, that some people, like myself, enjoy reading so much that they would have no issues in pulling out a random volume from a set of encyclopedias, flipping to a random pages and just start reading.

Fun fact that you may or may not be able to deduce from reading this post: I have a rather ambivalent attitude towards the encyclopedia, no matter what form they may come in.

I won't go out of my way to purchase a set, not even if it's on a topic that I like, True Crime for example. If one happens to be available and is reasonably up-to-date, I will be more than happy to use it, if only as a jumping off point to help me confirm something that I have knowledge of.

I leave you with one last thought: on a personal note: I would highly recommend, if you have a school age child that has an inquisitive mind and decent comprehension skills, that he/she be allowed to read the encyclopedia. It's an absolutely fantastic way to introduce your youngster to the world around them, both current and past, no matter what the topic, and give them a jump start on going down the rabbit hole of knowledge when something piques their curiosity.

Because as the old saying goes, reading is fundamental.

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

Episode #320: Yo! What's The Name Of Yer Book?

Beef in the summer time, it's what makes a family get together, a family get together.

Book titles have always been a hit or (mostly) miss for me.

Either I get it reasonably right: The Inner Sibling or A Trilogy of Love, or I get it painfully wrong: Line 21 or Red Stripe.

With my fantasy series, even though I got the overall title correct, Sister vs Sister, creating the individual titles has been a small pine cone in my work boot.

The first title was way beyond a no-brainer, since the first book started off the adventure with a kidnapping, it made sense to feature that particular word in the title. The second was just a shade more difficult, but knowing how everything was unfolding made it only a slightly bumpier ride to come up with a title that kissed the ceiling of the unwritten rule about title length.

The title for book $3 was the most difficult to come up with so far. One difficult part was reasonably matching the title up with the content of the book, which in this case features a key climatic point that sets the tone for the rest of the series.

The other difficult part was making sure that the title did not break that unwritten rule about title length. After performing about a half hours worth of brainstorming, I came up with a seven word title for the story. I felt it reasonably hinted at what the book was about, so I made a cover sheet for the binder and called it a day.

An hour later, I realized that it was too wordy, and if I felt it was too wordy, then other would too, so I spent about fifteen minutes deciding on where to chop it down and the end result became a three word title.

~~~~~

The apparent unwritten rule of thumb with the title, at least how I understand it, is that the title should be five words or less, because you have a few seconds to catch someone's attention and if they have to expand their short attention span longer than that. you're basically cooked.

If you know anything about publishing history, and I'm not talking about the modern 20th century, but going back to ye medieval times when the printing press came into vogue, book titles were both short and incredibly long at the same time.

Book jacket covers are a modern invention, where you can stuff everything that one needs to know about the book with impunity. Prior to the 20th century, you didn't have the jacket cover, you simply had the cover enhance with the title and the author's name, and maybe on the side. There were exceptions to that rule though, like dime novels.

Anyways, back then the title page inside often became the modern day equivalent of a brief synopsis: you would have a brief/succinct title of your book, say, "how to ice fish."

Underneath in parenthesis, you would have a fifteen to thirty word synopsis of the entire book as a subtitle. So instead of having a short title of your book, it would suddenly expand to a minimum of twenty words. And this was more the rule than the exception.

So when the modern publishing industry was created, I believe the unwritten rule of five words or less became the industry norm for fiction and some non-fiction. I think you would be hard pressed to find a fiction book with a title longer than five words in this day and age.

I'm almost certain that I will be revisiting this topic very soon once I start working on book #4 & #5, because I foresee having my usual difficulties in creating a title that connects in some way with the content.

Thank you for visiting this rare two-for post that is equal parts a writing update and a history lesson.

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