Episode #325: "Sister vs Sister"--- Where Are We? Now!

I finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago (late April) and purchased a couple of shepherds hooks and planted them in the side yard where squirrels cannot reasonably jump to and on. Oddly enough, I seem to be getting a different variety of birds with the bird feeders being so close to the mountain.

By the time you're reading this post, I am now working on book #4 of the "Sister vs Sister" fantasy series. I recently completed the first round of editing book #3, and I decided to celebrate my singular achievement by providing the odd statistical* writing update.

*I've always had a thing about finding oddball stats on whatever project that I happen to be performing at the time when the bug bites. And no, this is not a recent phenomenon, as I've been doing it all of my life.

I really do enjoy coming up with oddball stats for my projects and unlike the last one I had done a few years ago that had an emphasis on the actually for this series, this one will not be as labor intensive.

Starting with book #1: the actual editing time frame was January 13th through February 4, 2026, a span of about three and a half weeks. Now there were quite a few things that I did prior to that original start date that would allow me to utilize a new game plan that I had decided on way back in 2022.

Like supplies. Because I wanted to do the entire process correctly, I had purchased 5 1 1/2" D-style three ring binders (with a 375 page capacity based on the same science that says you can get 115 loads of laundry out of 1.17 gallon jug of liquid detergent), and a brand new storage container to hold the original 1st draft, warts and all; I created nearly 1 1/2 dozen initial posts for my FB author's page, as I wanted to turn it into a mini blog by chronicling this journey; and most importantly, an actual title for the book.

Now three and a half weeks to edit a one hundred ninety page novel does sound like an excessive amount of time, but if you factor in things like: living in the real world, and juggling two other writing projects (blog posts and Facebook posts) on top of the editing and the editing process itself, then that three and a half weeks looks a little different.

Between book #1 and book #2, I had a three day grace period, which was unevenly divided between needing time to recalibrate, choosing a title for the and reconfirming that #2 was going to be a slog, as I had some continuity issues that needed to be fixed.

Oh and, unless you're on a deadline because this is your 24/7/365 job, being methodical absolutely does with the race.

Book #2 definitely lived up to initial declaration of being a slog, as this two hundred forty-nine page tome toke me from February 7th through March 5, 2026 to complete. Nearly a month was spent methodically picking through line-by-line-by-paragraph tightening and fixing continuity issues, some of which were quite glaring.

I will not that the amount of words excised were more than doubled from book #1, and I believe that was due to the fact that my prose was becoming a little more purplish.

The break time between #23 and #3 increased to four days, which was mostly spent trying to come up with a title, with the remaining in time spent preparing myself to tackle a book that was at least 41% longer than the previous volume. The primary reason for this was that everything was about to come to head, when the multiple storylines were going to converge before heading back out on a parallel journey to the end.

Book #3 exceeded the limits that book #2 had previously established. The nearly three hundred forty-five page monstrosity took me from March 9th to April 23, 2026. Nearly a month and a half of not only y picking through line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph, but also making sure that the decision I made earlier by the killing off of two main characters and the subsequent aftermath unfolded in the way that I had intended. 

Oh and, what I had stated previously that manufacturer's are overly optimistic about their claims for capacity absolutely came true, as I had to purchase a 1" D-style three ring binder to fit the last 9 chapters of book #3.

In general, this volume was a tough edit, as it left me a little drained and a little sad. When you spend nearly two years that spans three volumes (so far), heavily invested in your characters, there's a certain level of pain when you have to remove a few of them.

I'm not quite sure how long the break will be between book #4 and book #5, but I'm pretty sure I'll be spending the bulk of that time coming up with a title for book #5 that will accurately hint or imply what the final volume is all about.

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

Episode #324: How To Respectfully Write A Hot Button Topic {2}

A classic waterfall pic from the 2010s to brighten up your Monday.

Welcome back my friends, to the blogger that doesn't ends (18 years and counting). Last week's post featured an in depth look at how I chose to make the Aztec culture/society a medium sized part of my story with two of my characters.

This week's post will touch upon Heaven, Hell, Limbo & Purgatory and how they were integrated into the story in various capacities.

For starters, I chose to turn that group of three into a hybrid business corporation/recruitment complex. Again, I was always fascinated by the "what ifs" scenarios that are often explored in other mediums, like literature and celluloid. So I took inspiration from that Albert Brooks movie, and created my own version of those four.

I created Limbo to be a universal clearing house for the other three conglomos. A recruitment center if you will, or to be more specific, a family run recruitment center, where your soul goes to be judges on where you should be moved onto next.

I called the overlord of this vast realm, Lord Visigoth, because reading/listening about early worlds history confined me that thew Visigoth's were bad-asses, and what would be more interesting than a proverbial badass who had a family that he deeply loved and cherished.

In addition to the overlord of Limbo being an empathetic badass, I added a healthy dose of realism to his family: his wife is deceased and appears as a semi-solid apparition. I never hinted at precisely what the illness was that caused her death, and I would like to think that her death influenced the humanity in Lord Visigoth.

I wrote Lord Visigoth as a complex man. One who, even though is physically is a man's man (muscular, tall etc); is quite self-conscious about his looks; has a lifelong friendship with one of the character's mother, yet never flaunts it or crosses the personal boundaries that his family has; is awkwardly trying to stretch his emotional experience beyond any synonym for the word "angry".

In addition to Limbo being a clearing house for the recently deceased, as all religions might have. I also touch upon the very real concept of reincarnation. Some religion's tenets have reincarnation as a theme, and since I had created a a whole other species/culture called "sentients" that are deeply involved, so it was a no-brainer to show how one might become a sentient.

Another oddity in this story, is that Limbo isn't actually mentioned outright. It is called "The Realm" once or twice, but otherwise, it's either implied or inferred depending on a given situation.

I think that, overall, I wanted Limbo to be as nuanced entity that everyone could understand and appreciated. By "nuanced" I mean it's a blend between a conglomo and a proverbial mom & pop store, in that everyone should be treated with dignity and compassion, and not as a particular unit to be shuffled around.

So in a nutshell, this is my personal take on Limbo. I always felt that Limbo as an entity always fell somewhere in between what Hollywood portrays and what the various world religion's portray it to be.

Strangely enough, this is the only concept of the afterlife in which I feel this way. I'm not quite sure how definite my feelings are for the remaining three concepts that I'd mentioned in the beginning, but that is something I should definitely explore in the future.

Happy Monday to one and all.

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

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