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

Episode #319: My Den {2}-Getting Into The Groove: Vinyl LPs

It's been a while since I've talked about my modest music collection (well modest compared to others), so I thought it would be a slight refreshing change of pace to focus on audio, instead of video/visual. Specifically, the petroleum product portion of our vast music collection (aka vinyl).

To give a very brief update, between 45s and LPs, my petroleum product collection contains a combined total somewhere north of 9,000 pieces. Now this is a conservative estimation, as I have one full carrying box, twenty and a half wooden crates (each full crate about 55 units) of LPs and six and a quarter crates (each full crate contains 60 +/-) and one full carry box (about 100).

My petroleum product collection has been acquired in a few different ways over the decades.

1. Purchased for me when I was a young'un (ex: a Brady Bunch album);
2. I purchased for myself: new (as a teen and young adult); used (from the age of twenty-five going forward);
3. Have been given to me by family, friends and co-workers.

Presently, #3 is how I've been acquiring them, as my family and my friends know that I'm always open to acquiring petroleum products on the cheap (aka free). Because of this thoroughly treasured part of my character, I've been able to expand to all kinds of music that maybe three decades ago, I would've simply waved away.

Here is a small sample of music in my collection. Please note that I do not make the distinction between 45s and LPs.

Country of all types of persuasions, including classic and pop; pop music; true alternative/indie music; comedy LPs (60s thru the mid 80's); classical of all types; true R&B; rock music (60's thru 90's); show tunes; easy listening and even niche stuff like barbershop quartets and "adult" (aka smut) music.

Granted, college radio had a major influence in my later years, specifically starting late 90's going forward, which exposed me to all kinds of music, no matter the country of origin.

I now would like to show you a few examples of what has come across my hands and into my collection over the decades.

Elton Britt: yodel songs

Yes, you read correctly. I have an original album from 1956 that contains twelve selections of yodeling songs. I did a modicum of research and this gentlemen recorded nearly 600 sides (45's) and 60 albums during a 30 year career*. I've yet to listen to it though.

*The only artist that comes to mind that might come close to those totals is Willie Nelson.

Apparently yodeling songs were quite popular back in the day, as this gentlemen had a few million sellers back in the 40's & 50's, and from what I was able to ascertain, he was working right up to the day he passed away in 1972.

This is a country album put out by Senator Robert Byrd. Yes, that Robert Byrd. The older than Methuselah rabid segregationist who stayed in office right up until his death.

Anyways, apparently he was an accomplished musician and this was released on a small private label in 1978. Oh and, he actually sang on this record.

~~~~~

While I often enjoy collecting for the sake of collecting, there are times, when after I do a quick run through of a recent acquisition or even a basic run through of my collection looking for something to play, I will often scratch my very bald head in bewilderment at some of the music that was produced and oddly enough, actually listened to.

I sincerely hope that everyone has an enjoyable week and I'll see you next time on the price is not quite spot on.

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

Episode #318: American English?! No, Not That! Well....Maybe

Flashback to when both dogs were living large and living pretty while enjoying life.

I discovered the joys of the American English Language very late in life, but early enough that it came to be part and parcel of my palette when I began to take my writing seriously.

To reintroduce everyone to my former employment background, my very first job was working at the CT State Library in something called "The Connecticut Newspaper Project". The extreme T.L.;D.R. is that I helped prepare old Connecticut newspapers for microfilming. the date range of these newspapers with the late 18th century through the mid 1980's, with a particular emphasis on the 1850's to the mid 1980's.

As I got to reading those early newspapers, I slowly began to appreciate the elaborate workaround that newspapermen would do to skirt the strong libel/slander laws of the time period. For example, you couldn't use select adjectives to describe someone in print. Instead you would often put a letter or two, followed by an underscore, and because your reader was reasonably intelligent, they would instantly recognize the word in question.

Or, if you want to insult someone in print, you would have to get really creative with your insults. For example, if you wanted to call someone "week" when they were bragging about the rope tying skills, you could say that "I had to learn on the fly because I didn't have the luxury of someone helping me out by standing still."

Fast forward about a decade or so. When I decided to become serious about my writing, I knew I had to make my characters stand out in some particular way. The no-brainer for me was to flesh out my character's linguistic skills, and I did this with all of my characters throughout all of my stories. Like a stock character trait.

So what I've tried to do was to model my characters language/speech traits after those writers and journalists of the Victorian age: a sharp tongue, biting wit, a delicate mix of sarcasm and bluntness that allows the user to get their point/insult across without too much collateral damage. I also made sure that those particular traits were sprinkled throughout a given story, because as the old saying goes: saying less carries more of an impact than saying more.

To elaborate on the 'less is more' philosophy, I have found that you can easily establish the personality of a particular character is, by simply having them use one word that they can apply a lot of inflection with.

For example, whenever I use the worlds "Indeed", or "Quite", I'm imaging my character is wanting to get to the point of whatever issue they're dealing with so that they can move on, or they're simply agreeing with whatever salient point someone else is making. Whenever I use the word "Come", it's basically short hand for "we need to get moving on to the next issue at hand."

In summation, I try to create characters that are well-rounded, erudite without being snobbish and will often use language as a way to keep the antagonists at bay, or at least, in their lane.

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

Episode #317: The Family Bookcase {4): Gaming

I was searching through the family bookcase looking for something interesting to blog about when I happened across a few RPG rulebooks/guidebooks. Now I am one of a good chunk of the population who are quite familiar with RPGs, but I never had the itch to play one. I prefer to use my imagination and writing skills for the general fiction world of the novella & novel, but I have mad respect for those who enjoy RPGs and the worlds they can create.

Anyways, I performed a bit of research on the three books that we possess, as well as a brief skim through, and I have to say that I am seriously impressed with the amount of effort from a collective to create these three books. Two of the three books are sadly out of print, as they were created by a close family member who no longer maintains that level of participation in the RPG community, although they have branched out in other ways {click here to see}.

The other role/guidebook was created by a company called West End Games, which surprisingly enough, is still in business under a different corporate umbrella. I won't bore you with the convoluted details, but please click on the link if your curiosity is piqued.

In general, I am astonished with the amount of work that went into creating these worlds (and their background, although it seems that the ones created and published by my close family member are heads above the corporate one), and so I will be explaining what each one is to the best of my ability.

~~~~~

The first of the two books created by my cousin is called Twin Crowns and Other Lands.

Considering I'm a serious neophyte when it comes to RPGs, what impressed me the most while I was thumbing through the book, was the incredible amount of detail and back story that were created for this particular RPG. I always knew that worlds were created for fantasy novels/series, but I always assumed that they would be limited to what would be actually needed for the story (like mine is), but I guess with RPGs, it skips to a whole new level of thoroughness.

The second book that my cousin had created was a role-play for the Twin Crown world that was based on Live Action Role-playing, which was something that I had never heard of before. Think of it as dressing for a Ren fair and then playing a D & D adventure, or one of those dinner theater mysteries.* And yes, my cousin and her gaming friends are featured on this cover.

*okay that last one is pulled directly out of the definition from Google of Live Action Role Playing.

Again, just like the first, it's extremely dense-not so much concentrated on the extensive background dump, but more concentrated on the characters and their  respective KSAs, as well as the assorted ephemera that makes a fantasy world function.

The third book seems to be the only part of an entire box that was left behind somewhere. Not knowing much about RPGs, I'm gathering there's other components that are needed in order to successfully play this particular adventure called Torg: The Possibility Wars.

If you check out the link for West End Games, it goes into greater detail about the origins of this game, and the company, which was found in the late 70's, and created a lot of well known RPGs for some very popular IPs such as Star Wars.

~~~~~

My views on all three games are decidedly mixed. On one hand, they have really opened my eyes to the amount of worlds building that is required to have a successful RPG (or fantasy series, both written and celluloid), so having top notch writing skills is a major plus, with a solid imagination a good second (especially if you're creating  your world from scratch and not using an established IP.

On the other hand, the amount of world building, along with the extensive KSAs involved with that particular world, is incredibly daunting and challenging to a neophyte such as myself, who has a very hard time putting that much effort to playing an RPG to begin with (which is why I never migrated beyond sports when it came to video games in my young adult years).

In spite of this kind of game not being my cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination, I do like learning about a facet of life that a lot of people enjoy participating in because it works both as a stress reducer and  a way to build a skill set that you can successfully apply to the real world.

Gaming is a great way to improve your critical thinking and problem solving skills, no matter what type of game you enjoy playing. Try one today. Or as my cousin used to say on her podcast, "happy gaming everybody."

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