I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 30th

Boy howdy and howdy to the girl wearing the oversized flannel shirt and nothing else and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where nothing is as it seems but everything is int its place.

I love to walk, which is unusual since I love to bicycle as well. However, due to my permanently perpetual medical malady, bicycling has been eliminated from exercising repertoire to issues of remaining upright for a consistent period of time. Therefore, walking has been my default choice of exercise for both losing weight and maintaining the status quo with my legs.

You might be wondering why I'm talking about walking. Well, about this time last year, I finally broke down and bought a smartphone. Long story short, it opened up a fascinating world of all kinds of audio for me partake in, in which the audio world of podcasts became my main companion on my daily walks, morning and evening commute and everything else in between.

By late summer 2018, I starting getting curious about the amount of mileage/distance I was walking, so in the last week of September 2018, I downloaded a pedometer/step-counter app. Among the modest goals/achievements I could meet was distance. Ya know, walk "x" amount of miles, accomplish the equivalent of this.

So in the span of about 9 months, I managed to accomplish the following goals:

1} 3 miles, which is the equivalent of a short hike;
2} 6 miles, which is the equivalent of a Roman Holiday (whatever that may be);
3} 12 miles, which is the equivalent of hike up Mt. Olympus;
4} 26 miles, which is the equivalent of a marathon;
5} 60 miles, which is the equivalent of 100 kilometers;
6} 135 miles, which is the equivalent of going to Paris from London.
7) 280 miles, which is the equivalent of going to Philadelphia from Boston.

This is what I've been able to accomplish with 9 months of walking on average 31 1/2 miles per month. Consistency has been the key for me in accomplishing this particular goal. Basically, with the issue was/is being overweight and having severe muscle weakness/neuropathy in my legs, there was an urgent need of my part to do something about it.

I actually have three remaining walking goals left with this particular app, of which two will be achievable. 8} 500 miles; 9}1200 miles, which is the equivalent of the Sahara desert; and 10} 3,950 miles, which is the distance to the Earth's core.

This my friends, is how I relax while I'm out and about on the weekends as well as during my lunch break at work. I walk and listen to podcasts. For those who are wondering if I know how many hours that I've spent listening to podcasts, I do to a certain degree. I switched over to the Stitcher podcast app from the crappy TuneIn radio app on 10/5/2018. Since then, I've logged in 460 hours and 1 minute of listening time.

So yeah, I do love listening to audio equivalent of wandering the library stacks looking for interesting genres to peruse. Don't you?

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 29th

Boy howdy and welcome to the mish-mosh that is the literary world of G.B. Miller, where his personal life sometimes become front and center.


This coming June 17th, my wonderful daughter Jenelle will be graduating from high school and I couldn't be more prouder and happier for her. Come late August she will be an incoming freshman at Quinnipiac University, and again, I couldn't be more happier and prouder of her (she'll be shooting for a Master's in social work).

I thought that for today, I would show a few of the ye olden pictures of her back when she was younger, as well as her final high school picture.

Picture #1 shows her with her stuffed animals, I think was taken in the early 2000's.

Picture #2 was taken during the early years of her dancing career. Not sure if this was for one of her dance schools or for one her dance competitions.

Picture #3 shows the end result of her drive and determination for her dance and skating competitions, at least several years worth.

Finally, picture #4 was taken during her senior prom with her current beau. And yes, the background is of Cedar Mountain. The gloom of the morning and afternoon completely disappeared by the time 5p arrived, which make the mountain the perfect background for the pre-prom pictures.

Empty nest syndrome will arrive the lat week of August, but until then, we'll enjoy the time that we will have with our wonderfully talented daughter. Congratulations Jenelle, you done us proud!

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 28th

Amazon

Girl howdy and howdy to the boy who freezes people in mid rant with a raised eyebrow, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where talk is cheap, action is expensive and everyone is celebrating the 70th anniversary of 1984.

First off, we would like to apologize for the one day lateness of today's post. I belatedly realized that if I want to apply what I usually do at work when presented with an issue that requires a down-the-road deadline (i.e. 4 days) in my blog world, I need to start writing the post in the middle of the week, as opposed to the either the day before or the day of.

Last week, we touch upon the fact that we received our manuscript back from our wonderful editor, which presented us with the brilliant idea of baring my writing soul to the blogging world {note, no sarcasm is intended or inferred}, which we promptly acted on.

So I thought for this post, I would cover what I managed to do right (the positive feedback that we all need to receive as writers) with The Friendship Continues. Within the next two weeks, we will cover what managed not to do write (critical feedback that we all need to receive in order to grow as writers).

1} To lightly paraphrase my editor, she said the following: "This is a hugely inventive world you've presented here, straddling comedy and sex in a proficient way, and demonstrating areas of solid humor. You've got some very good one-liners and I think your sense of humor leans naturally towards prose phrases and a celebration of incongruity."

Being that this was my first really solid attempt at world building, I will take this sliver of goodness and use it to stroke my ego.

2} I was complimented on my distinct lack of serious info-dumping, instead relying on small tidbits sprinkled throughout the story.

I've read stories where entire chapters were devoted to info-dumping, which really turned me off as a reader. So I vowed not to do this as a writer.

3} Sometimes, you write in a p.o.v. that you absolutely no idea that it actually existed, and simply thought you were writing in a default p.o.v. In this particular case, I wrote in the omniscient voice, apparently with full chutzpah and enthusiasm, with my previous novel and this one. And I managed to follow one of the rules quite well.

Unless the characters are psychic, do not give them psychic powers.

4} My sense of humor just shines throughout the story in all kinds weird and wonderful ways.

It has taken me years to refine my sense of humor to make it palatable for the written word. Blogging has definitely helped, as well as dealing with co-works, who are bottomless well of straight lines.

Those 4 positive points are all what has jumped out at me after reading my 36 page editorial overview twice. I'm sure there's a few more buried within, but those are in the "this-is-good-but-this-over-here-has-some-issues-that-need-some-attention", which we'll go over in not-quite-so-excruciating-detail next time. Also for next time, I will share with everyone what her ultimate conclusion of this novel as it presently stands.

Until then, have a sparkly non-chaotic week with one and all!

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode IWSG the 5th

IWSG

Girl howdy and is Howdy Doody alive and well living in the suburbs, or is he just chillin' on an astral plane of know return, and welcome to the literary world of G.B. Miller, where he has decided, yet again, to participate in the monthly blog hop that is IWSG, as well as write the longest run-on sentence in his blogging life, which recently celebrated its 11th year back on May 24th.

Phew.

Anywho, as you all know, the first Wednesday of the month is when we, as writers etc., commiserate about our writing or something connected, however tenuously, to our writing.

For today's lament, since I really don't have anything personal to squawk about yet, I thought I would take a crack at the question of the month, which is:

Of all the genres you read and write, which is your favorite to write in and why?

I enjoy writing fantasy, simply because it's one of the few genres that allows you to get away with just about anything, no matter how implausible it may be.

To elaborate, my current book series "The Friendship Trilogy" features a mixed couple: human (male) and half-human/half animal (female), or what I like to call a "hybrid". In addition to the usual animal features that can crop up from time to time {a tail, whiskers, ears, claws, etc}, she also has two sisters who are symbionts and who also control two different parts of her body.

This particular dynamic allows me to write the character as someone whose race is now somewhat commonplace, thus allowing me to treat her as a 100% normal individual. Additionally, I have also introduced the concept of telepathy into the story as well.

Basically, this genre allows me to bend reality almost to the point of implausibility, thus allowing me to show how an unusual person can be accepted amongst the regular peoples that populate the here and now.

And that, my friends, is what my comfort zone for writing is.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 27th

Books by G.B. Miller

Boy howdy and howdy to the ingenue who can destroy others with just a pout and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where cliches go to become resurrected and turned into a nifty little song, and originality is groomed to be the Master of my Domain.

So, we've gone off the proverbial path as it applies to my writing for the past few posts, and while it was refreshing change of pace (at least for me), it's time to get back into the swing of things and return to our chosen path of destruction.

Earlier last week, I finally received my manuscript back from my editor. I actually squealed with delight upon receiving it, because that meant I would be finally able to move on to the next phase getting book #2 published, which is getting a book cover for it, and since I'm currently on an almost week's vacation, I figured it would be a good time to work on it.

Right.

I printed out both the chapter review summary (20 pages) and the editorial overview (36 pages) and got ready to spend a few hours this past Saturday reading and digesting what the editor did to/for my manuscript.

As per my norm, I started reading bass-ackwards. Suffice to say, shock and awe was the call of the day, and I mean that in the positive way that it should be taken. Once I picked up my jaw from the grass and reattached it, I started reading the editorial overview. I stopped after eight pages. Not because I didn't agree with what was written, which I 100% absolutely did, but because I quickly realized that I needed to carve out a better block of quiet time with no distractions (I had originally started reading this while listening to music on my smart phone), so that I could properly digest and comprehend the good, the bad and the ugly.

Long story short, I wrote this trilogy strangely, in that I wrote book #3 first (about 20% completed and tossed), book #2 second, book #1 third and book #3 will be written fourth. Weird I know, but this is the brutal end result of inspiration.

From what I gleaned from the 8 pages that I'd read, I did some things quite well, but properly writing a series was not/is not one of them. Suffice to say, I do have a moderate amount of work ahead of me in order to make this book shine. I did have to do some additional work with book #1 based on the sound advice that a different editor gave me, but the additional work needed for this book will be uncharted territory for me. Thanks to my wonderful editor, this book is about 85% ready for publication. The remaining 15% will be entirely up to me, which I will attack with gusto once I read the editorial overview from cover to cover as well as the chapter summary (again) to see just exactly what I need to do.

So, in the end, this post becomes the intro for a new series of posts about editing, specifically, what I need do to make this book the best it can be. Next week, I will cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of what my strengths and weaknesses were with this book.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved