I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 34th

Boy howdy and howdy to the nerdy girl who can kick my butt with little to no exertion and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where nothing is as it seems, and what it seems is highly unlikely to actually fit in the rectangular hole.

My week has improved from last week to the point of feeling like I'm looking at my reflection in the window of my mind and wondering just exactly what the H-E-double toothpicks am I dong here.

To whit:

It was officially confirmed, after hearing it from multiple reliable sources, that my particular department will not be moving next spring.  Instead, our department (Payroll), will be realigned with Fiscal. Thus, instead of contemplating an early retirement and looking for a job in the real world at the age of a double nickel, we will now be contemplating whether or not our digs will move from one floor to another.

Also, the headache that I mentioned last week about picking up another payroll is only a temporary thing, since we are interviewing next week for another payroll clerk, to replace a good one who went back into the private sector to work at a company that specializes in backroom functions for multimedia companies.

Thus, the stress for work has been largely tampered down.

Things with the family are slowing coming around. Daughter will be moving in late August to college, and I will have to confirm the wedding rehearsal sometime next week. Additionally, I got "invited" (read: told I really need to be there or else) to a Jack & Jill thingy next month. Yay me, for I get to meet all kinds of people that I will probably never meet again (much) after the wedding in September. The only blemish this month was the passing of this little guy:

He lived a very long 18(?) years and he had a very good summer to enjoy before he left us. On his very last night he was surrounded by family and gradually drifted off to that big old backyard in the sky so as to play with the previous members of the household: Carbon (poodle); Cinders (shelter dog part boxer, shepherd and beagle) and Bubbles (ferret).

In regards to writing, I haven't yet. Still have way too much stress to touch my book, but I've begun to take some baby steps, in that I've started to re-familiarize with the 45% of book #3 that I've already written. That way, when the time comes (and it will) I'll have a basic grasp of what I need to do.

The main reason why I have so much work to do on book #2 is this: I wrote everything ass-backwards.

Normally, the iron-clad rule of thumb when writing a series (of any kind) is that you write it in proper chronological order. Ya know, book #1 (the beginning), book #2 (the middle) and book #3 (the end). You do not, repeat, do not write book #3 (ending) twice, followed by book #2 (the middle), then book #1 (the beginning).

What you accomplish is this: instead of trying to make book #2 bridge everything from book #1 into book #3, you have a bad bridge to book #3 while making book #1 look like it was written to fit book #2, instead of vice versa, with book #2 written to fit book #1 while bridging/transitioning to book #3.

This, my friends, is the monumental mountain that I need to climb and conquer so that I can continue on with my writing life. I actually do have a self-imposed deadline to start this thing, so come hell or high-water, I will get this thing completed by next year.

I tell ya, it ain't easy being a writer these days, especially when you're trying to work around the other aspects of your life in order to accomplish something.

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

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 33rd

The song up above pretty much not only sums up my week, but my year as well. 

Every once in a great while in the literary world of G.B. Miller, stress in all of its hideous forms comes crashing down all at once. When that happens, it usually makes him quite non-competent in his writing, which usually lasts for an incredibly long time. This is one of those times.

All facets of my life have conspired to make me pretty much non-competent with my current writing project, which is volume #2 of "The Friendship Trilogy". For this particular writer, background distractions need to be very minimal at the very least. I have monster issues that need to be corrected with this book (when you have to fix every chapter, yeah, it's just that bad. some day I will elaborate on this self-inflicted shot in the foot) and unfortunately, every facet of my life has a serious stress issue that has taken precedence.

1} Family. Lets start off with the easy part. Daughter has graduated high school and this weekend we finally had her graduation party. No real stress there, but she is going to a local college here in CT to earn a masters in Social Work. Thus the beginning of stress. The plan is for her to live on campus, so all kinds of stress involved with moving, meal plans, living money, textbooks, etc. More stress is involved when it comes to tuition. Fortunately, the Fall 2019 semester is fully paid for ($34k), so we have about a fourth month gap before we have to worry about the Spring 2020 semester. So, hooray for college stress.

2} Family II. Continuing on a theme, Son is getting marred in mid September (about two months from now), so we have a copious amount of stress involved there. My particulars stress revolves around two things: wedding rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself. The rehearsal dinner is mostly a monetary stress, in that I have to pay for this particularly fascinating endeavor (looking at between $650 and $700}, while the wedding itself will be majorly stressful. Note, the last time I work a tux when about a decade ago when my brother got married. So, hooray for wedding stress.

3} Work. Ah yes, the 1200lb/kg elephant in the room. Where to begin...well, for starters, my employer (the state of CT) is looking to consolidate its backroom functions (i.e HR, Payroll, WC, FMLA) into one antiseptic-morale-crushing location, where you're not allowed to have anything personal adorning your cubicle and you become one with your new agency. A lot of people, including myself, are extremely unhappy about this move. On a personal level, I've started job hunting within, looking for something that will prevent me from transferring out to that other agency. Barring that, I am giving strong consideration to early retirement, of which I will qualify for after my b'day in May 2020, taking a crappy pension and looking for a new job in the real world.

Also, I just picked up another large payroll, so there's a lot of stress involved with that. And this not a completely unexpected move, because a wonderful co-worker of mine is going on a six month maternity leave in roughly two weeks, so her payrolls have to be covered and other job duties will have to be covered. On the upside, I will be losing a payroll once a new clerk gets hired (yup, more stress). So, hooray for work stress.

So all of these absolutely lovely background distractions are the concrete reasons as to why I haven't given thought one to tackling the behemoth that is volume #2. There are a lot issues involved with this novel that have to be fixed, and next week, I will post a very cautionary tale on how writing out of order can create an epic blowback that can take months to recover from

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

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 32nd

Boy howdy and howdy to the boy who ain't a founding member of your clique but still likes you just the same and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where the past is a prologue to a very confusing future.

Before I get into the swing of things today, I would like to give a very brief writing update as it applies to my 2nd novel.

There isn't any.

While you may be asking yourself, "What?!", the truth of the matter is this: work, in all of its hideous forms, is now the driving force that is sucking up my free time, while college (daughter) and matrimony (son) are dragging up the rear. Sadly, because of the issues at work, which will likely take the rest of the year to resolve (unless by some slim chance a miracle occurs), I have not been able to carve out the desperately needed tranquility-of-the-mind-time so that I can properly fix/edit/save the 2nd novel. I don't know about the rest of you, but I need minimal interference from the outside world in order to write anything beyond a blog post.

With that downer of a paragraph written and out of the way, let's move on to the topic at hand: movies.

I like strange movies. Or, to be more specific, I like movies heavily flavored with religion, either directly or indirectly. I can take clean G-to-PG rated movies that aren't too preachy or condescending, but for the most part, my speed is roughly R-rated. Definitely not into the over-the-top schizoid religious horror movies that seem to be all the rage these days, but more into those who inject the right amount of religious references that make can make a movie both dark and thought provoking.

Let's take the vampire genre for example.

I've moved completely away from the traditional vampire flicks of the past 70+ years and now lean more towards those that take a non-traditional approach. A good example would be the movie "Only Lovers Left Alive", featuring Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston. This movie goes the very non-traditional route of taking two lovers whose relationship has spanned several centuries and following them to an unlikely conclusion. While the usual tropes (i.e. attacking people for blood bank withdrawals, drinking blood) are featured in the movie, they are presented more as a character trait/minor annoyance than anything else.

So using that film as an example (it's a movie well worth watching), the following movies are what I want to purchase with my next Amazon gift card.

1} Drive Angry. This features Nicholas Cage as an escapee from Hell who is on a mission to rescue his granddaughter from a cult of Satan worshipers.The usual tropes are to be had throughout this underappreciated movie (average rating is 5.4/10 on IMDb),  but I do like the few twists thrown into the mix: a character called The Accountant is dispatched to bring him back. I believe his job is to keep track of the total number of souls that are residing in Hell. He does have one incredibly dry line in which after he steps out of a nasty car crash (to to the disco tune of "That's The Way"), sees two teens doing drugs and says to the first, "I'll see you in three months," and the to the other says, "I'll see you when you're seventy".; also, Nicholas Cage's character is called John Milton, which if you know a smattering of literary history, he wrote the seminal novel "Paradise Lost".

2} Byzantium. This features Saoirse Ronan and Gemma Arterton (two very fine actresses) who play two vamipir-ish women who are perpetually on the run from those who keep the secret of eternal life. It doesn't have the usual tropes, but it is one of the very few horror movies that I don't mind watching. It's a very interesting and unique twist on the vampire genre, with multiple seamless flashbacks to the 19th century. A bit dark but overall a very good story.

So these are my two goals for my 2nd Amazon gift cards. I rarely buy movies to begin with, but I'm more than willing to take the plunge on these, although the 2nd one might be a little tougher to purchase since I don't have Amazon Prime. Will have to give the Prime membership a lot of thought though.

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

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 31st

Girl howdy and howdy to the Yello bear who might be surfin' in the lobby of a nondescript office building and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where crippling thoughts of self-flagellation battle with the free-wheelin' thoughts of "yes I can" to a serious stalemate.

In the first six months of this year, I gained quite a few Amazon gift cards (along with one Visa and one Wendy's) for b'day presents. Father day's presents and wedding anniversary presents. This is directly due to me being a very difficult person to shop for.

So as I'm want to do lately, I start surfing my smart phone, college radio and the news for artists to do that initial dip into their back catalog for. My criteria is exceptionally simple: One song from the artist has to pique my curiosity just enough to take a deeper look at their catalog.

So this is what I did for the 1st Amazon on my hit parade. I remembered three songs that piqued my curiosity, one of which was basically the one and only hit for the band. In no particular order of importance, they are as follows:

1} EMF-Schubert's Dip: I basically bought this c.d. as a replacement for the cassette that I bought some 20 years ago. That one hit was "Unbelievable",which got monster airplay back in the early 90's. it has a semi-earworm quality that usually isn't irritating when you do listen to it.

2} Sturgill Simpson-A Sailor's Guide To Earth. I actually discovered this artist via a college morning radio show on WWUH 91.3 (CT). They played a rather dark version of Nirvana's "In Bloom", and since I'm always a fan of darker/slower versions of popular rock songs, this c.d. became the next on my purchase list. Here is his version of In Bloom.

3} Alabama 3-Exile on Coldharbour Lane. I actually got this one via the news. I had read a story about the founder and lead signer Jake Black passing away at the age of 54 (?). Also read in the same article that their song "Woke Up This Morning" was used as the theme song for The Sopranos, which became a minor hit for them. Wasn't familiar with them until I watched a few YouTube videos, which in turn piqued my curiosity.

Next on my agenda for the 2nd card is to purchase two movies: Drive Angry and Byzantium. But the 3rd one is where I'll be needing help.

I want to purchase three more c.d.'s, so I'm looking for song suggestions from some artists that you like. Only caveat is that they can't be from a current release. Has to be something older so that if it does piques my curiosity, I'll have fun going though their back catalog.

Have a spiffy week my friends!

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

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode IWSG the 6th

IWSG

Boy howdy and how you all doing these days, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, who likes to talk the talk, walk the walk and ruin the rune

As ya'll know what day it is, and it certainly ain't Joe Camel day, we'll dispense with the usual intro and move on to the very post in question. Or the nub of my gist.

The topic of conversation today is: procrastination.

Yes, that bane of every writer's existence and the cause of everyone's collective brain cramp.

One case in point is this blog post. I procrastinated in writing this blog post so badly that I literally started writing this thing around 8:15 last night (EST/EDT, I can't keep track any more). Nothing like the fear of being invited to leave to get yourself off your buttocks and get the job done.

Another case in point is getting back to the item that you shelled out serious wampum for someone to edit the living daylights out of, and of which still needs serious work on to make it extraordinarily presentable to the masses.

I got my wonderful little novel back (complete with a solid 10 page chapter summary, a very solid 38 page editorial overview, the edited copy and the super clean final copy) in very early June. Now, I actually didn't look at it for about two weeks, since I had an extreme amount of family stuff (not drama) going on in those two weeks that prevented me from giving it my fully undivided attention. But I did read the editorial overview, just to give myself a basic understanding of what I was looking at.

Then, nothing.

I didn't look at it, didn't think about, didn't even crack open the edited copy on my computer. Why? I don't rightly know. Maybe it was because I had to face the reality of having to major add-ons/clarifications for each and every chapter. I've done this before with the previous book, but that took me about one hour total to work all the suggestions in. This, was something that was (and to a certain degree) way out of my league.

Finally, during the last weekend of June, I made the decision that come the July 4th holiday weekend, I would return to my novel, crack open the edited version, whip out that chapter summary and get to work on making it something truly unique yet a 100% perfect bridge novel for this trilogy.

Procrastination. It's a horrible thing to have and an even more horrible thing to go through. But sometimes, you just gotta give yourself a good swift kick in the ass to get you moving.

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