Episode #129: Dad Is Kind Of Willing To Explain Himself Once

"Let's wash away our current sins, whatever they may be, and focus on creating new sins to drive everyone nuts."

So last week, I gave you the reader, a peek into what makes me tick as a writer, a sort of 'then and now' look.

This week, I thought I would dive a bit deeper into the kind of tropes that I prefer to use in my stories, both then and now.

1} Then: Violence. Back in my early years, I was the typical angry writer (the why isn't important), so what I was writing had a very unhealthy dose of violence contained, almost to the point of being grossly cartoonish. Seriously, watch like an Itchy and Scratchy short from The Simpsons, or any bad action film from the 90's going forward and you'll get the basic idea of what my early stories contained. An all-around cringe-fest that even made me cringe. Just...ewww.

Now: Violence. Starting with this Hot Mess manuscript, the violence started becoming less cartoonish and more concise and relevant. Now what I mean by concise is that it wasn't overly dramatic butt instead it was more contained, like it took a max three paragraphs to describe a scene as opposed to a half to full page description. As for relevant, that means if the scene called for some kind of violence, on any kind of level, I made sure it was important to that particular scene and not sticking it in for the sake of having it there. Which leads us to the other well known trope of choice.

2} Then: Sex. Looking back on my early years, I can confidently say that if I wasn't able to properly write fictional stories of any kind, I think I could've hooked up with an adult movie company to write film scripts. Let that sink in for a minute. Actually, the only book that I had traditionally published, which is now know as The Inner Sibling, was basically a woman's (mis)adventures working in the adult movie industry (there are reviews for the original version of the book entitled Line 21 that you can find on one of the tabs for my book blog when you click on the book link).

So....yeah, it was just. that. bad. Bad enough for me to cringe once I was actually able to properly ascertain just how...pornographic....my stories were turning into.'Nuff said about that.

Now: Sex. I want to say that starting after way after this particular manuscript, at least in the original form, was when I started writing my sex scenes far less gratuitous and more of being relevant to the overall story. Must of my published work, as well as the currently unpublished stuff I have sitting on the back burner waiting for my c/c situation to improve, the sex scenes have been toned down from the X rated variety to more of the NC-17/R mix that I currently strive for. In fact, the last truly X rated sex that I had written was in the aforementioned book, because duh, adult movie industry. Since then, it has been toned to the point where it does seem to be a more...real/plausible for the scene in question.

A good example of this would be the new iteration of the Hot Mess manuscript. I've toned it down quite a bit so as to not make so hardcore, but it's still there. And there is one particular scene that I had to completely rewrite, because, you know, doing research into mythological names for my characters brought up some very interesting facts. Good for the reader, but not so good for me the writer. Essentially, it took me the better part of two days to re-write that scene.

3} Then: Violence & Sex. Note: If this particular topic bothers you just as it does me writing about it, by all means please skip this paragraph and read the "Now" regarding this topic. I promise that it will be a far more pleasant read than this one.

The fascination with sex and violence essentially peaked and cratered with the Hot Mess manuscript. I was writing a particular violent story (fantasy is the genre in question) which was, and to a certain degree still is, my preferred choice of a writing trope, and I while I like writing sex scenes of all types, I thought to combine the two with this story. So I did. This story contains at least three SA of varying degrees. While they weren't completely over the top, they were very much a necessity to the overall plot of the story.

As I take a fresher look at them while rewriting this story, I do have the cringe factor as well as deeper thoughts about writing them to begin with going for me. While I don't regret writing them, as I believe they were absolutely necessary as both background info and advancing the plot further down the road, I didn't feel one hundred percent comfortable writing them. I also realize that with the way this story is unfolding, I might have to write one more further down that road. So...yeah.

4} Now: Violence and Sex. After the initial peak and cratering of writing those types of scenes with the Hot Mess manuscript, the only other time I had to write (yes, had to) another SA scene, not counting the manuscript about two serial killers, in the proceeding eleven years was when I was writing one for a crime story about drugs last year, the one with the working tag of The Great American Novel.

So yeah, writing those types of scenes really weren't my cup of coffee at all. They really do bother me enough that I decided to make a genuine effort of not writing those kinds of scenes in any of my upcomin stories. I have no problem writing trope number one nor trope number two as complete separate entities, but will not combine the two going forward.

So thus, we come to the conclusion of the deeper dive into what I enjoy using for tropes in my writing. As for genres, I lean very much towards fantasy and a few sub genres contained within. Next week we'll do a deeper dive into what I listen to for music for writing.

Have a great rest of the week.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #128: Dad Is Behind And Is Willing To Make A Deal?

One of my favorite modern cartoon characters. Actually used this pic as wallpaper on my smartie phone. One of the few remaining items that I still have from when I was dating my wife back in the late 80's. I miss those days when cartoons were still relatively good.

Anyways, today's post is simply gonna be a panster kind of slap-dash goodness. Why? Well, I actually had a post that was all set to go as recently as Saturday night, was set to be published. But, it really didn't meet my minimal standard of lucidity. It started promising, but crashed quicker than Carter 2.0's presidency, of which we'll have to suffer through for two more years max. So, it got nuked, which is an actual rarity in my blogging. This makes like only the 3rd post in the past 12+ years to be nuked from any of my blogs.

But, such is the blogging life. So, here I is, attempting to do a free-form blog post, and hoping like the sulfuric land beneath our collective feet, I does average.

Let's start things out by updating everyone on my word count for my Hot Mess project. For six chapters completely transcribed I currently sit at almost 25k, I have one that I'm a third of the way through transcribing and two others in the on deck circle waiting for their turn at the plate.

So...as I'm sitting here trying to decide what to write about next, one particular thought has popped into my head. Well, two actually, but we're gonna touch lightly on one and probably expand on it in a future post, and we'll try to touch on the second one as well.

So let's daytrip back to the decade of 2010. Things were just starting to get interesting with my writing, as I started making a genuine attempt at working in the various topics that I was currently reading/listening/seeing into my stories, and this one was proving to be no exception, or problem for that matter.

I somehow started getting into using hybrid characters, which in this case were half animal/half human right about the time I started really getting into one of only two shows of the Star Trek universe I actually enjoyed: Deep Space Nine (the other being Next Generation). With that series, they were using different species (as per the norm) but were also using a symbiont species as well. I found that intriguing, so I tried to work that into a few of my stories (with moderate success).

At roughly the same time, I started working in my vision to the concepts of Heaven, Hell and Purgatory, into my stories as well. I admit, I was intrigued by Dante's work and took off from there. I also was fascinated by some of the grosser concepts of other ancient peoples (e.g. Aztecs), so I started working those in as well.

Also, I really wanted to tweak our current world to where having a different species living in our world was considered to be normal (like the show Alien Nation). And what could be better than having two different worlds collide, so to speak? Well, that particular box got checked as well. And off we were to the races.

In one aspect, I'm having a good time rediscovering what originally made me tick, and to a large degree, still makes me tick a decade later. And what makes me tick is something that I'll expand and expound upon in another post. In another, I'm finding that something that I had no problems with writing about ten plus years later, I'm having small issues as well, and yes, that will be touched upon as well.

Now, for the other topic we will touch upon: sound, be it music or sports.

Prior to 2021, my writing routine included having no background noise, of any kind whatsoever, while I write. Ya know, dead (or unalive as the grammar police on social media now dictate, and we ALL KNOW who the grammar police on social media are) silence. I needed an atmosphere of total quiet in order to write, or writing wasn't going to happen.

Well, as most of you know, our house suffered through major water damage in the basement via a corroded kitchen water-pipe in the summer of '21. Because of that, my base of operations had to be moved to the dining room for what turned out to be about 5 1/2 months.

Now of course, being on the main floor of my house was detrimental to my well being in a myriad of ways. First off, people. Secondly, people on television. Thirdly, more people. So naturally, I had to find a way to deaden the voices to the point where I could actually write. Well, this is where we went down the rabbit hole that is YT music. Long story short, I listened to more classical/fantasy/role playing/instrumental/medieval music in those 5 1/2 months than I did in the previous 57 years of living on this planet.

Major side effect of listening to the 12 music notes including the corresponding flats and sharps in forms too numerous to mention, is that now I need sound, which are those previously mentioned musical notes plus baseball games (I don't like the other three majors), in order to both write and transcribe. Which means I'm revisiting my c.d.'s as well exploring the SomaFM internet radio station, with 30+ channels of....stuff (explore the station and you'll quickly understand the long ellipses) for me to get semi-irritated with, as well as the TuneIn Radio app.

So, yeah, sound is now my frenemy. The real challenge will really be once I come to the point where I have to actually create fresh new product from scratch, because presently I'm just re-writing/copying what's already written, which is why I need the sound so I"m not getting lost in the windmills of my mind.

And thus, our hero, having shed a flashlight to a tiny bit of the darkness of his writing world, will now exit the computer screen to Albuquerque, stage right. Oh and, I promise to deep dive these twin topics in the coming weeks. Which could be a scary thing indeed.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #127: Dad Is Feeling Really, Really Old These Days

It's been unusually slow this past week, with the highlights being one, finding another good morning route to walk and two, my 33rd wedding anniversary.

Yes, you've read correctly. Thirty-three years of marriage, with thirty-five years of total togetherness.

This year, we're down to simply exchanging cards (my b'day is exactly two weeks prior, so gifts were given then. I'm now either 57, 35 or 12, take your pick), and for a change of pace, or rather circumstances, we went out for dinner the day before. 

I thought for today's post, I would ruminate about my wedding anniversary as well as other things tangentially associated with it.

For starters, to prove how much I really don't get out as often, I decided to go to the nearest 99 restaurant for our anniversary dinner. No particular reason other than I had a gift card from when I'd retired back in 2020. So, with this restaurant, the strange memories came back. For starters, the last time I had visited this particular restaurant was 2015, when we took my son there for his graduation from Porter & Chester. In the proceeding 7 years, the seating arrangements changed, in that they got rid of the open seating (for all I know, this could've been done during year #1 or #2 of Covid) and the menu got a bit slimmer.

Fast forward an hour and a half, I decided to go home a different way. The end result was seeing a lot more empty businesses that went bye-bye/changed names between 2015 & 2022. Yeah, that was fun confirming how long it had been since I was in that particular area of the state.

I'm feeling old.

So I got married back in 1989, which was a fun decade. Things were cheaper, like gas being somewhere in the neighborhood of $1.499; Biden was still being a do-nothing screw-up; cigs were somewhere about $2.50 per pack; cassettes and vinyl were still a thing and compact discs hovered around the $25-$30 price point, etc. etc. etc.

I'm still feeling old, because I still had hair back then. I sometimes still miss my hair.

Anywho, during those thirty-three years, we had two children, a son in 1992 (times were still good, as grunge was exploding from the Left Coast) and eight and a half years later, a daughter in 2001 (the beginning of what would be shitty decade for everyone, but not really me personally).

At this point, I was firmly entrenched at my last employer, State of CT, first agency (State Library), and having a great time working at the library.

Let's fast forward through the '00s. A low point was being laid off in '03 and out of work for six very long months. Not too many high points beyond raising two kids and moving from my former residence to back home. By the time we entered the next decade, '11 thru '19, I was slowly progressing in my career, such as it was, working for the state. I started at the Library in '96, laid off in '03, rehired in '03 to the Attorney Generals, transferred back to the Library in '04, transferred to Corrections in '04, and transferred to my final agency in '06, DCF.

Things were going pretty decently for the family and I during that decade. Both children entered the decade on different paths, with son spending the first half of the decade trying to find himself, so to speak. He eventually did, as he eventually hooked up with his now wife, serioused up with his education and exited the decade happily employed at UPS as well as being happily married. Daughter entered the decade knocking them alive at school, dancing and skating. By the time she exited that decade, skating and dancing fell by the wayside, but continued with the schooling by heading off to college.

I'm feeling really, really old, mostly because I'm now 57 and only have hair between weekly bouts of shaving.

Going into the current decade, '20-'29, a myriad of things happened with both childrens. Son is making slow and steady progress at his job and in '22, after getting his health straightened out, will become a father this coming October, which of course makes me and the misses grandparents (57 and 60 respectively) and daughter an auntie. With daughter, the journey has been a tad crooked, but still on her personal trajectory. Her major went through more than a half dozen changes after the initial choice of social worker, and now sits as a career in the medical field. She also has found someone and they're both thick as thieves now and is loving it, while also being gainfully employed.

So, I'm feeling really, really content with my thirty-three years of happy marital bliss. Life is indeed good, and one of the modest goals is to celebrate my golden anniversary, which of course would make me 74 and the misses 77. And maybe more grandchildren. That would be a nice additive to my marital bliss.

Thanks for joining me on my trip down memory lane and I promise that we'll return to normal, well as normal as it can be, blogging program. Have a spiffy week and will talk to everyone soon.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #126: Dad Has Only Fluff & Nonsense To Share, He Promises!

I needed my fiber the other day.....so, yeah they were good eats..

A very happy Monday to one and all, and welcome to yet another scintillating episode of I Have Stories, where grammar doesn't matter and syntax is a farce.

The title is simply a new take on the a classic Star Trek episode featuring Harry Mudd, and no, it's not that one with the furballs, with a trope that is often used on a particular YouTube channel to great effect.

For today's post, I thought I would wander around for a bit and touch upon a variety of topics that happened to touch my fancy. So let's see what my touch happens to bring forth.

1} The Hot Mess: I'm making slow but very steady progress with my latest which I've been writing in a most interesting way. I have just started transcribing the first three chapters after a delay of about two weeks while was in the process of switching computers (old computer was expiring, new computer now expires in four years), when I decided that I needed a way to stay busy while listening to baseball (note, if you enjoy baseball but due to circumstances beyond your control, you can't watch/listen to your favorite team, try the MLB app. Monthly audio subscriptions start at $2.99 and it's well worth the investment). So to that end, and because you know I like a challenge, I started writing the next tsunami of chapters at the same time. I'm trying to time it so that I always have at least three chapters at the ready for transcribing to the computer and so far it's working.

2} Blog Memories: Okay, this one sounds weird and once you hear the explanation, you'll still think it's weird. As I've mentioned previously, I originally wrote this thing well over eleven years ago, so while I was perusing the pages and refreshing my memory of what I'd written, I came across a most unusual scene. It was, shall we say, fifteen degrees of the sub-genres attached to kinky. After raising my eyebrow and saying to myself, "What?", which I often do when I come across previously written material and can't remember why I trudged down that particular path, it somehow jogged a memory of a blog post from that time period in which I actually wrote about that same topic and had gotten some lively comments about it. No, I didn't search for it, because sometimes the past needs to stay right there, undisturbed and covered with dust bunnies. But for this story, it will remain. Because, you know, the stranger, the better.

3} The Muse: I haven't talked about my muse much in the past...few....years, which was directly due to the fact that I haven't really done any original writing. She's been basically vacationing all over the Caribbean and Micronesia, and let me tell you, she is more than ready to step back into the action, and after spending all those years saying, "not yet," I can safely speak the only memorable line of dialogue that Steven Seagal ever spoke to my muse: "Now is the time.", because now is when I'll be finally writing original dialogue/scenery/action with this story, and I can't be more pumped to have her finally be part of the process.

4}Blogging: Don't worry, this isn't an announcement about the imminent demise of this blog, but simply a rant/vent about myself to myself for the quality of my blogging dipping a bit. I mean, G.B. normally spends the majority of the week planning/plotting what his post is going to be about, so by the time weekend rolls around, he goes in with both barrels a-blazin'. But no, this week, he just HAD TO HAVE his EYE SHOT this past Thursday (6/2), which of course made him completely wimp out for the rest of the week. So here we are, still waiting for G.B. to write something that nourishes the need to be entertained. Maybe he'll have better luck next week once he gets back into his normal blogging routine.

So folks, always feel free to castigate yourself for a failure to communicate with yourself, because only you know what you've done wrong that was 100% your fault and you have to own up to it.

Have a fantastic week and catch you on the flipside.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved