Episode #142: Dad's Muse Has Taken A Brief Siesta!

Coming soon to a house near you, Autumn!

Flexi, the muse that makes everyone's life utterly unique and stylistic, has decided to take a short siesta to recharge her batteries, her imagination and her clothing options. Stepping in to be her erstwhile substitute is yours truly, the copyright holder to whatever word salad she chooses to share with us, which as of late was a Cobb salad. Possibly in the future it will be a Waldorf salad.

So for the past three weeks, Flexi has been acting out a few of the main characters from my latest story entitled Hot Mess. To refresh your memory, Hot Mess was the last of four partially/completed manuscripts that I had dug out from my tote bin of slushies in 2021 that had survived damage from burst water pipes that I had decided to work on. Note, over one dozen manuscripts in total were saved from that disaster.

While the first three were easy enough for me to blast through (all 1st or 2nd drafts were done by February 2022, so roughly seven months total), the fourth has basically blown up in my face. I had about eight original chapters of utter gar-bage, which is the cleanest way I can put this, so it was quite obvious to me that something needed to be done.

Well, at the beginning of June, we did start to do just that. We blew up the original plot line of something (yes, this is a reoccurring theme for me, in which I have issues in trying to remember basic plot lines from stories written, in this case twelve, years ago), reconfigured what the new plot line was to be, and off to the races we went.

Fast forward to now: we just finished transcribing chapter 28 and our word count stands at 103,610. No, we're not finished as we just reached the apex of part the first of the overall plot. And what is that overall plot you may ask? To simplify: Mercenary {F} is assigned to kidnap/retrieve the husband of a former classmate/enemy and bring him back to a pod Queen. That's the legendary T.L.;D.R. version of the plot.

So while the plot is basically a solid universal trope (person is kidnapped for possible nefarious means), the gender roles were tweaked (kidnapper is female, victim is male) and a lot of strange things were thrown into the mix to make it anything but stale, we hope.

1} For starters, it's a bit of a low fantasy style story, with a mixture of real world and off-world(?) settings, specifically, an unidentified part of earth and a planet simply known as The Pod.

2} The characters themselves are pretty much hybrid humans with dormant cannibalistic tendencies.

3} One character has, from a still partially hidden background, styles herself a reluctant leader with two ladies-in-waiting at her back and call; while her husband, who is 100% human, worked for the Aztec Empire back in the day.

4} His ex-wife also worked for the Aztecs, having been taken as a possible Incan prisoner previously, and who also lives within him.

5} Another character has an adult foster son who is her equal in some aspects.

6} There are two groups of skeletal peeps. One is a pair that were previously consumed as a meal, but promised to be made whole at a later date, while the others are reproductions who can only speak in ASL.

7} Finally, there will be some old fashioned royal political intrigue, since The Pod is ruled by a Queen with insane protocol requirements and a power hungry of courtiers called The Royal Entourage.

8} And because I'm a bit strange when it comes to using information that I have absorbed through a lifetime of reading, I have tried my best to work those concepts in to my story: Greek/Roman mythology; turning very bad things into large conglomerates (e.g. human sacrifices and debt collection); using languages of all kinds for communicating (e.g. foreign and ASL); a modern form of technology (tablet); a fantasy world communication (telepathy); traditional forms of transportation (horses and travoises); new species (e.g. skeletal people); and finally, old fashioned intrigue and revenge.

If you stir all of these things together in a big old mixing bowl, what you get afterwards is a manuscript that has blown up like mentos and coke, and quite possibly turn into a two to three volume set of a humdinger of a story.

Least I forget, this is what happens when you decided to slow down your perpetually overactive brain just enough for it to actually think crystal clear on all kinds of thngs...by handwriting the entire story out before sticking it onto a computer.

Slowing down by being old fashioned is not something I would wholeheartedly endorse to anyone who enjoys writing, but it works for me. 

Happy Monday!

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

Episode #141: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {3}

No vegans around here! Only natural bovine by-product!

Part 1, Part 2

"Why me?"

"Why not you? After all, you is the creator and I is just the interpreter of your output. So what do you think, am I good or am I good?"

The tired writer continued to stare hard into her hazel eyes until his bottom lip began to quiver until it was sneering like that boxer from Philadelphia. Or the singer from the U.K., it was so hard to figure out who was who these days.

Nevertheless, he broke eye contact and face-planted his tired face into the tired table and wept.

Concerned for about a nano-second that she had done something wrong, Flexi quickly dismissed that responsible thought out of her head. Instead, she decided on a new approach. She slowly sat up and kissed her little man with the super big platinum crown jewels on the forehead, before sliding her voluptuous body to the ground. She stood up, performed a breathtaking hair flip that bordered on the obscene and quietly (for her) snapping her fingers. And just like before, she was surrounded by a daffodil scented smoke screen.

The tired man sat there with his mouth agape and drool running down his neck. "What in the wide, wide world of retro sports am I going to do with Flexi? Seriously, that...that...that birthing person (a hand quickly appeared from the smoke screen and unleashed a slap that spun him around in his seat so fast that his brain became unscrambled), I mean, that woman (he quickly flinched after speaking the word that no Democrat would dare utter) is going to get me into soooooo much trouble with my blog and--"

His thought was interrupted again when the smoke-screen cleared out, leaving yet another version of Flexi behind. As like last time, the tired man's jaw dropped, but not to the ground, but more down to his waist, after seeing that once again, she was dressed like one his characters from his story: tight fitting blue jeans, western style shirt, vest, long flowing hair, wraparound sunglasses...and an enhancement that somehow started with the numeral 4.

Flexi strolled over to the tired man with a movement that in his tween years would make his mother cover his eyes in fear. She slowly leaned over the table, taking care to make sure that her little man was getting a very unwanted eyeful of her anatomy, and purred, "Is this a better visual aid to help you with your creativity?"

The tired man went wide-eyed in shock and amazement, which was quickly followed by lust and a deep yearning for something beyond his means. And then....

Tune in next week for part the fourth of "Dad's Muse Has Come Back!"

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

Episode #140: Dad Is Having A Moment Of?

Okay, I actually had an entire post all written out and ready to publish, but after re-reading it numerous times, I came to the realization that I had sounded 1000% like a bitter unbalanced and extremely pompous newbie writer.

Now, while I may be bitter at times, I am not anything else previously mentioned. Because I'm not the kind of person to go off on a juvenile rant, that leaves me to fall back on what I call "shooting from the lip", in that we're gonna blog about whatever happens to pop up in my mind so that I can create a passable blog post.

So, first things first, a writing update. I'm currently in the process of transcribing chapter 26 of the story with the placeholder title of Hot Mess. For a word count, it currently stands at 92,030 words. Yeah, you read that correctly. I figure that I'm about at the halfway point of the story, and if I keep up with this current pace, that means I'll finish with about 52+ chapters totaling 189k words. Yeah, again you read that correctly. The average word count for each chapter is about 3,681. Oh and another reminder: that entire word count was originally handwritten, or rather, printed out.

Now, second things second. A little background info on the story itself. For those of you who aren't long time readers, whenever I write a story about myself, I have a tendency to portray myself a bit like Walter Mitty, in that I have feats of daring do when I'm alone, but quickly go spinless when a strong woman walks into the room. A bit submissive one might say.

And because I'm like some writers who have trouble in properly explaining what their story is about etc., I have decided to inform people of the particular points of a given story in a way I'm most comfortable with, which is writing a fiction based narrative for it.

So far, I have shown in the story that my spine is soggy linguini so to speak, and I have also shown that my muse has taken on some of the characteristics of one of the story's cast members. Like, being a bit voluptuous and having facial tattoos. This is how I'll be introducing the rest of the pertinent cast members as well as the main plot of the story. I figure I can maim lots of birds with nerf pellets as I go about the process of trying to explain my slowly growing epic low fantasy story.

To sum it up, my Hot Mess of a manuscript is literally a hot mess that is rapidly expanding to encompass all aspects of my writing life. Which at this point, has forced me to set something of a deadline to finish this story: January 2023.

I set this as as deadline, mostly because at my current age (57) I''m not quite able to concentrate of two different projects at the same time, and I would really like to get back into the swing of publishing what I already have prepped waiting for me to complete, which in this case is a partial re-write/tidying up of a previously published book.

So...yay me.

Tune in next week, where we continue with the public humiliation of a tired writer trying, without much success, to rein in his hyperactive muse.

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

Episode #139: Dad's Muse Has Come Back! {2}

Remember kids, even wimpy men eat fresh bovine!

Part 1

After screaming Flexi's name multiple times and receiving no response, the tired man, being no longer tired, springs into action. He dashes around the table, battling his way through the remnants of the daffodil soaked misty cloud in order to search for Flexi's legendary boudoir.

In spite of the fact that he's never seen her boudoir in all of the years they've been together, he's feeling pretty confident, perhaps overly so, about finding it. After all, how hard could it be to find a door handle that would lead to the legendary boudoir?

Apparently, very hard, as for the next fifteen minutes he scoured his office with an actual magnifying glass looking for anything, and we mean anything, that remotely resembled a door handle, but came up emptier than the platitudes offered by an anti-law enforcement Democrat.

"Good Lord, what am I gonna do? If she comes out wearing something that will make me go mad with lust, or even worse, make my readers go mad with lust, it will be the end of me! I'm too old to be writing erotica!"

The man sat back down at his desk and began to weep in despair. Not so much for the fact that Flexi might embarrass him with her choice of clothing, for that was something he was long used to, but for the fact that he just complained about writing in a particular genre that he spent years denying what the bulk of his stories were.

His pity weeping was rudely interrupted by another blast of daffodil scented smoke erupting from the floor.

"Of course it would be from the floor," he said while inserting a Tom Swifty adverb.

When the smoke cleared enough for him to see, his jaw dropped remarkably very little to the ground. Flexi was dressed like one of his characters from his current story: half army fatigues, a belt created from insects, a red cherry tube top that accentuated.....everything and her hair done up in a whip braid. With certain old fashioned toiletries items inserted.

Upon closer examination, he noticed a few unusual...designs drawn on her face.

"Good Lord Flexi, you cannot wear such revealing and dangerous clothing around here. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that my little man with the big cajones needed some visual...aids to help his creativity in action, so what better way to inspire my little man," she paused to pinch his chubby little cheeks. "writing juices. Besides, what's there not to like about what you see?"

The tired man suddenly felt very tired again, and sat back down on his tired table. He moved his tired paper to the side, took a tired sip from his water and performed a not-so-tired face-plant to the table. And kept it there.

Flexi, deciding to have just a little bit of fun with her little man, laid her voluptuous body across the table and started to purr seductively in his ear. The tired man raised his head, stared hard into her lusciously deep hazel eyes, and said....

Tune in next week for part the third of "Dad's Muse Has Come Back".

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