Episode #169: I Hear The Chirping Of Crickets

A shadow appears in the writer's den. As it silently comes closer, the sole occupant of the den catches the barely perceptible aroma of lilacs kissing the air. His eyes go buggy as the aroma enters his being and coats his entire circulatory system with a subtle yet quite powerful muscle relaxant. Before he could even mount a defense, his body melts like decadent chocolate drops on the....well, you can use your imagination, right?

The shadow gently places the man on the sofa and covers with a sheet. After giving him a sensuous kiss on the lips and feather touching his cheek, she sits down in front of his computer and powers it up.

A few minutes later, she navigates to her chosen website and quickly starts to type. Her long fingernails race over the keyboard like she was a telegraph operator, all the while puckering her lips in hardcore concentration as she stares at the screen. Eventually she pauses to read what she has written on the screen. About a minute later, an evil smile slowly spreads across her face as she slowly digests the delectable words that she had created for everyone's consumption.

She carefully finger combs her hair before slowly placing it over the back of the chair. After giving it a final fluff, she goes back to working on her essay, for lack of a better term. As her body temperature slowly begins to rise, she decides to undo a few buttons from her blouse so as to let the breeze flowing through the window cool her down.

Biting her lip in anticipation of good things to come, she sighs softly before knuckling down with her essay. When she's at the halfway point of the essay, she pauses for a moment, before slowly turning to face her mentor, lying peacefully on the couch. She bites her lip again as a memory slowly comes to the forefront. It spins around for a bit, before coming to a stop. It hangs around just long enough for a genuinely warm smile to make a stop on her face.

It stays there for a good solid minute, as the memory runs its course through her body. When it reaches the finish line, the muse blows out a long steady stream of smoke, before eventually coming to a stop. She stares long and hard at her mentor, before reluctantly forcing herself to turn her attention back to the computer and her essay. Sighing hard, she spends the next three minutes muscling her way through to the end. At that last sentence, she yells, "Finished!", then hits the publish button. She waits for the confirmation, then shuts down the computer.

The room goes dark again after the glow of the computer screen fades away. She gets up and walks over to the couch, where she promptly sits on the floor next to her mentor's head. Leaning in, she purrs softly to get a sliver of his attention, for he's still lost in the windmills of his dream world. When she believes she has it, she gently grabs his ear and begins to whisper.

"Mon ami, it is time to get back to work on your latest masterpiece called "Dandelion Tears". Do not forget that you have me playing well over a half dozen sizzling female characters, each one unique in their own right. From the bottom of my brackish heart, I pledge my undying gratitude and I will not let you down. Enjoy your dreamland while you can and I shall see you in the next day or so. My love, I am forever in your debt."

She lightly kisses his ear and his cheek. Flashing another genuinely warm smile, she stands up and glides across the floor and exits the den in the exact same manner as she entered, leaving her mentor in the warm embrace of his dream world.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #168: Where Am I Today?

I kind of feel like that bird in the birdbath right now. Happy that I'm king of all I survey, but sad that I'm king of all I survey.

This has been one of those take two steps forward, but three steps sideways and one giant leap backwards kind of weeks. I was able to accomplish something, while at the same time not accomplish anything.

The something: I finished my rewrite of a previously published novella, which added another 2k words to the count, confirmed with my daughter that she was still willing to do a beta read/critique of said story, and passed it on to her (remember kids, familial bribery will take you far in life, which in this case is an Andrew Jackson and a free book).

The anything: not writing a blog post ahead of time (yeah....epic fail there) nor making any kind of headway in writing a new blurb. Writing a new blurb is something I really need to get completed because I'm starting to get that familiar itch and return to writing part three of my Hot Mess trilogy.

Procrastination is a brutal thing to have as part of your daily routine, especially since there are a few other things that I've been procrastinating on as well, which in this case is car insurance and searching for a new doctor. 

So....yeah, I'm doing the daily life version of "fish or cut bait?", which really isn't a very good thing to do these days. So, since I don't like ending things on a downer note, let's end this post on an upbeat note. Enjoy!

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #167: Adventures in Food

A blast from the past. Holly probably checking out the birds from her favorite spying spot, the front bay window.

I have been known to be quite the picky eater during the first two and half decades of my life. Like as a youngster, a salad for me consisted of iceberg lettuce, some shredded cheese, bacon bits and a puddle of Italian dressing. Or a pizza without cheese. It was only much, much later that I started adding things like peppers, onions, carrots and other assorted items to my salad.

It was also much later than I started enjoying other condiments like salsa, spicy peppers, different kinds of pickles beside spears and other cooked vegetables. Even onions on pizza, but no pineapple.

As I've gotten older, I've tried other kinds of food that I normally wouldn't give the time of day to. Incrementally at first, which usually shocks my wife and family, as they've never known me to eat that particular item before. Nuts are a good example of this. Having liked only peanuts, over the years I've added other kinds like almonds, cashews, macadamias and pecans to name just a few.

I've been such a vanilla kind of guy over the years that I've always like having a bit of fun with the family whenever I would add something new to my menu.

Like cheesecake.

Right up until this year {2023}, I was not a fan of cheesecake. At all. Couldn't get me to touch it with a twenty-foot tape measure. I think my dislike of cheesecake stemmed from the fact that during my childhood, whenever my dad would feed my brother and I lunch on a Saturday, it would always be stuff that HE liked: all kinds of vegetable soups and weird cheese products like cottage cheese and maybe a small piece of cheesecake. I would have the all-too-familiar epic battle of wills over whether or not I would eat the slop put in front of me.

Fast forward to this year.

I started thinking about trying cheesecake this past March just to see if I would actually like it. I figured if I didn't like it, I would give the rest to the family. So I asked the way that the next time she was shopping at Aldis to pick me up a two pack of cheesecake.

End result was I converted the two slices into four (19g of sugar ya'll per slice) smaller pieces, which were consumed over the next five days. Suffice to say, I thought it was pretty good. I may repeat this later in the year, as I consider this to be quite the sugary dessert that should be consumed in great moderation.

Now, another item I decided to try was kimchi. I actually first heard about this on an episode of MASH, then about 15 years later from a co-worker in passing. Finally, I started seeing videos about it being made on a YouTube channel called Food Kingdom, which specials in cuisine/food products from all over southeastern Asia (e.g. Korea, Vietnam, Thailand).

So I figured to give it a shot. It's just cabbage and spices, you can have it cold or hot. Paid four dollars for a 10.5 ounce jar, and been spending the past week consuming it as a side dish. I was pleasantly surprised by the tangy taste it had.

It's definitely something I can see myself splurging on a semi-consistent basis, and what makes it even better, is that I found a vegetable that my veggie daughter won't touch, so it's a win-win for me.

I'm not quite sure what else I can venture to try, as there's still a lot of foods that I did not touch when I was younger, and still didn't touch as an adult. In any event, I'll still keep searching around looking at different foodstuffs from my past and see if any of them should get a second or third look from me. Who knows, maybe I'll find something to tickle my fancy one again.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #166: Is 3 The Magik Numero?

Hi-dee-ho neighbors and neighborettes! This is your old pal Michigan J. Wilson, who today is speaking to your on behalf of our wonderfully legendary {in his own planet} G.B. Miller, who is going through the proverbial writer's extensional crisis of "continue or start over", with his cxurrent projecxt.

Ya see people, it's not like "Hello my baby, hello my honey, hello my ragtime gal," but more like "What was the real reason behind Galileo's house arrest?" predicament, at least in my lovely eyes, which have been graced with long luxurious lashes and---

The humming of a razor in the forefront makes the narrator go wide-eyed and slack-jawed as the implied threat sinks in. After about thirty seconds or so, she swallows hard and nods in acknowledgement, whereas the humming abruptly stops. Exhaling in relief, the narrator continues.

Anywho, the predicament that our intrepid writer friend finds himself in is basically this: with two more chapters still to complete, he's finding himself becoming disillusioned with the way the overall story is playing out. He's not quite feeling the present tense vibe anymore, so he's thinking about: 1) stopping where he's at and blow up and redo yet again; 2) continue to the bitter end before putting it away and moving along to the next story in his slush pile; or 3) continue to the bitter end, then continue grumping all the way through to the publishing process.

While our writer friend is waffling between option 2 and 3, yours truly is thinking about a wonderfully sensuous option 4, which is to complete it to the bitter end, then pass it off to a beta reader, wait for their brutal feedback, then decide what to do next.

The writer comes back online with the razor, but this time the narrator slaps the razor out of his hands, before enveloping the immediate area in a dark blue soupy mist. Exactly one minute later, the writer is being escorted away with a look of utter surprise plastered across his face and a bit of drool hanging from his bottom lip.

The narrator fluffs their hair for a bit before continuing.

Yes, I am. Who do you think I was? Anyways, I'm looking at option 4, because not only do I think it's sensuous and has a sexy walk to die for, but it's also the right thing to do. Get the feedback before deciding on a course of action. Not doing a 'wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am' will make your life so much easier in the long run.

Take it from me, Michigan J. Wilson, muse extraordinaire, short term fulfillment is often like eating Chinese food, in that the fullness never lasts. Always play the long game. Like a good relationship, it will always have its peaks and valleys, but the fullness always lasts.

{c} 2023 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved