Episode #297: The Family Bookcase {3}

Before we get into the meaty part of the blog post, a little rant is in order. To refresh, back in the day, I had Yahoo! as my main e-mail provider. That didn't last very long as I eventually moved over to Hotmail and Gmail as my two main e-mail providers, leaving Yahoo! to collect all kinds of junk mail (this turned out to be a smart move as Yahoo! was hacked some 12 years ago, in what turned out to be the largest data breech in history).

Anywho, I'm getting very disappointed with the quality and the amount of spam that I have been receiving at my Yahoo! addys. I feel so neglected and unwanted because I no longer have any decent micro fiction stories to read any more.

Now, the meaty part.

I have two more book choices I want to pontificate on, with one of them actually being my wife's. She's the epitome of a non-reader as she averages about one book read every seven years, shorter if something piques her curiosity. Maybe. Anyways, she was prompted to buy this book because she got hooked into the original version of the BBC series that was shown on PBS back in the day.

Now personally, I'm not quite sure how I found my way to the James Herriot book series. I distinctly remember reading the entire massive four book hardcover series (which after doing a bit of research for this post, was a compilation of his other books) that I had borrowed from my public library. I also remember listening to the books on tape versions that were read by the lead actor of the BBC series Christopher Timothy, so I'm guessing I made it to the book series that way. And of course, I watched the BBC series on PBS back in the 80's and 90's.

For the uninitiated, James Herriot was the pen name of English vet James White (who had good biography written by his son some several years after his death) and his adventures working as both a big animal and little animal vet in Yorkshire, England.

If you enjoy animal stories, as well as stories about the veterinary trade and life living in rural England, I highly recommend this wonderful author, his book series and the original version of the BBC series that ran in the 80's/90's (I can't speak of the reboot, as I did not have the opportunity to watch it), because if a writer can get my very non-book reading wife interested in reading, imagine what they can do for a member of your family.

~~~~~

With this particular book, the back story is usually the same as how other books are acquired in this house: I have no idea. 

And to be brutally honest, I have no idea how this book caught my eye, beyond the cover catching my attention. There wasn't much of a back cover blurb beyond a few blurbs by three well known publishers of the day (1982), and I don't believe that I had developed my book choosing routine yet.

Curious fact about this book, the copy that you see is actually part of the second run of the mass-market version, and the third version (as of 1982) overall. I did a bit of research for this book as well, just to satisfy my curiosity and the first author listed was/is quite prolific and well known in the sci-fi genre.

Looking back on this novel, which is set in a futuristic version of  California (that we desperately wish was still around) that suffered through the upheavals of a global war, the use of RPG's (for the uninitiated, role playing games, e.g. Magic the Gathering or D&D) as the main setting for a very interesting murder mystery was something I don't believe I read previously.

I didn't do too much of a dive for this post beyond checking for the catalyst of this story, the murder itself (which is actually quite ingenious for its time and I've only seen used one before in a Keanu Reeves/Dan Aykroyd movie), as I wanted to make sure that I wasn't misremembering a key part of this book. The book itself is quite yellowed with age, so I didn't want to risk losing pages from opening the book too wide.

I found this book to be interesting enough for me to consume quickly (how quickly I cannot say, other than there was a very long stretch of time where I consumed books in the same manner that frat boys would consume beer in a week). I don't remember what my opinion of the book was back then either, but it did manage to stick in memory just enough over the decades that some 35+ years later I'm able to write about with a good deal of clarity.

What I can say with confidence was that I truly enjoyed this book, especially one that clocked in over 400 pages. I'm quite particular when it comes to reading sci-fi and the various sub-genres that fall under that umbrella, where I lean more towards stand-alones than series. I do like series, but when they go on for far too long (Robert Jordan soured me on fantasy series in more ways than you can possibly imagine) is where I have a tendency to say "no mas".

With that being said, I hope you enjoy this latest chapter of my family bookcase. I highly recommend both books, as well as both authors, as they seem to have enough of a back catalog to keep you occupied for quite a while.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #296: It's Grammering Time!

Family decided to do something a little different this year by actually putting up decorations in a spot that is high visibility.

In blogging news, it seems the bots finally filled their USB stick and went home to download a terra-byte of collected data for who knows what, as my page views are back to normal for the first time in two months.

So with the bots hightailing it out of the blog world, hopefully never to return for another decade or two, it leaves me with a tiny bit of a quandary: do I continue down the new path that I had to involuntarily chart, or do I casually add an old element or two back into the mix?

It is a tough decision, because on one hand, I made a commitment that I shouldn't back out from; but on the other hand, I made a commitment that I shouldn't back out from.

The above question is a little rhetorical, since I do plan on dipping my toes into the proverbial mud puddle to see what kind of response I will get, if any. Wish me luck.

I finally, unequivocally, with a solid degree of certainty, put my five volume fantasy series "Sister v Sister" on the last train to Clarksville, where only a pedi-cab will meet them at the station and take them on a journey for self-reflection for the next several months. I had decided, mostly because I was in a funk with my latest attempt at writing a novella (no real writer's block, just the conundrum of how to use a short story as a starting point for a novella), to finish writing out my bullet point chapter synopses for my fantasy series. Having left off at chapter 96, it took me about 1 1/2 months to create the remaining 24 chapters (totaled about 75 pages).

Naturally this left me with a plethora of time on my gnarly little hands. And you know a writer with time on their hands and a jumbled mess of brain cells desperately wanting to focus on something worthwhile, no matter how shallow or tenuous it may be. I eventually focused on writing a blog post, and since I had quite a bit of time on my hands, I wrote it out with pen & paper.

The topic of this initial post was something I had been mulling about for quite some time: the unrealistic portrayal of gay characters in novels. Now this is probably a hot button topic for those who've done at least three times the amount of reading that I've done in a quarter in one month, but this was something I really wanted to elaborate on and explain my thought process on portraying at least 20% of my characters as gay/lesbian/bi realistically as humanly possible, based on the societal norms of today and yesterday.

This post ultimately turned into something that I haven't really attempted since my high school days (that's more than 40 years ago for those of you keeping track), an essay, which in this particular instance, was an essay totaling over 7k words. Now considering the amount of aggravation that I was going through with the bots, combined with the hypersensitive faux triggering in today's culture, I made a conscious decision to not post the end result to this blog, but to create a section containing essays in another short story collection that I've been working on for the past several months.

I know there are a certain subset of people who like to take offense when people write about situations that they've never had personal experience with, and it's these people that my essay is geared towards. In general, I explained my rationale for writing what I personally believe are realistic scenarios that the gay community would sometimes face, either passive aggressively, all purpose aggression, or in some instances, with acceptance and empathy.

Believe it or not, I don't mind explaining my rationale behind why I write what I write to other people, as it forces me to step outside of my comfort zone (I'm a weird anomaly, in that I'm an introvert in the real world, but quite extroverted in the digital world). It's definitely not easy stepping out of one's comfort zone, especially when you're half introvert/half extrovert, but it's something that I'm incrementally working on.

I do have other ideas for essays, some of which pertain to other aspects of my writing life, that I have no doubt I will enjoy expounding on. Because, as well all know, a busy writer is a happy writer, no matter what he/she has chosen for a topic/format to write about/write in.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #295: My Bookcase {2}: Time Life Books

Back in the 1970's through the early 90's, Time-Life book series were, more often than not, the pinnacle of craftsmanship. The type of craftsmanship that you don't usually see, unless you're participating in a Kickstarter project where one of the pledge levels features a leather bound book cover, Gilded pages and other fine material that goes into a limited edition book, which is capped off with an exquisitely detailed/thoroughly research story of non-fiction or fiction.

I had first come across one of these series called "The Old West" when I was a middle school student (that's circa '76/'77), and of course what got me interested was the cool photos of dead people (saw a pic of scalped soldier, which is still seared in my memory banks 50+ years later). But what stood out to me to begin with was the leather cover/binding, because to a kid anything out of the ordinary was a must touch/see.

Fast forward to now, or rather, the early 90's. The early 90's version of me was dropping serious money on Time-Life music cassettes (yes, I know, I know), when I decided to pay attention to one of the inserts about their many book series. I'm a US Civil War buff, so two of the book series stood out to me: one was a repro series of Civil War memoirs (ultimately 32 volumes) called "Collectors Library of The Civil War", while the other was one of those leather bound US Civil War series called "US Civil War" (yes, not very original), which totaled 28 volumes.

I also have a very short series on True Crime (9 volumes), but the two mentioned above are the ones I'm most proud of, and they will be the focus of today's post. I would like to note that these three book series were my biggest outlay of funds for book purchasing, and in fact, the total outlay, conservatively speaking $1,400 in 1980's dollars, has not yet been matched by my 30+ years worth of book purchases since.

So without further ado, two brief synopses of my favorite Time-Life book series.

Something that was quite prevalent in the late 19th century, were memoirs written of wartime experiences, either directly (e.g. soldier, spy, military officer) or indirectly (e.g civilian on the home front or part of the rear command), so the book series "The Collector's Library of the Civil War" features diverse topics such as: 

The Citizen Soldier (both sides relied heavily on the military draft/volunteers);

Army life in a Black regiment (self-explanatory);

The capitol of the Confederacy, Richmond VA;

The book pictured on your right.

All of which were written by the actual participants to the topics in question. These are the kind of books that good historians thrive upon, as they can give one a more in-depth look at a particular event in history, which in this case is the US Civil War. This conflict affected a wide swath of people on so many levels that only by reading the various memoirs of those who participated can one truly appreciate the magnitude of this monumental conflict. 

I do want to note that I haven't read any of those books. These books are so well crafted that even 35+ years later, I'm still afraid to crack any of them open beyond a couple of inches for fear of somehow damaging them with my bad hands. But as many are want to say, one can never say never.

~~~~

This particular series is one that I've actually read all 27 volumes of (28th volume is the master index) from cover to cover back in the early 90's. 

It covers the entire US Civil War, from the events leading up to the Civil War (1st volume is called "Brother vs Brother"), and everything connected with the war itself: the various military campaigns in the various theaters of the war, such as the one picture to the right, which features the Rebels counter offensive in two different battles; the life of a typical soldier, the extensive involvement of civilians, and of course, the surrender and assassination. 

The articles/essays are expertly written with not a smidgen of bias to be found (which is a novel concept in today's journalism); are easily digestible/understandable to the average person who only has a smattering to zero knowledge about the Civil War; and are written in such a way that when you're done, they'll make want to search out more books on whatever topic that has piqued your curiosity.

Time-Life Books, when they were around (sold in 2003, and ended business in 2024), created a quality product that was basically sold directly as a subscription and is still highly desirable today. As an example, the Old West series I had mentioned at the beginning, I found for sale on Etsy for about $230. If you can find any of their book series, and they produced quite a lot in their many decades of existence, I highly recommend purchasing them, as they both a fascinating read and a research culture encyclopedia.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #294: My Bookcase {1}

This is my personal bookcase, which has a little bit of everything: knick-knacks, books, music and down below out of view, various used computers (out of date Chromebooks, Win XP and Win 7).

The book collections that stand out the most, are from Time-Life Books, two on the US Civil War. One set contains 31 (of 32) volumes of leather bound reprinted memoirs; while the other set is a leather bound original set covering all aspects of the war. Total dollar value, in 1980's dollars, is in the neighborhood of $1300 +/- (each volume had a price range of $17.99 to $21.99; the other is a true crime set of about nine books that came out in the early 90's, with a dollar value of $220 +/-.

What we'll be concentrating on in today's post is music, specifically boxed vinyl record collections.

Back in the 1970's/1980's, boxed vinyl record collections were all the rage. Whether 45s or LP's, they were always a great addition to one's personal collection. For me, I have almost one dozen in total decided between 45s and LPs. The boxed sets of 45's include artists like The Carpenters and Little Richard, while the LP's included artists like Bob Dylan, Jethro Tull and Dr. Demento (I know, not an artist, but he came out with a 7 record sampling of novelty songs from the 40's through the 80's).

My favorites though, were some boxed sets from Reader's Digest. Back in the day, Reader's Digest branched out from their condensed books and started releasing record collections. I managed to acquire about five or six from my late grandfather's modest music collection, and oddly enough, they were from artists that I had grown up listening to. One such artist was a well known country singer Marty Robbins.

I was introduced to Marty Robbins as wee lad via my late father, who would often play an album on the stereo while he was grading tests/exams. Like most kids, I did not like or appreciate the music of my parents at that age. But as I got older, I learned to appreciate the music that my parents, especially my father, had exposed me to. In fact, I have come full circle with musical tastes, as I more often than not, will pivot to those genres (and sub-genres) for my listening pleasures.

Like most boxed sets that are programmed a certain way, so too were the Reader Digest box sets. 

With this particular box set, it was programmed as follows: record one features a greatest hits compilation; record two has songs from Hawaii and country classics; record three has sad love songs and ballads; record four features songs about women (remember these are from the 60's and 70's) and more love songs; and record five features story songs (story songs were a major thing back in the day) and even more love songs.

I believe this is probably the basic programming outline for any artist that comes out with a box set these days: start off with the greatest hits, then slowly work their way through their vast catalog for different themes (emotion, personal faves, deeper dives, etc).

In general, while I do appreciate the box set collections that come out, as it can be a great way to sample a favorite artist's back catalog if you don't want to go the other route (aka buying each individual release of a fave artist), I will often balk at the excessive price tag that seems to be attached to those box sets these days, even if they're mainly on c.d.'s instead of vinyl (which, IMO, is turning into a major grift/cash grab these days).

Whether you enjoy compilations or not, a box set from a given artist is often a fantastic way to sample an artist's back catalog without spending an escalating amount of money in acquiring every single release of that artist.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #293: The Family Bookcase: {2}

Before we get into the meat of the post, a word from our sponsor, the US Constitution, in regards to our perpetual flavor of the year: the 1st amendment.

SCOTUS has ruled, repeatedly I might add, that while you do have the right to unfiltered, unfettered and uncensored free speech, your right to that unfiltered, unfettered and uncensored free speech comes to a screeching halt like putting a car into 'park' while driving 65 down the highway the second you cross the threshold to your place of employment. Because at that point, they have the authority to regulate what you can and cannot say on their time; and as an added bonus, they can regulate what you can say on your own free time, because reputational damage is a very real thing.

And now back to our previously scheduled blog post.

The book pictured above, One Good Deed by Dave Rosi, is a mystery of some renown, that is currently out of print. The publisher of this particular book, Hard Shell Word Factory, was in business from the early 1990's thru the early 2000's, and they were an early embracer of digital technology, as you were able to purchase downloads and floppy disks (the 3 1/4 inch version) of their published books.

This particular book stood out to me due to the simple fact that I was looking for a decent book of fiction that I could take my sweet time in reading. My reading is often cyclical in nature, in that I have long periods of wanting to read a plethora of books in the shortest time period possible. Those long periods are intermingled with equally long periods of wanting to move at the speed of slow with my reading, which is not conducive with borrowing books from the public library (even though my public library has basically eliminated fines in favor of perpetually renewing a checked out book until the patron decides to return it).

So among the many dozens of books of fiction, this particular book jumped out at me. The cover art was eye catching and the back cover blurb intrigued me as well (low level drug dealer, hurricane, lost stash of drugs, murder of what is now derisively called a 'White Liberal Savior', etc.), with the actual hook being: "the decision he makes will measure how much his life can be changed by one good deed".

The book itself is but 364p in length, which, in my opinion, tells me it can be a solid enough read that should any draggy parts be encountered, the rest of the story will pick up the slack. So far, with about 70+ pages read, I have not encountered any draggy parts.

I like fiction, but just like I'm finicky with the type of non-fiction that I read, I'm also finicky with the type of fiction that I like to read. This book seems to fit my offbeat criteria for what I feel comfortable in reading for fiction.

~~~~~~

One final advert, this time sponsored by me: I now have print copies of my latest book, To Live Is To Die Young, available on Amazon KDP, as well through me. The copies available through me are roughly 40% off the list price (plus CT sales tax) and I cover the S&H. Details can be had at my book blog, Books By G.B. Miller.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #292: I'm Popular In A Bad Way

I needed something relaxing to look at while I'm writing this particular post, because the topic of choice is something that I thought I would never have to deal with in my blogging life, but here we is.

I was comparing my weekly Statcounter reports with the amount of page views that this blog and my book blog had been getting for the past month or so (as well as my other dormant blogs) and the math wasn't mathing.

Example: last week I was averaging a daily page view for this blog of 4.9 and the book blog of about 1 per day. Yet looking at the view count for my last blog post was sitting at 196 views, while my book blog post was sitting at an aggregate total of 561. 

I ruminated on this troubling statistic and I eventually came to the sadly plausible explanation for the sudden uptick in page views was that all of my blogs are being scrapped/pilfered for content. Obviously I'm none-too-pleased about this depressing development.

I spent a solid week ruminating on what I was going to do about my blogging going forward, and the few ideas that I had come up with, weren't really feasible for me. The first idea that crossed my mind was simply writing a short blog post on my Facebook author's page then link to here on the blog. While I did change the settings for the page so that you don't have to be a member of Meta to view it, but I have not figured out how to paste the link to a FB post elsewhere, and would inconvenient to everyone if I said on a blog post, "hey, look for my FB post dated xx/xx/xxxx to read the blog post."

The second idea was to create a newsletter that people could subscribe to in order to read my blog posts. But that was problematic on sooooo many levels that I sent that idea to the bottom of the Mariana Trench.

So having discarded those ideas, I'm still left with the quandary of what to do about my blogging going forward. While I don't plan on giving up on my blogging (been doing it now for the better part of seventeen years), I do plan on making a bunch of changes going forward.

I plan on tweaking what I actually blog about. Instead of ruminating on whatever happens to strike my fancy, I plan on narrowing my scope to simply the following four items.

1} My family bookcase: I have a huge eclectic bookcase to share with everyone. Archival memory is always a good thing to have, especially when it comes to books, and trust me, my memory is quite encyclopedic when a given situation calls for it.

2} My personal bookcase: mine is about the same size in totality, as it kitty corners, and is chock full of all kinds of interesting things to explore and opine about.

3} My vast music collection, which is located in that kitty corner and my den

4} My writing: which is the original topic that all of my blogs were predicated on. I will still opine about that, but will try to tighten it up to make it not so specific, unless I'm promoting one of my books.

In regards to my other blogs, I started the process of shutting down 99% of three remaining blogs that people could actually peruse: Cedar's Mountain; Father Nature's Corner and It's Always Saturday In Suburbia (my adult blog). I say 99%, as I turned all but one post into draft mode, eliminated the page tabs and any out-of-date advertising on them. My short story blog has already been completely deactivated using the same method, going on now for at least five years. Because of this, any links that you may come across directing you to the first two blogs will be broken and unusable. My picture blog will stay open for those to peruse at their leisure.

So my friends, this post is probably not what you're expecting to read, but it's the one that needed to be made, albeit quite reluctantly. Next week we will be back to our semi-abnormal self covering one of the aforementioned topics.

Have a fantastic start to your week.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #291: The Family Bookcase: {1}

In my basement we have two monstrosities that pass for bookcases: the family bookcase that basically stretches some ten feet across a side wall, and mine that stretches some four feet down the side wall in front of my den. Starting with this post, we'll be doing a skewered exploration on the contents of the family bookcase, and alternate a few about my bookcase.

Our family bookcase contains about 60 years worth of books collected in a few different ways: directly purchased from bookstores, acquired on the dirt cheap (aka free) from various people who were bringing/purging their collections. 

Just to give you a basic idea of what kind of books/reading material taking up space, we have the following: old mystery/sci-fi magazines; religious materials, encyclopedias, fiction, pop culture and different types of non-fiction that one would find in schools/universities. Like I said, this is just a sampling.

Wherever I walk by the bookcase, I'm always on the lookout for a particular missing repro book from the late 19th century, specifically, memoirs from the US Civil War (I bought some 35 years ago, two different Time-Life book series that totaled almost 65 volumes, each one costing, on average, $14.99 (not counting S&H) in 1980's money). When I was creating my own personal bookcase, I discovered I was missing one volume from the memoir series, thus the need for perpetually searching the bookcase.

Because of the type of books we have stashed in a bookcase that will never be read, there are titles/topics that often jump out at me, simply because of how strange the topic is. For our first example, we have this:

To be honest, I do not recall how this particular book made it to our family bookcase, but since my brother is a bit of a mild hoarder, I'm thinking it came to us courtesy of him.

Now, I know absolutely zero about cricket and I'm 100% positive that no one in the house knows anything about cricket. I think I tried watching it once or twice, but when you don't know anything about a sport that is popular everywhere except the US, you kind of say to yourself, "No." and move on.

This is but one of about two dozen sports oriented books housed within that large bookcase, which run the gamut of encyclopedias, memoirs, histories and compilations, covering mostly baseball, with a few football and one emphasizing World Cup soccer....and one that's a short history of Bundesligia, which is German soccer (fun fact: our local PBS affiliate used to host a weekly German soccer game called "Soccer Made In Germany", which my dad used to watch every Sunday.

~~~~~~~

I have five of these highly informative baseball encyclopedias. This particular baseball encyclopedia was around from the 1970's through 2009, was a baseball junkie's wet dream. It had everything a junkie would want: a detailed synopsis of every season (both AL & NL) as well as the final standings; with a statistical breakdown of each team's total player stats; it also included a breakdown of each world series (and divisional playoffs); divided the entirety of baseball (1876 thru 2009) by periods/eras; lifetime stats were also divided by the same periods/eras; and even included the two years that the Federal League was around (1914 & 1915), fun fact: Wrigley Field initially belonged to the Chicago Whales, the Federal League ball-club before they disappeared with the Federal League did. Overall this was a fantastic detailed history about Major League Baseball.

This baseball encyclopedia was the catalyst for me getting into the minutiae of baseball for a number of years, and everything else that I've managed to come across I compare to this encyclopedia, and I found those...wanting.

This was and remains to this day, my absolute favorite encyclopedia of my absolute favorite sport (I became a NY Mets fan since I got cable t.v. in the late 70's), and it still has an influence on me as a person and as a writer to this day.

As the title of this post states, this is the 1st part of what I hope to make a reoccurring feature on this blog: a sampling of books that were read maybe once or twice, then became a part of a very eclectic collection of books that me, myself and I would ever read, as I seem to be the only hardcore reader in my household.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #290: It's Been Traveling Like A Car With Four Square Wheels

This is pretty much how last week went: crashing hard after surfing through the dullness of reality.

The picture pretty much sums up the past week that was, in that there wasn't much of newness to it, just a leveling off from the plateau of freshness into the mesa of staleness.

The only thing of note that I was consistently working on, besides finally getting to the last stage of publishing the print version of my novella, which was fraught with serious examples of self-inflicted obtuseness that created extra work that didn't need to happen, was my post fantasy chapter outline/bullet points for my recently completed series.

One of my little quirks that will sometimes raise its fugly head is that I can be extremely....focused on certain peripheral items that are related to the original project that I would be working on. This chapter outline/synopsis is one such item.

This soon to be 150+ page monstrosity allowed me to go into further detail with my note taking, in that allowed me to properly plan out how certain chapters should be rewritten and/or revitalized. For example, some time during the second volume of the series, I decided to refocus on how I wrote chapters. Instead of writing a chapter with competing plotlines between two main characters (that ultimately became three) that would occasionally meet up throughout the series, I decided it would be easier to alternate chapters between each of the main characters.

This made things so much easier for me to handle, as each character would have their own chapter devoted to their particular plot line, plus all of the various tangents within that plotline, with the occasional crossover to the other plotlines, until the final three chapters.

So this is how I've been keeping myself occupied in the morning/afternoon/evening: churning out what I will predict to be 105+ pages of pure, unadulterated, board certified doctor scribble. And I do mean doctor scribble. My printing is bad to begin with, and my note taking has ramped up the scribble to the point of being undecipherable, like a court reporter's note taking.

Like it's now turned into a hybrid mix of printing/cursive handwriting, complete with words that are supposed to be, say seven letters long for example, being chopped down to maybe four, with no vowels and letters that could masquerade for six others (yes, my scribble is just. that. bad.). My scribble is what doctors should aspire to and what pharmacy techs should loudly curse to the bowels of hell over.

So....that's been my basic to-do list for the past couple of months, but up until last week, I was able to do other things around it so that I would break up the monotony of a dreaded, but highly necessary addition to the laborious proper editing of this series.

Is there light at the end of the tunnel? Absolutely....in 2026, after I publish one final re-re-re-write of a previously published novella that I was severely disappointed with mere days after it went live.

Have a fantastic start to your month of September!

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #289: We Be Reviewing & Promoing Local Authors

Today we offer an interesting two spot for books: one for promo and one for reviewing, both by local authors.

Up first, the promo

After many years of writer's angst spread across multiple rewrites (and multiple computers and printers), we have finally published our latest novella To Live Is To Die Young as an e-book through KDP and Books2Read, with the print edition to follow in the first week of September.

It really was very much a labor of love to produce this fast paced urban/city crime fantasy novella, as this is the second of four writing projects that I had decided to work on when I had retired in 2020 (man, coming up on five years now) to be successfully published (first was The Mortality of Familial Love in 2024) and I do hope you find the opportunity to check it out in the near future.

~~~~~

And now, the review.

This author, A Wilson Steele is from Connecticut, and I had the pleasure of running into her at our town's annual Extravaganza as a vendor. I often try to purchase something every year when I visit and this year I have succeeded. 

Ms Steele writes historical mysteries set in the mid 1990's, and she also writes non-fiction books on horses (If I recall correctly, she's involved with a local horse rescue organization). This particular book, called The Trap, is volume one of a mystery series called The Griegg/Eastwood Mysteries.

Here's a snippet of the back cover blurb:

"It's 1995, and American Alana Eastwood's grandfather has fallen ill at his home in Germany. She immediately travels to be by his side. While staying in his home, Alana finds a box that contains family heirlooms and, to her amazement, an unopened letter postmarked Berlin 1945. The letter is addressed to her granduncle, who she believes died in the war. Even so, why was the letter still sealed? Opening the envelope thrusts her into one of the most notable unsolved mysteries of WWII."

I found this book to be very well written and intriguing enough to keep me engaged from cover to cover. I was very impressed by the way she handled both time periods involved: WWII and the 1990's, with an excellent eye for historical detail, especially with the way the entire story revolves around one of the more intriguing and enduring mysteries of WWII.

If you like well-crafted historical or time period mysteries, this introductory volume to the Griegg/Eastwood Mystery series is for you. Available as a paperback, e-book and audio book from Amazon. And you can find her on Facebook as well.

Thank you for stopping by and I do hope you check out not only my latest published work, but this wonderful introductory volume to what seems to be a very good mystery series.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #288: We Be Reviewing A Pop Culture Icon

Found this at my local Savers store (thrift store that's a slight cut above the Salvation Army) for about $6. This was the best of a not so good shopping expedition that day.

Even if you've never read the books, not seen the animated series (2006-22) nor the movie, chances are that you've heard of Curious George and his "owner" the Man With The Yellow Hat in some way, shape or form.

Curious George is a pop culture icon, much like Bob Ross is, in that all you have to hear is a particular phrase and presto! you instantly know who they're talking about.

On a personal level, I have very mixed feelings about Curious George. On one hand, I do believe I made a genuine attempt at reading the school age books  but quickly realized that while the illustrations were good, the story simply didn't keep my interest (I think at that point I was already reading way above my age level). But on the opposite side of the equation, the name was used as a bullying epithet that was directed at me during my late elementary/middle school years.

The end result of this potpourri of feelings is that as an adult, I've been very....meh...about Curious George. I mean, I don't go out of my way to be nasty about it, I haven't the need to defend it like Babar (another pop cultural icon), because most of the world doesn't have a problem with him on a cultural/revisionist basis. I certainly don't regress back to my childhood when other things are created from the IP like other types of IPs (e.g. Harold and the Purple Crayon cartoon series springs to mind).

But I do find it to be quite the blast from the past whenever I come across something that involves the IP, like the aforementioned commercial lithograph that was originally part of series carried by Target. Because even to this day some 50+ years later, it still strikes a (mostly) positive chord whenever I see or hear something about Curious George.

In conclusion, while I remain mostly ambivalent about Curious George, I have no qualms in recommending this particular blast from the past to others who might be curious, in a gentle George kind of way, about children's literature from their parent's childhood. After all, everyone needs to revisit something that was considered to be magical when they were a kid, right?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #287: We Be Reviewing Library Books

I've always been an avid reader as far back as I can remember. Not really having many friends as a child/tween/teen/young adult/adult, I would turn to the one thing that gave me comfort: reading. Didn't matter what the material was (start with newspapers and you'll pretty much have an idea on what I liked to read), I devoured it voraciously. Eventually, and probably due to the amount of newspapers that I read, I narrowed down to two polar opposites when it came to favorite reading material: true crime and memoirs/biographies.

I've always enjoyed reading the life story of well known people from all walks of life. I've more than read my fair share of good/bad/fugly bios/memoirs over the preceding decades, but maybe for the past 10+ years I've been more discerning. After reading two good bios that didn't have the participation of the subjects involved (Paul Simon & Robert De Niro), I decided that reading bios that didn't have the participation of the subject involved weren't for me (example, bios of Ringo Starr and John Prine).

I've read good bios/memoirs from an eclectic group of people such as Erik Roberts, R.E.M., John Lydon (aka Johnny Rotten), Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth), Tom Petty, Freddie Mercury, Sissy Spacek, Dean Butler (Little House on the Prairie) and Steve Boone (Lovin' Spponful). I've also read a few that left me either confused (Michael Neismith) or highly annoyed (Neil Patrick Harris did his as an "choose-your-adventure" book).

This past week at my library, I found this memoir by one of the founding members of The Heartbreakers, Mike Campbell. 

He does an incredibly fantastic deep dive into his friendship with Tom Petty as well as his music career, and leaves no stone unturned nor untossed, either at others or at himself.

One of the events that I was really interested in finding out, was the entire story surrounding the band threatening (not actually) to file bankruptcy in order to get out of a truly bad contract. For those of you who may not listen to regular commercial radio anymore, most jocks would always lead in with the tired tidbit of the band filing for bankruptcy. He gives the entire complex backstory and tells it in such a way that makes you take what little rose colored glasses about the music industry you may have and destroy it to smithereens. Highly, highly recommend this memoir.

~~~~~

True crime was the other go-to genre of mine, now going on 50+ years. After I had gotten tired/over-exposed to books that covered the same 40 people, I started branching out to other sub-genres of true crime to satiate my thirst for true-crime knowledge. Eventually, even those sub-genres weren't doing it for me anymore, so I moved on to getting my fix to other sources that covered crimes that MSM didn't cover. I now listen to podcasts such as The Casual Criminalist (covers true crime from around the world), Park Predators (covers true crime in the US National Park System), Dark Down East (covers true crime in New England) and Small Town Dicks (covers true crime in the smaller areas of the US, as well as Canada and Scotland).

At the age of 60, the only way I now dip my toes into revisiting a historical true crime (e.g. serial killers) event, is if the event is approached from a different angle that hasn't been covered before. I came across two such books in the month of July, one is about serial killer Dean Corll, which was written by a forensic researcher who is trying to identify his remaining unknown victims.

The other is pictured on the left. There have been a lot of books written about the man in question, but this one was written by the daughter of the woman who was childhood friends/co-worker/classmate with his very last victim, and was the one that helped jump-start the investigation that led to his arrest/conviction/execution.

This was quite the poignant read, as it does an extensive deep dive on not only how her mother was affected, but how the entire community was affected by this man. She does a great job of interweaving here mom's teenage years with her young adult/adult years as she revisits her mother's hometown with her.

I highly recommend this book, as there aren't too many true crime books that are written from the p.o.v of the victim's family/friends in such a personal way. Added bonus is that a Netflix documentary was done from the p.o.v of her mother and the last victim's family as well.

I hope to make this a semi-regular feature in the coming weeks, as the bulk of my book reading involves the extensive collection of my local public library, with the remaining sliver involving actual purchases of books from people that I've either met online or have talked to in person (like at a local fair). 

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #286: July Was....Very Interesting

My best bud, Mr Squirrel (I call him "Mr" because he has, somewhat begrudgingly, earned my respect over the past several years) once again chillin' out underneath the bird feeder. He was kind enough to let me take a few photos while I was about to go on my daily walk.

July was a very interesting month for me as it pertained to writing. It was also interesting because I saw, albeit briefly, a well known social media influencer/businessman get absolutely wrecked/cancelled in real time for using a word that is now considered to be "racially insensitive".

In regards to my writing, as I mentioned a few posts ago, trying to release a book in July is an exercise in aggravation (aka the 5 P's.). But the good news is that all of the pieces are about 98% in place, as the only thing that I'm waiting on now is the print cover. Which means that the July release that I really wanted will realistically become an August release.

Now because of the abnormal length of time it took to get everything ready (again, the 5 P's come into play here) I need to stay occupied. Which I attempted to do by writing another novella. As I mentioned previously, I had written a short story that was a perfect ending to a novella/novel, so I decided to write a story that would finish at that short story, albeit in a slightly different form.

We performed a full body dive into the deep end of the pool with this story. Things started off exceptionally well, but soon, it became abundantly clear that my enthusiasm for this story was not going to carry the day like it did with the others. In fact, after that first chapter, my enthusiasm began vanishing until it got to the point where it took me nearly a week to write an eight page chapter.

Long story short, we gathered up all the components (binder with completed chapters and chapters waiting to be transcribed), made a tidy little pile on my writing tray and spent the rest of the evening and the next day giving serious contemplation to moving the entire mess to my "slushle" box.

Later in the evening of the next day, we came to a dual concrete conclusion: I need to restart the beginning and channel my inner sociopath in order to properly do this story justice, and that I needed to switch from being a "pantser" (aka no real conceptual plan for the story) to writing a good basic outline so that I have an above average idea of how I really want the story to unfold.

And finally, I'm on the search for another FB writing group that's a cut above the previous one that I was in. I have a couple via the suggestions of FB algorithms, so I'm going through each group's guidelines to see which one is the better fit for me. To be completely honest with everyone, I'm much too old to deal with various issues/nuances that my previous group seemed to have. Give me concrete guidelines on what I can and cannot do, don't carve out exceptions to the "cannot" guidelines, don't have a plethora of admins (too many admins means poor communication) and you'll have a very happy member who will not rock the boat inside the group.

Remember, the weekend is always the cure to whatever ails you during the week, so make that your ultimate goal.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #285: You Lie Like A Puddy Tat!

Taken in early July during my one, and it seems to be my only hike, up to the proverbial top of Cedar Mountain. I say "only" because I heard a rumor that a homeless person made themselves home in the back end of the closed Cedarcrest hospital near the fenced off area of the mountain.

There are very few words/phrases that can immediately change the direction of a given conversation/situation, whether in fiction or in real life, the moment they are uttered.

For example, "no", is a complete sentence that always changes the course of a given conversation/situation. Same goes for the "F"-bomb (there's a popular meme that periodically makes an appearance that describe all the wonderful ways grammatically it can be used (e.g. noun, verb, adjective, etc).

But my favorite phrase that I love to use for a given scene in a story is but two words in length, which can be divided into two sentences that can instantly change the direction/tone of a scene in a myriad of ways is, "you lied". Or as I often like to use it, "You. Lied."

I absolutely adore that nifty two word sentence because of the way it can be weaponized to move a story along in ways that can be totally unexpected. But, I never had to use it in real life, because unlike using it in fiction, there can be actual consequences when you use it in real life.

Until now.

As most of you know, I can be quite provocative with my blog posts, sometimes to the point where in 2021 I caused a rule change in my now former FB writing group after posting it (it was political in nature). So from 2021 until now, I had refrained from writing anything political, on any level (local/state/federal) on my blog. But I was inspired to write last week's post about the US Constitution, so because I used my former writer's group to post weekly blog links, I checked two days prior to writing with the admins for what kind of parameters would be required to post it.

I spend the day conversing with one of the admins (he lived in the UK, so five hour time difference) and hammered out what I thought was a solid compromise: direct people to my profile for the post in question. For an added bonus, I posted a link to an 8 year old blog post from one of my previous blogs.

So I post the link and directed people to my profile and all is good. Right?

Wrong. I come back three hours later to find my blog post gone. I eventually find it a queue for admin approval, which really annoyed me, because I had no DM telling me that my post was pulled. So naturally I came to the logical conclusion that I was lied to. Or in modern parlance, gaslighted. And as an added bonus, when I decided to make my annoyance known prior to leaving (after deleting the post in question), I found that my post was put into the queue for admin approval as well.

So not only was my post pulled AFTER getting approval for it, I was suspended (at least it seemed that way to me) and no one was going to clue me in as to why I was suspended or why my blog post was pulled for approval after receiving approval nor why my last post complaining about their censorship needed approval. In fact, as of the date of this post, no one has reached out to me from that writer's group to explain their actions.

As most of you know, I have major issues in being censored/lied to for/about my writing(s) over the years, both in the digital world and the real world, so I have a tendency to get quite upset when people choose to shoot first and ask questions later.

In the short term, I am looking for another writer's group in which to participate, one that is consistent on having sensible rules, with the occasional exception, as well as being honest about what they say. In the long term, while I haven't burnt any bridges with the half dozen friends that I have acquired through that group, I am being careful on how I go about broaching this particular issue with them.

Presently, that scene from the original Star Trek show, where Kirk says to Norman that whatever Harry Mudd says is a lie. Harry Mudd proceeds to say to Norman, "I lie". Norman ultimately cannot reconcile what Kirk said and what Harry Mudd had said and blows a chip, is how last week has gone in regards to my blogging.

Here's to telling the truth and learning how to say "no" without being wishy-washy about it.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #284: Constitutionally Catatonic Conundrum of Chuckling

Every American's new number one favorite document to hotly debate about, is a home grown creation that promises more chills, spills and mega thrills than any measly book written by the same English author that gave us a dystopian novel about an animal farm.

This week's blog post came to me much like the bulk of my previous posts: during a bout of self-inflicted stupidity, in which I actually decided to open the pictured book and actually browse the pages.

Among the various sections that I had skimmed, one really stood out to me: Amendments Proposed But Never Ratified.

Did you know that since the inception of this wonderful country, more than 10,000 amendments have been proposed, and that the Constitution has been changed a grand total of 27 times, giving us a grand total of 27 Amendments, with the 27th being approved 203 years after it was proposed (1992 changes to congressional salaries). If you're wondering about the 26th, that was approved in 1971, and it lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Any ways, I thought I would share with everyone a short list of proposed amendments that got seriously rejected by Congress, along with some enlightening commentary by yours truly. 

1. (1876) Abolishment of the US Senate: can you imagine the chaos if the Senate was abolished? Laws would actually be passed and a whole category of elderly people would actually have to become gainfully employed and have no real power.
2. (1876) The forbidding of religious leaders from holding a government office or receiving federal dollars: All NGO's would have to be secular. Even worse, they would have to perform continuous fundraising, and just about the only fundraising that the American public likes to participate in, is the purchasing of Girl Scout cookies.
3. (1878) An Executive Council of Three to replace the office of the President: a great way to legitimize bribery and corruption in the Executive branch. 
4. (1893) Renaming this nation to "The United States of the Earth": precursor to The Gulf of America.
5. (1893) Abolishing the US Army and Navy: no more of those pesky football games and definitely no more being the world's policemen. But hey, we can be protected by those stunningly brave social justice warriors, right?
6. (1894) The Constitution needs to recognize that the almighty Father and his Holy Son are the absolute authorities to human affairs: who needs separation of church and state when the church is the state and the state is the church.
7. (1912) Making marriages between races illegal: reality check, the unwritten/written law was declared illegal in 1967 with Loving v Virginia, which was affirmed by SCOTUS on appeal.
8. (1914) Finding divorce to be illegal: another reality check, spouses, usually female, aren't chattel that can be used and abused. They are living, breathing individuals who demand and deserve respect.
9. (1916) All acts of war should be put to a national vote. anyone voting yes is automatically drafted into the army: we could theoretically wind up with the largest perpetual peacetime army in the world. Of course, no one will respect us in the morning...or afternoon...or evening.
10. (1933) Limiting personal wealth to $1,000,000: adjusted for inflation, in today's dollars it would be $24.7 million. Can you imagine the outrage within the US Senate and House of Representatives that their personal wealth will be capped at $24.7 million? They wouldn't be able to...enrich themselves with all of those highly questionable (for us) financial maneuvers. I think I need to clutch my pearls tighter.
11. (1936) A variation of #9, with the difference being a majority rule affirming/denying that we should go to war: To be honest, while I'm neither a dove nor a hawk (realist perhaps?), this sounds like a happy compromise that neither side would like.
12. (1938) The forbidding of drunkenness in the US and all of its territories: this one is so far out of touch with reality that it should be written into an episode of the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery. Oh wait, this was written as an episode of the Twilight Zone, except that it dealt with the banning of being pretty/pleasant to look at and people got sent to a modern day reeducation camp.
13. (1947)  The income tax maximum for any individual should not exceed 25%: the earliest proposal for a flat tax, which of course would send one party into an absolute meltdown, because this means that they would actually have to stick to a budget. What a novel concept, sticking to a budget. I think I can actually hear the loud thump of jaws dropping to the ground.
14. (1948) The right of citizens to segregate from others: back then we as a nation were trying to desegregate ourselves and we eventually succeeded. Fast forward nearly 75 years, and we've sadly come full circle, as college/university campuses have now self-segregated themselves to the point where at some campuses, there are separate graduation ceremonies for each ethnicity attending.
15. (1971) American citizens should have the alienable right to live in a pollution free environment: yes. we do. Will it happen? not in mine or my children's lifetime...unless both sides find a realistic compromise that each side can live with.

So as you can see, some of those proposed amendments were so far fetched that they got seriously torpedoed by whichever legislative body they were introduced in. While others, even though they make minimal sense now, were just too radical to be passed by hypocrites on both sides of the aisle.

I know the above list seems to be a genuine exercise in obtuseness, but those were the people we voted for back then, because unlike today, the reps were a microcosm of their constituents. Which meant they proposed bills/amendments that accurately reflected the viewpoint of the people who elected them.

Reality is always conceptual when it comes to politics these days, because more often than not, the people we elect often present a facade of what they think will get them elected. Once elected, the facade drops and we're left with someone who doesn't truly represent us because they have an agenda that, more often than not, does not coincide with their constituents agenda. Once entrenched, they're almost impossible to get rid of.

Happy whatever day of the week you happen to be reading this post. I sincerely hope that this post gives you the briefest of chuckles to brighten your day, and makes you think about the people who represent you on whatever level, and ask yourself, do they align with your values, and if not, what are you going to do about it?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #283: How To Keep Busy While Publishing

This was taken during my first real long distance hike up Cedar Mountain. The deer was gracious enough to allow two photos to be taken before they made a right turn down the mountainside (as you're facing the photo).

I know the blog post title sounds just a tad redundant, but I made the mistake of trying to publish my book in July, which is the busy season for publishing. The end result to this madness is that timelines are often stretched out, which for people like myself who don't have real deadlines to meet, are sometimes put on the back burner.

So the seriously obvious answer to the question posted above is keep writing. But what should you specifically write to keep yourself occupied? Short stories? I cranked out about ten short stories of various word counts from a low end of 2,500 to a high end of about 12k. How about a novel? I don't quite have the brain capacity for writing another full length novel. What about writing a novella? I might have the brain capacity for that.

But where would I get the germination of a story idea for a novella? That is a toughie, but it was a problem that I was willing to tackle, so to speak. I had one that I had recently put on the back burner this past spring because it was becoming a cluster....bomb of a mess, so I actually thought about taking another look at it. But the idea that I eventually came up to fix it was one that would need some serious brain capacity to work on and that was something I really didn't want to pursue (changing the character focus completely around by making the incidental characters the main focus and the main characters the incidental focus).

So I turned to the short stories that I had previously written, which I had previously talked about here. While nine of the ten stories written were major rewrites that ultimately used the original story as a outline, nine of those stories didn't possess anything that would inspire me to explore further. But that tenth one, it had everything needed to nudge me to take that risk of expanding it.

What did it possess, you may ask?

The short story possessed the ending. I originally rewrote it to emphasize that the assignment that the main character was to carry out was their final chance to actually complete an assignment, or face the ultimate consequence for failing to launch. I'll still have to re-re-write it again to make it fit the setting/aesthetic of the novella, which will be feudal Japan, specifically the Shogunate eras of feudal Japan.

Which if you think about it, is a lot easier to research than it was to research my fantasy series. I mean, one country (Japan) as opposed to four continents and two planets, one of which was due to world building; one time period versus multiple times periods; and finally one ethnicity/culture (Japan) versus six (five original: Mayan, Aztec, Incas, American and English; and one made-up: Pod People).

So after choosing the story that seems to promise a whole lot of prior to that could be successfully written to turn it into a novella of some kind (trust me, I already have, based on the actual content of this story, mentally written the entire outline of how events should unfold leading up to this particular ending, which is something I almost never do), the issue now becomes how much time I can spend mentally/physically working on it while waiting for the creaky wheels of self-publishing to advance back into my personal realm of frivolity.

The main reason as to why I'm waffling about devoting all kinds of time and energy to this novella is once I get the manuscript completely formatted for e-publishing (KDP, e-pub and Word), I'll have to apply the brakes as I need to pass on the specifics for the print version of the cover. And that can easily become a cluster....bomb of titanic proportions if I'm not careful.

So presently, I am following my own advice and have started working on yet another novella while waiting for phase one of my book to come back to me. My only hope is that I can easily pick up the proverbial pieces to the novella and re-start from where I had originally left off at, and not have it turn into something that showed so much early promise, only to flame out faster than a flambe dish at a fancy restaurant.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #282: "To Live Is To Die Young"-The Real Journey Has Begun

My friends, after a very long (3+ years on this particular phase) journey, we have moved onto the very most important journey that a book can undertake: being published.

It took over three weeks (apparently the summer is a popular time period for publishing books) but here is the cover for my upcoming crime fantasy novella To Live Is To Die Young.

To refresh everyone's collective memory, it took me an aggregate total of 3 1/2 hours spread out over three weeks to come up with a title, a tag line, a short blurb, a long blurb and a basic concept for cover.

And to answer one very important question: the cover is multi-racial because the four main characters of the story are as depicted.

It was really weird how everything came together so quickly. Unlike with my previous novella, which took a couple of reader polls and the collective effort of a writing group to come up with the aforementioned items, this was truly a piece of cake. Like if you were called in to work on an issue that you're so familiar with, that with only a cursory glance at the issue, you know exactly what was wrong and fixed it. This novella went exactly like that sample scenario: a cursory glance and everything eventually wrote itself.

~~~~~

The teaser blurb:

Caught in a power struggle between his supplier and a drug kingpin, Jon needs to find a way to keep on living in order to not die young.

The short blurb:

Jon Morris was in a world of physical pain and mental numbness.

Caught in a horrific power struggle with his supplier Bradley Tomas, a raging wannabe who could never be and his morally bankrupt hybrid wife Alexia on one side; and an extremely violent regional drug kingpin Terrence Torquicelli, who had no qualms in collecting body parts to solve fixable issues on the other side, Jon needed a way to fix all three of his problems while staying comfortably alive.

Thing was, could he succeed before the others succeeded with theirs?

The long blurb:

Jon Morris was in a world of physical pain and inner turmoil.

After throwing one of his infamously raunchy house parties, he soon found himself under a vicious attack orchestrated by his drug supplier Bradley Tomas. Once the dust had cleared, Jon had found, much to his annoyance, that his new job was now to be a nanny to Bradley's hybrid wife Alexia.

Alexia, who even in the best of times was a barely passable professional escort of dubious morals, decided to show her extreme displeasure of her husband's choice of nanny by making Jon's life an absolute nightmare.

Which included, among other nasty deeds, ripping off a major drug kingpin.

Jon knew that being held personally responsible for Alexia's shenanigans, meant at the very least, he would be suffering a barely living death. Thing was, could he find Alexia to make things right with the kingpin before the kingpin could make things permanently right on his own terms?

~~~~~

Having sent the cover to my formatter over the July 4th holiday weekend, I think that a realistic date of release would be late July or early August. I'm very happy with the work done on the cover and I can't wait to show it off to the world at large. Sometimes being a light nag with a "I need to get this done" mentality is an endearing quality to have.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #281: Have You Ever Challenged Yourself?

When your brain is emptier than a plastic garden gnome, you know you be in some deep dark dank pit of creative nothingness...

Anywho, today's chop suey special is called "Challenging Yourself", or if you want to tweak a well known movie quote, you can say in the voice of the well known character actor Strother Martin, "Have you ever challenged yourself?"

Specifically, as a writer, did you ever go out of your comfort zone, just to see if you could produce a quality product?

I've gone out of my comfort zone quite a few times over the years. One of the very early instance of me going out of my comfort zone, was to write a clean story.

No, really.

When I first took my writing seriously, I knew right from the get-go that I was going to write adult fiction. While I enjoyed reading clean stories, my warped dark sense of humor and my exploration of adult....topics...in my younger days basically guaranteed that cleanliness in my writing was like men reading Playboy or Penthouse for just the articles: it wasn't going to happen.

But.....one day I decided that I was in a rut and needed to try something completely different to get out of the rut. So during the course of one day (maybe two), I wrote a G-rated short story called "Cedar Mountain". That short story became one of only two short stories that I managed to get published in my career, with this one being in a now defunct e-zine called "Beat To A Pulp". 

Another challenge that I decided to inflict upon myself, was to write a story in the first person/present tense. Now considering that we're all taught almost from day one that we should be writing our stories in 3rd person/past tense, with the occasional foray into 3rd person present tense, writing a complete story in the present tense is usually an exercise in frustration.

I've been known to do bits and pieces of an overall story in the present tense, but except for maybe a viable sliver here and there, I've usually reworked those passages to make them fit better with the overall story. But I had issued myself a challenge, and the challenge was accepted.

And I had just the perfect vehicle to implement my challenge with: a previously published novella that I wasn't too happy about (trust me, there were  A LOT of things not to be happy about). So back in the hey day of that nasty little thingy that made everyone's lives miserable for the first half of the 2020's (including my house), I took that previously written novella and re-wrote it to the present tense.

Definitely were not easy to do, changing everything from the proverbial "I used to be smart." to "I am smart." left it alone for a few years, then tidied it a bit this year, so when all is said and done it will come out as an e-book only. But, the challenge was successfully completed.

Another challenge that I had decided to do early on, and this one pre-dates the previous two listed, was to write a story in the 2nd person viewpoint, which is considered to be one of the hardest view points to write in. I can't really describe it well, but if you click on the link propagated by Google, all will be answered. But just the same, the challenge was accepted.

On the upside, I succeeded in writing two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. On the downside, I succeeded in writing, rather badly, two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. Also on the downside, there are no surviving paper copies, but one of my old XP or Win7 computers may have a copy or two. Maybe. 

And lastly, there was one final challenge that had multiple parts, of a personal nature, that I decided to accept: write a full blown novel. By full blown, I mean something along of the lines of being a supremely detailed, thoroughly researched, with completely fleshed out characters with just enough sub-plots to keep everyone cohesive without being too overwhelming.

I had actually tried this once before with another fantasy series that ultimately died an inglorious death (that is, I recently unpublished both the print and e-book versions), mostly because I was too much of a keyboard commando, for lack of a better term, to put in the work required to fix it/complete it. But that may change in the future....if I remember what the general plot is/was supposed to be.

Anyways, me accepting this challenge was the perfect nudge that I needed. I was waffling about whether or not I should switch to writing my stories via pen and paper then transcribing to the computer, but after writing about a half dozen chapters by hand for my latest novella and discovering the pros (no major digital distractions or chronic hand fatigue, to name just a few) more than outweighed the cons, I took the plunge.

The rest, as they say, is history, as I completed a five volume fantasy series totaling some 600k words over 122+ chapters, with every single page written by hand before transcribing to the computer, during the 1Q of 2025. Total time spent was almost three years, but it was well worth it. I want to note that I did chronicle this particular journey under the tag Hot Mess, so if you want to check out in greater detail about this fantasy series, by all means check out that tag.

And believe or not, I'm not flying on air, but I have decided to challenge myself once again: this time, taking a recently finished short story and turning it into a novella. And for an added bonus, the short story itself will be the actual ending of the novella. So unlike the fantasy series, in which I had the beginning and a nominal outline for an ending as a non-moving goal post, I have to create an entire beginning and middle to arrive at the completed ending.

I believe that you should always challenge yourself as a writer, because you just never know what you can actually accomplish if you don't actually give it a try.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved