Episode #280: Is My Inertia That Blatantly Obvious?

This is about the only real selfie that you will see on any of the social media platforms that I use. This was taken between 2004 and 2013, as this was used on my very first blog "Cedar's Mountain" (you can find the link in one of the tabs above this post).

Before I get into the topic at hand, I want to make an observation: does anyone find it how remarkably obtuse some spammers can be when they ignore a caption that states comment moderation is enabled and post just the same? You would think that they would program their bots to ignore blogs/websites that have that policy enacted and just hit the ones that don't moderate. Right?

Back to the topic at hand: Inertia.

For the past month, I've been pretty much stuck in a holding pattern with publishing my upcoming novella. I was becoming so afraid of pulling the trigger (aka severely third guessing myself), so I started doing all kinds of things to avoid pulling that trigger. Things like:

1} Getting the short story bug and writing almost one dozen stories for maybe a short story collection in the future, although one of them is calling out to me saying "expand me to a novella", and I may do just that in the future, as soon as I can figure out how to work in that short story.

2} Beefing up my c.d. collection. I've temporarily stopped purchasing music from Amazon, and not because of some altruistic vibe of shopping locally, but simply because current life events have dictated that my frivolous Amazon spending be directed to non-frivolous Amazon spending.

But I did shop locally, as in I supported my public library by purchasing gently used c.d.'s (most of which were $1). I'm always of the opinion that used c.d.'s are the way to go if you're intrigued about a particular artist, past or present, but not intrigued enough to drop $10-$20 on a new c.d. in order to satiate that need.

3} Beefing up my DVD collection. Most of the DVD's that I've purchased came to my attention directly due to pay-cable t.v (e.g. HBO, Showtime, Encore) going through spurts of overplaying movies for a couple of months to gin up interest before taking them out of rotation (before the advent of streaming, most of the major pay movie channels had over a half dozen offspring that required content)

The movies listed are ones that I did not see first run, but saw on cable, which due to overplaying, got me hooked: Quigley Down Under (cool western featuring Tom Selleck); The Shawshank Redemption; Kung Fu Hustle (The gentleman who did the fight choreography for Crouching Tiger and The Matrix did it for this one); Falling Down (in my opinion, a truly underappreciated Michael Douglas film. Fun fact, it was filmed during the King riots of '92); Major League: Back To The Minors (fun fact, the Buzz are based on the real AAA team, the Salt Lake City Bees); and everyone's favorite spaghetti western: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly.

And finally, 4} re-re-editing a previously published novella. Or, that was the basic idea. Two years is a long time to go from not appreciating the original rewrite (went from the normal 3rd person/past tense to 1st person present tense) to having serious thoughts of leaving the bulk of it alone and just perform some continuity tweaks.

The short version, I have a previously published novella, A Taste of Pain, that ultimately I was not happy with the end product in a myriad of ways. In short, it should've been published as an e-book exclusive, without all of the fluff at the end (e.g. chapter samples of two other books to pad out the page count), which is one thing I'm giving serious thought to. But in regards to leaving it alone, after sitting down with the intent of re-re-editing it back to a traditional voice*, after tackling the first couple of chapters I came to the sobering thought that this story was flowing pretty good in 1st person/present tense view. Like it was a lot more personal/intense in that particular viewpoint than others.

*3rd person/past tense is usually the traditional method. But let me warn everyone, I've actually written stories in all three voices, because you know, I like to challenge myself.

The good news to all of this, is that the reason for the inertia has fundamentally changed. The original reason of being afraid to pull the trigger (my choice) has been replaced by simply waiting to receive the first version of a book cover. Only when I approve the cover for the e-book will the book formatter be able to start the process on their end. Until then, the inertia remains stuck in the same holding pattern, yet now, it's not by choice.

Contentment is a concept that has numerous paths to explore and no single path is the actual chosen one.

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

Episode #279: Sometimes Life Feels Like A Venn Diagram

Believe me, this blast from the very distant past (like early 2000s) kind of matches up with my state of being for this past week.

My life currently feels like a Venn Diagram. For those who need a tiny refreshment of minutia on what it is, please click on the offered link. Everyone else, I apologize in advance for bringing up something that horrified normal people in 2024.

To elaborate just a tad, I had a lot of things going on in the past few weeks in which the only common denominator was me. So, with that being said, let's explore this human equivalent of a Venn Diagram with me being the central connecting point to all four circles.

Circle #1: let's say this one features my recently completed fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Because of the general state of blue funkiness that I was in, I decided to do one last round of pen edits before I really put it away for the next year or so. Going through that five volume monstrosity didn't really do anything to negate the blue funkiness, because afterwards, I really felt just a little bit...lost. Like an actual hardcore empty nest syndrome.

Circle #2: let's say this one features book reading. Normally I try to keep up with my reading by consuming at least two books per month, but lately, my heart really isn't into consuming books, new or used. As I've mentioned previously, I really had to push myself to finish the book, because even though the topic intrigued me, the content was just...meh. Because it was meh, this 240+ page tome really did a number on me, as I was torn between DNF'ing this bad boy and pursuing the sunken cost fallacy to the bitter end. Suffice to say, the latter was chosen.

Circle #3: this one is a toss-up between two writing related options, so.....Jeopardy? And my answer is, writing fresh stuff. I spent the better part of two months writing nearly one dozen short stories as a distraction to actually doing the item in the final circle. Out of those nearly one dozen stories, one of them had ultimately planted the seed of writing yet another novella, featuring the two main characters from that story. So here I sit, mulling over that particular idea. Or rather, that idea gently nudging me saying, "write me, write me...you know you wanna."

And finally, circle #4: my novella, "To Live Is To Die Young". After completing all of the necessary tangents that are required for this novella {e.g. title and blurbs}, I finally pressed the proverbial Pay Now buttons and did just that, to the tune of $450. Yay me!

So we have four properly labeled Venn slightly illogical circles, none of which actually touch/intersect with each other, but do intersect with yours truly. Which if you really think about it, is quite odd. In theory, all four circles should have at least one thing in common with each other besides the main point, which in this particular case, is me.

But...they do not. Unless you count that they were all vehicles for my procrastination, which really doesn't work for me. Absolutely none of them have a common.....wait a minute.....wait a minute....okay, let me stare at the screen for thirty seconds.....

at this point, G.B.'s legendary muse walks up to him and slaps him upside the head like Moe does with Larry, Curly and Shemp. He promptly slides out of his chair, but is immediately caught by his muse and placed back in his chair. She sternly shakes her finger at him before silently walking away with a swagger in her stride.

Dumbfounded, which is a normal state of being at least once a month for him, G.B. suddenly picks back up where he had left off at previously.

Well, I'll be a McDonald's ice cream cone. They do have at least one thing in common with each other: reading! No, really. Think about it for second: circle #1 requires a boatload of reading since editing is being done; circle #2, no-brainer since a book is being consumed; circle #3, needed to do reading because one has to proof their stories to makes sure there's no typos etc.; and finally circle #4, reading was definitely needed while putting together one monster manuscript for the formatter to begin work on (my formatter of choice requires the entire novel/novella to be one entire manuscript, no matter how many pages/chapters it has in order to create the necessary files for KDP/Print/Non-KDP platforms).

Huh...so we had a come to your deity of choice moment while writing this heartfelt lament featuring the almighty (to some) Venn diagram. Which, if you really give it some thought, is about a bogey over on the golf course of life for me. More often than not, I will arrive at a conclusion a few minutes after the train left the platform, only to belatedly realize that making that stop at my local mom & pop coffee house allowed to arrive at that wrong conclusion, thus missing the train.

So now what this post boils down to is to pay closer attention to your surroundings, because while you're focused on the beauty of the blossom in your hand, you're completely ignoring the vulture standing on the arm of the cacti who is counting down the minutes to when his dinner will be served al dente.

Having good eats is not the same as being good eats. Paying attention to finding a common denominator to the multi-tasking that you're performing can only breed success in the long run. But definitely pursue finding that common denominator early, otherwise the end result will be something like this:

"A blog post that started with good intentions, but stumbled so badly out of the starting gate that it has no choice but to flail its arms in a cartoonist manner while running like Woodstock flies."

Happy Monday to one and all, and to those who are parents, whether dual or single, I sincerely hope you had a very good Father's Day.

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

Episode #278: Procrastination....

Tina, our lovely Chihuahua, who suffers from partial blindness, deafness and dementia, is still living the good life as an elderly doggo.

I've always had issues in doing what was required in order to have an appropriate outcome for a particular task/goal I had set for myself. There were a myriad of reasons for allowing this kind of drama in my life. Sometimes, it was the fear of failure. Other times it was the over-analyzing/over-thinking of a particular action that ultimately caused a serious INaction to occur.

Like self-publishing.

The self-doubt/second guessing that I had when it came to self-publishing was, at times, nearly crippling. But I managed to persevere, mostly by taking seriously small baby steps through every step of the process until I was able to, with confidence, press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW! that would activate the final step in the process of self-publishing.

Up until now, that was the process that I had followed, without fail, with my previous self-published books: incremental baby steps until my confidence level was at the acme of my existence, which in turn allowed me to press that shiny yellow button that said BUY NOW!

Now is where the issue of procrastination (to be fair, every time I type in that word, this nifty Rod Stewart song immediately comes to mind) has recently come into play.

I had written a Facebook post a few weeks prior to this blog post on how ridiculously easy, compared to my novella from 2024, it was to create (short blurb, long blurb, teaser, title and ideas for a cover) the ephemera needed for my next novella*. I ended up asking the rhetorical question of, "is it really this simple?"

*note: it took me a total of three hours, spread out over three weeks, to complete the aforementioned items.

Well, the answer is, sadly enough, no it is not that simple. 

I knew complications were being fast tracked when I began researching what other packages I wanted to purchase this time around for a book cover, which was soon followed by what kind of price increase/new content my formatter of choice had listed on her website. At this point, we decided to super-size our value meal and simply embrace the procrastination that was rapping at my chamber door.

How, you might ask? By choosing to finish a book about the Frankish Empire in the time of Charlamagne and perform another round of pen edits to my five volume fantasy series that I had recently completed earlier this year. At the same time.

I was already beginning to stress out financially over self-publishing my novella, even though my finances were in fantastic shape, so I decided that a distraction was needed to take my mind of things (you see where this is going, right?) by reading the aforementioned book. Then when I was really struggling to finish this book, I had the bright idea to perform yet another round of pen edits, because you know, I needed yet another distraction in order to publish my novella.

And PRESTO!, we pulled a rabbit called "Procrastination" out of the hat. It's not cuddly, nor cute, it smokes a celery stick and it's trying to corner the market on main character syndrome.

Being surrounded by procrastination crutches has done wonders for my well being. I mean, what else can I do but lean on them in my times of uncertainty? Right? If I don't, then that can only mean one thing: I actually have to complete the goal that I had set for myself in early June, which was to publish this novella. And I'm not sure if I want to face that faux fear head on just yet.

So here I sit, with three options in front of me to choose from: A} finish reading the book; B} finish the latest round of pen edits; C} publish that novella. But, is there a fourth option for me to pursue? I mean, if you really think about it, the letter D} would be something like this: do all three at the same time. In other words, perform the catchphrase of Larry the Cable Guy and just "git-r-dun."

Pursuing option D would certainly get me moving in the right direction with my novella, since my novella should take precedence over finishing a book that, in a best case scenario, would be automatically renewed by my local public library. And it should take precedence over finishing my latest round of pen edits, since that book series has at least another eighteen months of gestation before I can actually publish it.

Procrastination is a fugly concept to personally experience, because only means that your confidence level isn't what you thought it was, and that simply isn't true. You need to kick it to the curbside, because if you don't, then you'll be perpetually playing the very tiring game called "What If?", and is that a game you really want to play in today's world of "Do It! Now!"?

Definitely something to think about, and it's something that I too will definitely think about as well.

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

Episode #277: Breaking Through That 4th...Wall?

Definitely a blast from the past. We have a well known local farm that (usually) has a produce stand every summer. I haven't seen cows out in the pasture in a very long time, but seriously, how often have you seen cows smack dab in the middle of surburbia?

Last week {May 19th-24th}, I was severely procrastinating working on my latest novella by performing some pen editing to almost a dozen short stories, when I happened upon a particular paragraph that basically broke, if not severely crack, the proverbial fourth wall.

To refresh everyone's foggy Monday/Tuesday/Wednesday morning brain, breaking the fourth wall is when an actor breaks character and steps out of scene to talk to the audience about that particular scene. This is commonly done in movies and t.v. shows, usually with great success, but rarely has it been done in books (at least that I know of. I'm sure I'll be corrected on this point).

The story in question was one that I had to substantially rewrite as the original story was, to a major degree, quite blase. The re-write though, was something else though. As soon as I put fingers to keyboard (this was one of the last few stories that I wrote directly on the computer) something came over me. Whether it was due to the topic of choice, petty revenge, or something else, I suddenly channeled the smarmy/sassy/insufferable side of my personality and wrote like a man possessed.

To be honest, this was one of my better written short stories that featured a lot of tropes that usually populates my adult novels, but toned down to PG-13. But you didn't come here to listen to me brag about my writing. You came here to read about my opinion on breaking that fourth wall. Here is the paragraph in question.

What happens next has been pieced together from both first hand accounts and video that was taken by Dennis during the entire date, thus the narrative voice that is yours truly. What? Do you actually think I was there for all the behind the scenes stuff that’s been going on from the get go? Get real. This is a story that requires you to suspend your disbelief for a brief snippet in time, while yours truly the writer, weaves a fantastic tale of cosmetic karma for your enjoyment.

This stepping out actually takes place near the very end of the story, where the petty revenge is about to unfold in all of its exquisite glory. The entire story was written with a strong narrative voice along with the traditional p.o.v. Additionally, it does have a bit of the first person viewpoint sprinkled throughout.

Personally, I would consider this paragraph to be just the dipping of the toes in a small pond when it comes to something like this. I normally don't see something like this in a lot of the fiction that I read, so I am curious if this is something that is frequently done, or if it's something that is rarely done, simply because there are so many different ways to write/tell a story that breaking the fourth wall simply isn't a thing.

I do enjoy when actors break the fourth wall in movies and television, because I believe it makes the product that more enjoyable to watch.

So let me know of your honest opinion about breaking the fourth wall. Do you try to do it with your writing, or do you believe it's better suited for the stage, the big and little screen.

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

Episode #276: I Don't Really Want To Know...

You know your week has gone from the frying pan into a mud puddle when you can't even come up with a decent backstory for the picture that graces your blog post.

How bad has my week been?

Well....it has taken me about a week and a half to determine, with the help of my ISP, that my Chromebook has a bad hardware problem with the network. Which means that the EOL has come one year earlier than expected.

Ultimately, we persevered, as by the time this post has hit your feed (either RSS or Facebook), we will have our new computer up and running (EOL date is about this time in 2032).

With that being said, the reality of this post is that there's no real topic to opine about beyond the computer issues mentioned previously. The one silver lining (or bronze lining depending on what your opinion is of Alphabet Inc.) is that none of what I have is tied to Windows, which means that in a pinch I can access what I got via my smartphone.

Having redundantly restated my previous statement, I think the best thing I can do right now, is to link up to an old blog post from one of my archival blogs. I got at least five to play with, four if you disregard the adult oriented blog, with a blog post count in the excess of 1,200.

So please peruse this short post from one my old blog's called Father Nature's Corner, which was active in the early 2010's. The topic of choice is how/where I purchase my music from. A couple of things that you should be made aware that are contained in this nearly nine year old post.

1. The link for the blog "I Are Writer" does not exist. At one point I had a Tumblr blog to post my musings, which lasted less than a year before I decided to nuke that blog to infinity and beyond.
2. I'm pretty sure that this post was written in between a couple of retail apocalypses, so there are references to retail stores that have sadly gone to retail heaven.
3. My c.d. count from that post has grown by 25% since 2016.

Beyond those three notes, please enjoy that short post on my musical tastes and hopefully by next Monday, I should be back to my old self.

I sincerely hope that your past week has gone much better than my past week and I also hope that your current week is going lights-out fantastic.

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

Episode #275: DNF That Bad Old Book!

A book purchase that was an actual good selection for me, because quite frankly, in today's world, it's better to be educated than ignorant.

I have been on a very long losing streak as of late, when it comes to selecting books to read. Normally, when I decide to choose a book to read from my local public library, I have a set of rules that I follow in order to select a book to read.

1. The front and back cover. If my curiosity is piqued, then;
2. I open and read the inside blurb. If my curiosity is still piqued, then;
3. I open to a random page and read. If my curiosity is still piqued, then; 
4. I check out the book.

However, if the book is non-fiction and if it's from a person that I am very familiar with (e.g. Eric Roberts has a memoir out), then I will skip my rules and simply choose the book.

The problem that has contributed to my current DNF streak is pretty basic: I am purchasing gently used books from my local library's used book/DVD/CD store, and they're being chosen by a completely different criteria, namely, it's about an interesting (at least to me) topic.

Unfortunately for me, choosing a book, usually non-fiction, by topic, has not translated to the book being an interesting read. Let me give you a few examples to show you exactly what I mean.

1} A book about a Victorian lady whose husband is a sea captain, sailing from England to Australia, from Australia to San Francisco, then San Francisco to Ireland, then from Ireland to home. Sounds interesting, right? Especially when the source material is a diary/journal that the lady in question kept throughout the trip. Unfortunately, the narrative was dry as dirt and because it was written by an academic, it felt like I was reading someone's master thesis. So I gave up after two weeks.

2} A book about the history of the London underworld. The title alone piqued my curiosity enough for me to purchase the book, and after discovering that the author in question wrote a series of books covering different facets of the London underworld, I was hooked. But, it soon became apparent that the author's biases were making themselves known throughout the book. Call me old fashioned, but I'm of the school of thought that when you write a non-fiction book, your biases should be kept under wraps. You should present a thoughtful interpretation of the events without your personal biases coloring your writing. This one I also gave up on after a few weeks.

In general, the past half dozen used books that I had purchased caused me to have buyer's remorse. Not so much losing money, as the price range of $2 to $4 (about 10% of the current cover price) was good and it was going to a good cause, but the fact that the topic mentioned on the cover did not live up to the hype whatsoever to what was between the covers.

I'm fortunate enough that the newer books that I have purchased I do not have the same problem, as I make it a point to actually get to know the person in question before I actually commit to dropping my hard earned dollars on their product and I have not been disappointed whatsoever.

I really do loathe in not finishing a given book that I have acquired, either temporarily (library) or outright purchased (new or used), because I'm of the mindset that if I had taken the time to acquire said book, then I need to read it to the bitter end, a literary twist on the sunk cost fallacy if you will. I'm pretty sure that I applied this theory to music as well.

Pivoting back to the written word. The scary thing about my DNF pile is that it's almost exclusively non-fiction that I ultimately have issues with. It's very rare for a fiction book to make my pile, although a few have made it in the past forty odd years, which have been scattered across all genres. 

I think in general, my one saving grace is that I'm not spending oodles of money on the gently used books purchased and that the money being spent goes to a very good cause. So if I don't like the book in question, it ultimately makes a very fine visual addition to my bookshelf that screams "look how well read I am!", which is a tiny white lie that I'm willing to live with.

So my dear reader, do you force yourself to finish a book that you eventually found unappealing, just to justify the amount of money (or if you're a library patron, time and effort) spent to acquire the book to begin with? Or do you simply stop and place the book in an area of your bookshelf that holds all of the books that, for one reason or another, became a cherished member of the DNF, never to darken your field of vision every again?

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

Episode #274: A Fugly Tale Of Two Novellas

Pretty sure I posted another version of this photo in late 2024, but I still think it's a cool pic. I mean, when a cat casually appears in the street to survey you, and only you, it makes you feel...special.

It's been a really slow week here in Connecticut, which usually means we're going to blog about something writing related. This time our writing related topic, like the title suggests, is about two novellas, one published and one hoping to be published, and the two radically different paths that were trodden to get where they currently are today.

Let's start at the beginning with the comparison. They were both born during a rather fertile creativity period of the very early 2010's, in which I was churning out all kinds of slop for stories as well as for my blog (I think I was doing maybe three to four blog posts a week at that point). They were both poorly written but they were near and dear to my heart, which of course meant at the time they were ready to be published.

This is where their dual journey took a major diversion at the proverbial fork in the road, with the published book going left and the unpublished one going right.

The published book caused me a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of money. Because I was simply oozing with confidence, I decided to hire a now ex-Facebook friend in 2014 who was a freelance writer and editor, to edit my book. About two to three weeks later and $300 poorer, I had a nicely edited novella and a three to four page critique on what needed to be fixed on it. I read the critique, studied the editing notes that were written on the manuscript....and promptly shelved the entire thing because I was too chicken to actually knuckle down and fix it.

Fast forward to the wonderful world of Covid-19. We're happily retired and got to work on a number of projects, including this novella. Once I had fixed all of the issues and got it to where it was ready to be published, I promptly ran head first into a two-bay garage door.

It took me a total of ten years and an online poll to come up with a plausible title for the novella. I've always had issues creating a title for my stories, and this novella was no exception. The next problem that popped up was writing a long blurb, a short blurb and a tag for the novella. This also took about a month to write both, which included some substantial help from my Facebook writing group to hammer out two rough drafts of the long blurb before nailing it on the third. Had the same issue with the short blurb and the tag, multiple drafts before nailing each.

So overall, the published book caused me a ton of stress because I had a wickedly hard time trying to write 150 +/- word long synopsis, an 80 to 100 word short synopsis and a 20 +/- word tag for a novella that I had a moderately difficult time, due to the complexity of the plot, in deciding what the story was actually about.

Now we move on to the unpublished novella.

The unpublished novella was also similar to the published novella, which also included a complex plot and a fast pace. But that's where the similarities end, as even though it had a complex plot line, the underlying event/reason (drug turf war) was very simple to understand and work with. We performed at least four rounds of editing, both in Gdoc and Word (the formatter I use works in Word as a starting point for everything else) and in that process became overly familiar with the entire novella cover-to-cover.

Because of this over-familiarity with my story, everything else associated with it became the polar opposite of what was done for the published novella. In a span of three days totaling one hour, I had a 159 word long blurb that I was happy with. It took me twenty minutes to write a 91 word short blurb, and another twenty-five minutes to create a title. Because of the difficulty I had in trying to come up with a cover concept on the fly the first time around, I sat down and spent an hour re-reading the novella and taking notes about what I want for a cover. In fact, the only thing that I have left to do for this novella before I move on to the next phase of publishing, is to come up with a proper tag.

So we have a tale of two novellas, both of which took over a dozen years to come to fruition, but took divergent paths to reach the proverbial golden ring. One fed directly into my stress/anxiety of writing blurbs, a story title and a vision for a book cover; the other ignored my stress/anxiety and instead gently stroked my ego and self-esteem to the point where I was able to complete all but one of my goals in rapid succession.

A question that I would have for you: does your stress/aggravation level ebb and flow when it comes to writing the blurbs/tags, creating a cover concept or even coming up with a title with every book that you complete? Or do you find it to be the same no matter what kind of book you write?

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

Episode #273: From A Young Foot Patrol To An Old Foot Patrol

Gotta love the duck, for they only have three modes of transportation and doesn't give three quacks over which one to use at a given moment in time.

This past week has made me realize that I've come full circle with my modes of transportation.

To elaborate: after 16 years spent acquiring 132k+ very hard miles, it decided to throw a tantrum and drop its transmission. Under normal circumstances, I would simply say "adieu" and go through the aggravating/time consuming process of acquiring another dependable car.

Here's the thing though: after spending a solid month thinking about it, I decided to get another car for myself and keep this car as a proverbial back up/second car. Which means biting the bullet and having this one one brought back to working order (if you take about 6% of the aforementioned mileage, you will have a basic idea on how much this repair is going to cost me).

Which brings us to the topic at hand.

When we were young, foot patrol was our main method of transportation until we got our bicycle. That became our main mode (with obvious exceptions) until we acquired our first motorized vehicle. As we got older, foot patrol became a dependable/necessary back up when motorized transportation wasn't available. Sure, we would grumble about it, but we dealt with it to the best of our abilities.

Spending a week (actually 10 days) without a car made me realize how fortunate I am that reverting to foot patrol to run certain errands doesn't bother me as much as maybe five years ago. Five years ago, it was a major pain in the butt not to have access to other motorized transportation when my primary mode isn't available. I didn't have access to a bicycle anymore (safety concerns then and now) and walking was a pain in the butt to run my errands.*

*note: I live in the northern end of town where it's a forty minute walk to the center to run certain errands and an hour walk to the next town to run certain others.

Fast forward to now. Now walking is much easier for me to deal with, because less weight makes faster walking with less pain. So the majority of my time sans car was spent walking to run at least one of my night errands earlier in the afternoon. I did have access to a car to run a few important errands, but overall, I found I wasn't really inconvenienced by being on foot patrol.

I actually found the experience quite enjoyable, and to be honest, this past Friday (5/2), having to run two key errands, banking and lottery, was actually a snap to perform. It took me 2 1/2 hours to execute a large circular trip to the center (bank), then back towards home (not really) to the package store to run the second part of my errand, then finally back to home.

What helped me a lot was taking two viable shortcuts that saved me about 1 1/2 hours of extra walking time. Seven years worth of hardcore walking allowed me to plot out the shortest distance between two points on numerous occasions, and this walk was no exception. Think about it, if a normal walk to a particular destination took you close to forty-five minutes and you found a route that covered the exact same distance in thirty minutes, would you not take it?

I'm not sure if my new ambivalent attitude about walking has something to do with being a semi-Luddite when it came to technology as an adult. I'm a child of the 70's/80's, so the Internet wasn't a thing for me until the advent of Google in the 90's. I definitely was a half dozen steps behind when it came to both cell phones and smart phones, so being glued to my phone isn't as severe as other people have it. As for computers, no real exposure until I started working for the government in the late 90's.

In any event, I believe when you get older, it's possible to not be so concerned about transportation issues when you have a lot of time on your hands, and no real immediate need to actually do something with that excess time. As the old saying goes, work smarter, not harder. Or in my case, prior planning prevents poor performance.

How about you, do you find yourself not really worried/concerned when your normal mode of transportation has decided to take a short holiday and you have to improvise?

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

Episode #272: When Accuracy Really Matters In The Short Run

Still one of my favorite Mamacita & Son doggo pics.

 I've always been a research fanatic, even back in my young adult years when I used to study reference books and encyclopedias for fun (seriously). That fanaticism carried me well into my working adult years.

That same dogged determination from my work life carried over to my writing life, where I began to research like a fiend for my novels and novellas. Because as you know, nothing screams NEWBIE! when you open a book from a first time novelist and find all kinds of continuity errors/common sense errors/general knowledge errors. All of which stemmed from a lack of basic research into whatever topic that particular story happens to be written about.

Today's post is not about the abnormal amount of research that I've done for my novels and novellas, because I'm pretty sure that you really do not want to hear even a smidgen about. Instead, I'm going to be writing about all of the fun research that I had to do for my latest short story project. 

Note: I actually got motivated to start writing short stories again, as I was 99% caught up my current novella, so I was basically treading water while I was getting my finances back in order (courtesy of USPS and their suddenly slip-shoddy delivery service) and while trying to think of a good hook for my novella.

I believe accuracy is important in whatever story length/genre you happen to be writing in, especially if you're creating short stories. I mean, no matter what the topic of choice is for your short story, you want to sound like you know what you're writing about, because ignorance is not bliss when it comes to writing.

So, in no particular order of importance, I want to highlight what I had to research for the nine completed short stories and the one that I had just started on. Enjoy!

1. Story #1: An original bizarre fantasy/horror story that was written during the early months of mandatory WFH, so no real research was performed beyond my state agency's basic WFH requirements.
2. Story #2: A re-written short story from my early blogging years, no real research was performed beyond digging deep into my memory banks about the area/landmarks in my local neighborhood.
3. Story #3: A re-written short story from my very early writing adventures. Again, no real research was performed beyond recycling a few fictitious business names.
4. Story #4: A re-written fantasy short story that was originally published in my now closed short story blog. Once again, no real research was performed.

I promise, this does get better. It's kind of hard to do research on re-written short stories that do not deviate much from the original premise.

1. Story #5: A re-written short story that was based on a biblical verse. I had to redo some basic research, as each section of the story was based on one sentence from the verse in question. A bit dark, but I think it blends quite nicely with the verse in question.
2. Story #6: A completely re-written short story that used the very bad original as a basic outline for the new and improved version. This is something of a dark fantasy story that featured hybrid humans of maybe the werewolf kind, as well as a tiny bit of religion (including a biblical verse or two), so the research was a little more than what I did for the previous stories.
3. Story #7: A re-written short story that is a black humor fantasy. Research on Aztec religious rites were key elements to the writing of this story.
4. Story #8: A re-written short story that mostly kept the dark theme of the original fantasy. No real research was done for the story beyond a shallow dive in the memory banks for certain concepts.
5. Story #9: An original story that explored, in a very roundabout way, the adult entertainment industry (much like my novel "The Inner Sibling" did). So we had to dig very deep into my memory banks for various articles about what goes into making an adult movie. A few elements from my recently completed five volume fantasy series were featured in this story: telepathy and intraspace transportation. I think the most challenging part of this story was writing the explicit sex scenes PG-13, which if you think about it, is not an easy task to accomplish.
6. Story #10: This will also be a completely re-written short story, with the badly written original serving as a very basic outline. Because of the way the main character was dispatched in the original story (beheading), we decided to take that particular ending and go to town with it. We have researched, so far: Japanese girl names and samurai swords (because the main character is a female samurai). So this story is going to be a blast to write and a blast to research.

I know it doesn't seem like I did a ton of research the second time around with the bulk of the short stories listed, but the second around I did make sure that what I was writing did make sense in the long run. Even though each story is fictional, I still needed to be accurate with my portrayals of the three noun groups of life (person, place, thing), and I think I did a very good job with each of the stories listed.

So my question to you the reader is: do you have fun researching the required information needed for your short stories, or do you perform the absolute bare minimum for your short stories?

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

Episode #271: When Research Fails To Connect

Random picture from the mountain that makes one yearn for the sanity of Father Nature this Spring.

As most of you know, I enjoy supporting my local public library by shopping at their internal bookstore for gently used books/cd's/dvd's at three times a month.* I find it's an economical way to pump up my respective collections of media.

*my public library has two book fairs for all of the donated media they receive year round and what doesn't sell there, goes into the bookstore. They also cull the collection and sell those items in the store too. All monies raised goes towards various programs that are not covered under their general budget.

For example, my haul for the past month featured music by: Tower of Power; EmmyLou Harris; Jethro Tull; Annie Lenox; G.E. Smith; Barenaked Ladies;18th century popular music; Chevelle and early 19th century folk/ballad music. Books include a bio of a seafaring Victorian lady and a look at the London underworld from pre-medieval days to the present (late 90's/early 2000's).

Today's post is about the creator of the early 19th century folk/ballad music. The official title of the c.d. is "The Battle of Plattsbugh: Music from the war of 1812", and the artist in question was Connecticut native Stan Ransom aka The Connecticut Peddler.

Now as I'm want to do whenever I come across an old (in this case 24 years) c.d. is to see what kind of current info I can find on the artist/musician in question. So I went to his website listed on the back to see what I can see. Found a lot of stuff that was grossly out of date: the website was last updated some 13 years (it had Adobe flash player, so yeah...) ago, a defunct like button to a FB page and the last release listed was maybe in the early 2000's.

So off we went to go a-Googlin', and while we had some initial success by finding a newspaper article from the 2010's about the gentleman in question, any further dive would require spending money on a subscription to a paper that I neither wanted nor had any compunction to read. So off we went a-Googlin', this time for an obit.

Now you may think that searching for an obit is a bit strange, but in the bio link on his apparently defunct website, he was born in 1928, so a good assumption on anyone's part would be that he is no longer residing among the living. Alas, I found some obits, but not for the gentleman in question. In fact, the last thing I found for the gentlemen was a LinkedIn entry from 2020 thanking everyone for their birthday wishes.

Ultimately, this is where we decided to end our research. If I want to search out for any of his remaining c.d.'s, I would probably have to try my luck on Ebay. It's a rare occurrence for me when my research doesn't pan out in any meaningful way. In fact, I think this is the only time I wound up shooting a total cap gun with my research, as every other time I've done similar media research, I've always had a conclusion, good or bad, that I could live with.

I always want to be successful whenever I perform a personal research project, and this one felt like a complete failure to launch for me. 

So my question to you, my drive-by reader, is this: have you ever done a research project, personal or otherwise, that became a complete total bust/total zero when all was said and done?

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

Episode #270: Censorship 2.025

This pic, while holiday themed, accurately describes my state of being right now. The implied caption will, we hope, become apparent by the end of this blog post.

Today's socialized media makes it very tough to be a centrist kind of person, as being a centrist often makes people assume that your personal beliefs are toxic. This viewpoint is often badly magnified when the cyberspace that you dabble in often espouses beliefs that you have serious issues with.

As the majority of you undoubtedly know, I keep my personal views tightly concealed from those that I do not know. Because of this, I often have to censor what I say in certain public forums, like socialized media. That's a fact of my life.

Digital self-censorship is often a triple edged sword for me. I've been blogging for over 16 years, and at first, I had no problem voicing my opinion on numerous hot button topics and I was of the mindset of, "no one is forcing you to read me, so you can leave if you want to."

But now, in 2025, I don't have the readership that I used to {blogging really isn't the be all to end all anymore}, and since I post my blog links on one of the other two socialized media platforms I partake in with regularity, I now have to be very careful on what I opine on in my blog because someone could take hysterical hostile offense on my viewpoint, which would be detrimental to my digital well being.

That doesn't mean that I will not opine on issues that I care about, but I keep those opinions strictly to commercial oriented forums {e.g. news, pop culture and sports} where I can get into (mostly) sane debates about topics. It also doesn't mean that I will simply ignore what other people might have an overly strong opinion about. I have, very recently, culled/lessened my interaction with certain individuals because their opinions about certain things have...drifted, for lack of a better word.

As I stated previously, nobody is forcing me to read/listen to anything that anyone else says that I disagree with. I simply ignore and continue with my day. Especially at my age {60} where I have more than average understanding of the world around me.

Now I'm pretty sure at this point, you're wondering why I'm talking about self-censorship yet again. In order for you, dear reader, to have a better understanding of this post and the picture up above, a short info dump is required. I live in one of six deep turquoise blue states that make up New England. In fact, my home state of Connecticut is battling with Massachusetts on who should become California 2.0.

With all what you know about Blue States, your educated guess about what topic I might want to opine about would be true. If I was to write about a certain topic, one definite outcome and two probable outcomes are likely.

1} I would not be able to post the blog link to my local writer's group, as I'm the direct cause of a rule change instituted in 2021. Thus, those random eyes would not be able to easily visit my blog post.

2} I'm trying to build some interactions with my author's page on FB. Posting it there might generate some unwarranted backlash because, to be fair, those who write tend to lean 180 degrees left on social issues, and aren't that open minded about opposing viewpoints. At all.

3} My own personal page, while centrist by nature, tends to stay in my very narrow bicycle lane and only ramble on topics that slices of life and/or topics I have personal working knowledge of {e.g. public sector employment/unions}. If I were to post a link to a hot-button blog post, I could very well get some unwanted static, and I really don't need that in my life anymore.

Ultimately, this is why you're getting a post about self-censorship instead of the topic I most dearly want to write about. Like I stated in an earlier post, sometimes we have to do things that we personally do not like, in order to keep and incrementally build on what we currently have.

And with that being said, please enjoy this best of SpongeBob's "I'm Ready!" manifesto.

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

Episode #269: Random Writer-esque Musings

Spring is in the air, even in places where you didn't think anything could grow beyond wood chips, branches and leftover tree remnants.

How to write a swerve for a blog post: 1} start writing on a subject that you're extremely passionate about; 2} complete three complex paragraphs, including a disclaimer, before going off to run some errands; 3} realize that you've touched upon that topic a couple of months ago AND that in order to put a new twist on the topic you would have to go up to and straddle that line between keeping and blowing up your social circle; so 4} you need to come up with something that straddles the road between acceptance and offensiveness.

Which brings us to this particular post, which we hope will side-straddle that bridle path quite nicely. 

I recently put an upcoming novella on the back burner while I get my finances straightened out (thanks USPS for doing such a bang up job with delivering my mail :/s). The odd thing about this novella compared to the one that I had released last year, was that creating the title, the long blurb, the short blurb and a basic outline for a cover, took me an accumulative total of ninety minutes to complete.

So with an excessive amount of time on my hands, I started working on another short story collection. To date I have eight full stories written. The main challenge for me was not coming up with an original story to write (anyone can do that), but taking a story that had a born on date somewhere in the painful growing years my writing life and reworking it using the vastly improved skill set of 2025 to make it palatable to the masses. Not an easy exercise.

As we began work on story #9 that had a born on date going back to the mid 2000's (yes, I started writing during GWB II), my mind started wandering around to what I had already published and what I could do with them*. After studying the small piles of books that I had, I zeroed in on my two very short short story collections and my failed attempt at writing a series. 

*I should note that in mid-March I received an e-mail from Amazon about marketing my books and I was, and still am, giving it some serious thought. Hence the renewed focus of my published books.

The failed attempt at writing a series was easily solvable: unpublishing. I may get back to it someday, but I think at this point I've lost the basic plot of the entire series, and I just don't have the motivation to find it and continue (I do have a completed second volume that needs a ton of re-editing and a partially completed third).

The two short story collections, however, have presented me with another problem, but one with a potential solution. The main problem with the collections is that some of the added bonus stories/information contained within I'm no longer happy with, so the solution I came up with is to combine the two current e-books into one book carrying seven stories and tidy it up til it shines. Now I do want to keep the old print versions available, but I'm not sure if the Amazon overlords will allow it. I did post the question to the KDP Community forum, so I'm just waiting for it to be approved by the mods so that the community can offer me some sound advice. I should note that I have no problem in creating a new print version, but if I can avoid spending money unnecessarily, more power to me.

However, I am hedging my bets just the same, since with certain businesses (like a respectable self-publishing platform) I have a tendency to be overly-polite to the point of being a toady. So even if I get the answer I'm looking for, I may still start over from the beginning just to ease my conscience. It's funny, or ironic, that the amount of passiveness we display towards a digital company is often tied to how deeply we're enmeshed with that particular digital company (e.g. Apple & Google).

So this is where we stand with our writing: 1} came back to writing short stories like a man returning to a partner who has him wrapped around their dainty little finger with a silver bow; 2} decided to spruce up a couple of books by re-editing and re-releasing; 3} unpublishing a book that really should've never been published in the first place; and 4} getting all of my drakes bowing down to the ones who wear the pants so that I can drop a little under $500 to publish my novella.

I leave you with this very worthwhile link to the eternally optimistic Bob of Sponge whose Pants are Squared, to start off your Monday.

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

Episode #268: To Use What You Were Given Sometimes Takes Guts

"My dude has fallen over in shock and he can't sit up!"

Reality is that I have very bad balance and I happened to bump into my c.d. rack, thus the new resting position. But, after reading my post, you may agree with his response.

Today's post is probably going to be a bit of a sticky wicket, so to speak, so I'm going to do my very best to keep it sensible. I would like to also note that I will also try not to deviate too much by covering certain facets that have already been discussed in greater detail elsewhere.

Personally, this particular topic has been a steady part of my writing for the past dozen years or so, which is directly due to me creating super strong female characters that would use everything in their arsenal to accomplish their goals.

The topic in question is weaponizing sex, or as Pat Benatar eloquently stated in a song that was ahead of its time: "Sex As A Weapon". Even though this topic is geared to both sexes, this post will concentrate more on women than on men.

What prompted me to write this post was a particular YouTube music channel that I subscribe to that features a very talented female Japanese guitarist based out of South Korea. It seems like from day one, she initially attracted subscribers using what God had graced her with (with some very creative cosplay costuming that always (barely) stayed within YouTube's ToS) and kept them with her exceptional musical talent. 

So I got to thinking about how this particular issue often plays out in other venues/avenues, sometimes voluntarily: e.g. concerts, cosplaying (of all types, including what's mentioned above) and involuntarily: e.g. pro wrestling, track & field and other sporting events. And fiction, which is a separate category of its own.

note: I am not touching on the topic of adult entertainment, simply because that's an extremely volatile issue that I do not wish to engage in.

Now I'm old enough (reluctantly knocking on the front door of 60) to remember the before of the involuntary weaponization of sex, where the athletic uniforms for track & field weren't so blatantly provocative as they are now. Ditto goes for professional wrestling, where the clothing attire for women was in the vein of one piece leotards (similar to what gymnasts wear). I'm pretty sure that the after of the involuntary is something that most everyone reading this has seen the aftereffects: exceptionally tiny uniforms for track & field, and booty-shorts and tinier than normal sports-bras, along with some....enhancements for female wrestlers (if you think I'm kidding, check out any video/t.v. program/facebook page that involves ladies professional wrestling for confirmation).

For those of you who have partaken of today's music scene, or even going back at least a decade, you have seen performers dress in ways that emphasizes what they got, sometimes modestly, sometimes not. Even though they may draw you in with their talent, sometimes it's that weaponization that keeps you hooked, like a double edge sword.

Whether it's voluntary or not, it still involves making a highly personal decision about how each performer wants to use what they got in order to make money. Some people are very comfortable in their own skin, and thus have no problem in using what they got to get what they want. Others may be comfortable in their own skin, but simply do not want to cross that particular line in the sand.

Now I mentioned that fiction is its own separate category. The reason why I believe this is that every writer often injects their own morals/mores into their stories, because more often than not, a given character in a given story is an extension of some type of the writer.

In my particular case, using sex as a weapon in my stories was always thing, no matter what level of weaponization was being applied to a given story. This was basically showcased in my fantasy series "Sister v Sister" where, for example, the Queen of the Pod Planet was forced to weaponize what the deities had graced her with in order to get what she needed to effectively rule the planet. It wasn't pretty and it was quite humiliating at times, but I tried to make it so that everyone in the Queen's inner circle knew how bad it was, so they tried to help mitigate the degradation she was forced to endure as much as possible.

I think what it boils down to, at least in the real world, on how much is a woman willing to compromise their personal beliefs in order to have the career that they'd decided to pursue. The fictional world is far more nuanced, in my personal opinion, since no matter what the medium may be, it's the writer that builds that character and decides how much of themselves do they want to be injected into their characters.

For me personally, I do not question how a person, male or female, wants to use what the deities of their religion had graced them with in order to have a fulfilling life. As my very opinionated/well-informed daughter is often fond of saying, "my body, my choice.", and that is a mantra that I try to abide by (which is why, for example, tattoos do not bother me whatsoever, and even if some did, my opinion does not matter).

So my friends, what's your opinion about women using sex as a weapon, either voluntarily or involuntarily? Please keep in mind, I'm not touching upon the industry that is exclusively for adults whatsoever. I'm only touching upon what the general public, ages 15 and up, sees on a daily/weekly basis.

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

Episode #267: It's An Extremely Casual Road To Nowhere

Spring is really, really, really trying to make an appearance on the mountain this month. Let's give this little guy three cheers and a GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!*

*for those of you who do not know, this word is now a worldwide sports meme, both audio and video.

Have you even sit down in front of your computer, open up your brain after opening up a freshly blank document and start pounding away on a story idea/blog post that sounded "oh-so-promising",  produce maybe five paragraphs, then realize it wasn't such a hot idea after all, so you nuke that mess and start all over again from scratch?

Glad to know that I'm not the only one with a slushie-brain in a tidy world.

Anyways, I wanted to give a writing update this week, but consider how few "hits" I get from people to visit, as opposed to my non-writing related blog posts (averaging about 36 hits per week), I wanted to spice things up by bringing back my Abnormal Reviews reviewers Ted & Bob, to liven things up. Alas, I had no such luck, as per the opening paragraph, it was a downhill ride to the cesspool of nonsense, thus we decided to flush it away.

So here we are, a little flummoxed on how best to give a writing update w/o people yawning until they cry. But since we have that can-do attitude of stubbornness, we're going to give it our best shot. To begin at the beginning, we have our recently completed novella, now called "To Live Is To Die Young".

Unlike last year, when it literally took a village over the course of two months in order to come up with a title, long blurb, short blurb and even a cover design for my novella The Mortality of Familial Love, this year, for my upcoming novella, it literally took me a total of seventy-five minutes, spread out over three days, to come up with a title {pen, paper, and nailed it on the ninth try}, a long blurb {fourth draft was the keeper} and a basic outline for a cover design. It's currently on the back burner due to budgetary constraints and the lack of a short blurb.

And since I needed to stay occupied in some particular way, we decided to work on a short story collection. I have three short stories {two original and one re-edit from a blog posting} already in the can, so it took me but twenty minutes to go through all of the short stories from my defunct short story blog and find a half dozen suitable specimens that I can rewrite. I also decided to write one fresh story featuring my wonderful literary muse, who was finally given a proper name and in this story, was elevated to be an upper-crust member of society.

The fun thing about this story, in addition to being low-fantasy, is that it's sprinkled quite liberally with concepts from my recently completed five volume fantasy series {e.g. telepathy, intraspace travel and sentients/empaths}, and most importantly, the story is basically writing itself. Like I'm just the conduit for the main character {my literary muse} as well as the supporting cast. It's only been about one calendar week, as of the date of this post, and I have the equivalent of 13 typewritten pages hammered out.

So this is my, what I hope to be, a lighthearted writing update. I say 'lighthearted', because I don't think I've had a long period of time where a short story simply flowed out of my pen to paper, nor did getting three of the four major items needed to publish a book completed with relative ease.

I like things to be easy in my writing life. Makes me feel like I can actually complete something without getting aggravated.

A very happy Monday to one and all.

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

Episode #266: I......Am Hooked On A Name!

Flashback to the early 2010's, when my Holly was the absolute chillest cat you ever laid eyes on.

Back in mid-October 2024, I wrote a post that touched upon naming throwaway characters. It was a fascinating read to be sure, as I tried to dig a little deeper into my reasoning behind using certain names for my throwaways.

Today I decided to revisit that particular post in order to make another attempt at understanding why I like to use certain names repeatedly.

I think this is something that all writers go through from time to time, in that they become overly attached to a particular name, male or female, and decide to use an ungodly amount of time. If you really think about it, repeatedly using a particular name can be considered trope-like behavior.

Let's use me as a good example of trope behavior without really recognizing that I was doing it until a number of years had passed.

Way early on, I became quite enamored with the name Nikia. I first heard it used in the movie "Kill Bill, Vol 1", and I thought it was quite the badass name, even if it was attached to a young tween. So I started using it for a lot of my early stories whenever my lead female character was a badass. Ultimately it took me until the mid 2010's to pull the plug on using the name, as by that point it was going to be part and parcel of five stories (two novellas and a failed trilogy), and I was becoming quite sick of using it.

That 'sickness' eventually worked itself away, as I started using other types of names for my badass female characters (some involving a twist to the dark original name, e.g. Machiavelli). But it didn't really work for my male characters, as you will soon see.

The only reason that I fell in love with the name Melvin, is because of its versatility. Not as a character that would make a great protagonist, but as a character that would make a great antagonist. What immediately springs to mind when you hear the name Melvin? Annoyance? Disdain? Loathing?

Melvin is one of those names that you can say with any type of emotion and chances are, a character will be born out of that emotion. Think I'm kidding? Let me show you a few examples.

1} In my currently unpublished five volume fantasy series "Sister vs Sister", Melvin is portrayed as a loathsome, misogynistic piece of human excrement who is looking to take over the world (no, really). So in this particular instance, when I'm speaking/reading the name Melvin, I'm instantly disgusted/turned off by the mere utterance of his name. In other words, his name leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

2} Let's take a modest step back to the novella that I'm looking to publish this year, "To Live Is To Die Young". In this particular instance, Melvin is written as one of those fringe members of a society that really doesn't care about him. He comes off as an intolerable nuisance with barely any redeeming qualities. This time, when I'm reading/speaking his name, I want to severely mock him for being such a useless member of society, so in my head, my pronunciation of his name is one octave lower on the first three letters and one octave higher on the last three.

3) Let's take one more step back to a short story that I'm editing/reformatting for another small novella that I decided to work on while putting the aforementioned novella on the back-burner for a small moment in time. In this particular instance, Melvin is the name of the narrator of the story. He is written as someone who is both respected and loathed in equal amounts in a given friend group. In other words, when I read/speak his name, I want to treat him as someone who is the necessary evil that you need to keep your disparate friend group coagulating on a daily/weekly basis. In other words, I say his name with a healthy mix of disdain and tolerance.

So as you can see from these examples, the name Melvin can be molded/manipulated to any kind of character that you want to create, simply by uttering his name with whatever type of emotion you want to inject the name with. To be honest, it's starting to look like the name Melvin is going to be the literary equivalent of a character actor who becomes part of a movie/t.v. star's acting crew (e.g. John Wayne had a set number of character actor friends who appeared in his movies from the 30's through the 60's).

If I need an antagonist of some kind, whether minor/mid-level/semi-major, Melvin is going to be my go-to character name to fulfill that particular role. So my question to you is this: do you have a particular name, male or female, that in your eyes is versatile enough to appear in a good percentage of your stories in some particular way?

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

Episode #265: It's Never Simple!

Harbinger of what we hope will be a pleasant Spring 2025.

The title of this week's blog post was a favorite saying of a wonderful old supervisor of mine back when I was a newbie state employee in the late 90's. She would often utter this phrase whenever she came across a particularly annoying government rule that was explicitly designed to make something 10 times more difficult to complete than it needed to be.

I found myself thinking about that particular phrase when I was trying to come up with something to write about this week {fun fact: this year marks my 17th consecutive year as a blogger, having started in 2008}, and after pondering about during a Saturday evening nap, I realize that blogging is painfully similar to writing a novel.

Point A: Trying to come up with a topic (blog) or an idea for a story (writing). Both have a gestation period, but a blog's, due to circumstances, is the equivalent of the lifespan of a house fly; while a story idea's gestation period is the equivalent of the lifespan of a fruit fly.

Point B: Fleshing out a blog post to the exact point where it can keep a reader engaged is a tricky endeavor, since if you make it too long, people will step out and not finish reading it. Make it too short and people will get the idea that you write clickbait; while fleshing out a story idea is an easier endeavor, in that the only limit you have is your preferred production type (e.g. short story, flash, novella).

Point C: Engaging the reader. A blog post, above all else, must engage the reader in a topic that they would want to know more of, in some particular way. Make it too esoteric, and you'll attract a minuscule fraction of the actual audience you want; on the other hand, a story idea often has a built in audience to begin with, and it often boils down on how you wish to expand and expound upon said idea in order to keep that built in audience engaged.

Point D: Offensiveness. Obviously, you have to tread a very fine line of a hair follicle when it comes to writing a blog post, with the main reason being is that you run the very real risk of alienating part of your audience if you write about a hot-button issue (politics for example) in specific terms rather than general terms (national politics vs local/state); a story idea is the complete opposite, in that while you may alienate some with the way you expand/expound on your story idea, the bulk of your audience with not be alienated.

Point E: Well, I don't really think there's a fifth point to be had, as I basically covered the four main differences between blogging and writing. 

However, in summation, it's never simple when it comes to blogging, because if you make a direct comparison to writing, blogging has way more rules that you have to perpetually navigate on a (in my case) weekly basis, whereas when it comes to story writing, the only rules that you have to navigate are those in your chosen length and genre. 

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

Episode #264: Deep Down We All Have 2 Brains

This is what I would imagine myself to be after spending a day trying to understand why myself decided to usurp myself.

I am a typical guy when it comes to my health, in that it does not matter what happens to us, we do our best interpretation of the Black Knight before continuing on with our day.

Unless we get a cold, then we don't act like a typical guy. Instead, we simply brush it off and continue with our day in good old Black Knight fashion. But sometimes, every once in a while, things go a tiny bit sideways. When that happens, our second brain kicks in and takes over.

Think I'm kidding? Well, here's the deal: we all have a Big Brain* that we use to govern every part of our existence. Living, breathing, eating, relaxing, etc. etc. etc. It's used extensively and for the most part, what we say goes. But there are times when our body finally says, "ENOUGH!", and decides to do something about decision making process.

This is where the Not-So-Big-Brain comes into play. "How?", you may ask. Well, it's pretty simple really. Because I'm always a good malleable subject when it comes to exploring certain harebrained theories, we'll use me, because, unlike others in the world today, I don't suffer from phantom maladies, but I do suffer from a good sense of humor.

Now, everyone's Not-So-Big-Brain is located deep inside their Big Brain, and is only accessible by the Body, and no one else. Not you or I, nor the Big Brain, just the Body. So, getting back to me.

Like I stated earlier, I'm one of those guys who can be quite stubborn about their health, and this past week was no exception. In spite of the increasing pain in my lower extremity, I did my normal walking and ran my normal errands, and ignored all of the warning signs that my body was telling me. Well, my body finally said, "ENOUGH!", whipped out the Not-So-Big-Brain, and took over.

They decided that I should be punished for my ignorance by increasing the pain in my lower extremity to the point where I actually had to go to see my doctor before my scheduled appointment to have it taken care of. The immediate aftermath of this was that I am not allowed to do any long distance walking for at least a couple of weeks.

If you think that's no big deal, think again. I am one of those people who simply cannot sit on my buttocks whenever I want to listen to any kind of audio medium (e.g. podcasts, c.d., radio, sports, YT). I actually have to be doing SOMETHING. Doesn't matter what that something is, I need to do it if I want to have a fulfilling audio life.

So, not being able to get my 3+ miles of daily walking in while methodically listening to 27+ podcast feeds/5+ YouTube channels that specialize in pop culture content, bothers me to no end. Makes my body happier than a foodie creating sugary masterpieces in the kitchen, knowing that they're in the driver's seat because the weather has just started to turn for the better here in Connecticut, and that makes them cackle with glee.

And there really isn't thing one I can do about, because we all know that when our body wants to do something proper, like healing from an illness, and we don't, it's going to make damn sure that we suffer the consequences of our own blithering idiocy.

So my friends, always remember that if you and your Big Brain don't listen to your body from time to time, your body is gonna whip out that Not-So-Big-Brain and make you suffer the consequences of not paying attention. Just like me.**

*: "Big Brain" is a phrase that well known YouTuber Simon Whistler, who hosts almost one dozen channels and at least three that double as podcasts, is very fond of using, mostly as a gentle insult to himself and others.

**: I had developed a nasty foot ailment that I'd ignored for the past three months until the pain got to be unbearable. End result, ailment fixed but now forbidden from hardcore walking for at least two weeks. So now I'm substituting crosswords puzzles during the same two time frames for walking, in order not to fall too far behind with my podcasts subscriptions.

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