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