Episode #319: My Den {2}-Getting Into The Groove: Vinyl LPs

It's been a while since I've talked about my modest music collection (well modest compared to others), so I thought it would be a slight refreshing change of pace to focus on audio, instead of video/visual. Specifically, the petroleum product portion of our vast music collection (aka vinyl).

To give a very brief update, between 45s and LPs, my petroleum product collection contains a combined total somewhere north of 9,000 pieces. Now this is a conservative estimation, as I have one full carrying box, twenty and a half wooden crates (each full crate about 55 units) of LPs and six and a quarter crates (each full crate contains 60 +/-) and one full carry box (about 100).

My petroleum product collection has been acquired in a few different ways over the decades.

1. Purchased for me when I was a young'un (ex: a Brady Bunch album);
2. I purchased for myself: new (as a teen and young adult); used (from the age of twenty-five going forward);
3. Have been given to me by family, friends and co-workers.

Presently, #3 is how I've been acquiring them, as my family and my friends know that I'm always open to acquiring petroleum products on the cheap (aka free). Because of this thoroughly treasured part of my character, I've been able to expand to all kinds of music that maybe three decades ago, I would've simply waved away.

Here is a small sample of music in my collection. Please note that I do not make the distinction between 45s and LPs.

Country of all types of persuasions, including classic and pop; pop music; true alternative/indie music; comedy LPs (60s thru the mid 80's); classical of all types; true R&B; rock music (60's thru 90's); show tunes; easy listening and even niche stuff like barbershop quartets and "adult" (aka smut) music.

Granted, college radio had a major influence in my later years, specifically starting late 90's going forward, which exposed me to all kinds of music, no matter the country of origin.

I now would like to show you a few examples of what has come across my hands and into my collection over the decades.

Elton Britt: yodel songs

Yes, you read correctly. I have an original album from 1956 that contains twelve selections of yodeling songs. I did a modicum of research and this gentlemen recorded nearly 600 sides (45's) and 60 albums during a 30 year career*. I've yet to listen to it though.

*The only artist that comes to mind that might come close to those totals is Willie Nelson.

Apparently yodeling songs were quite popular back in the day, as this gentlemen had a few million sellers back in the 40's & 50's, and from what I was able to ascertain, he was working right up to the day he passed away in 1972.

This is a country album put out by Senator Robert Byrd. Yes, that Robert Byrd. The older than Methuselah rabid segregationist who stayed in office right up until his death.

Anyways, apparently he was an accomplished musician and this was released on a small private label in 1978. Oh and, he actually sang on this record.

~~~~~

While I often enjoy collecting for the sake of collecting, there are times, when after I do a quick run through of a recent acquisition or even a basic run through of my collection looking for something to play, I will often scratch my very bald head in bewilderment at some of the music that was produced and oddly enough, actually listened to.

I sincerely hope that everyone has an enjoyable week and I'll see you next time on the price is not quite spot on.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #318: American English?! No, Not That! Well....Maybe

Flashback to when both dogs were living large and living pretty while enjoying life.

I discovered the joys of the American English Language very late in life, but early enough that it came to be part and parcel of my palette when I began to take my writing seriously.

To reintroduce everyone to my former employment background, my very first job was working at the CT State Library in something called "The Connecticut Newspaper Project". The extreme T.L.;D.R. is that I helped prepare old Connecticut newspapers for microfilming. the date range of these newspapers with the late 18th century through the mid 1980's, with a particular emphasis on the 1850's to the mid 1980's.

As I got to reading those early newspapers, I slowly began to appreciate the elaborate workaround that newspapermen would do to skirt the strong libel/slander laws of the time period. For example, you couldn't use select adjectives to describe someone in print. Instead you would often put a letter or two, followed by an underscore, and because your reader was reasonably intelligent, they would instantly recognize the word in question.

Or, if you want to insult someone in print, you would have to get really creative with your insults. For example, if you wanted to call someone "week" when they were bragging about the rope tying skills, you could say that "I had to learn on the fly because I didn't have the luxury of someone helping me out by standing still."

Fast forward about a decade or so. When I decided to become serious about my writing, I knew I had to make my characters stand out in some particular way. The no-brainer for me was to flesh out my character's linguistic skills, and I did this with all of my characters throughout all of my stories. Like a stock character trait.

So what I've tried to do was to model my characters language/speech traits after those writers and journalists of the Victorian age: a sharp tongue, biting wit, a delicate mix of sarcasm and bluntness that allows the user to get their point/insult across without too much collateral damage. I also made sure that those particular traits were sprinkled throughout a given story, because as the old saying goes: saying less carries more of an impact than saying more.

To elaborate on the 'less is more' philosophy, I have found that you can easily establish the personality of a particular character is, by simply having them use one word that they can apply a lot of inflection with.

For example, whenever I use the worlds "Indeed", or "Quite", I'm imaging my character is wanting to get to the point of whatever issue they're dealing with so that they can move on, or they're simply agreeing with whatever salient point someone else is making. Whenever I use the word "Come", it's basically short hand for "we need to get moving on to the next issue at hand."

In summation, I try to create characters that are well-rounded, erudite without being snobbish and will often use language as a way to keep the antagonists at bay, or at least, in their lane.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #317: The Family Bookcase {4): Gaming

I was searching through the family bookcase looking for something interesting to blog about when I happened across a few RPG rulebooks/guidebooks. Now I am one of a good chunk of the population who are quite familiar with RPGs, but I never had the itch to play one. I prefer to use my imagination and writing skills for the general fiction world of the novella & novel, but I have mad respect for those who enjoy RPGs and the worlds they can create.

Anyways, I performed a bit of research on the three books that we possess, as well as a brief skim through, and I have to say that I am seriously impressed with the amount of effort from a collective to create these three books. Two of the three books are sadly out of print, as they were created by a close family member who no longer maintains that level of participation in the RPG community, although they have branched out in other ways {click here to see}.

The other role/guidebook was created by a company called West End Games, which surprisingly enough, is still in business under a different corporate umbrella. I won't bore you with the convoluted details, but please click on the link if your curiosity is piqued.

In general, I am astonished with the amount of work that went into creating these worlds (and their background, although it seems that the ones created and published by my close family member are heads above the corporate one), and so I will be explaining what each one is to the best of my ability.

~~~~~

The first of the two books created by my cousin is called Twin Crowns and Other Lands.

Considering I'm a serious neophyte when it comes to RPGs, what impressed me the most while I was thumbing through the book, was the incredible amount of detail and back story that were created for this particular RPG. I always knew that worlds were created for fantasy novels/series, but I always assumed that they would be limited to what would be actually needed for the story (like mine is), but I guess with RPGs, it skips to a whole new level of thoroughness.

The second book that my cousin had created was a role-play for the Twin Crown world that was based on Live Action Role-playing, which was something that I had never heard of before. Think of it as dressing for a Ren fair and then playing a D & D adventure, or one of those dinner theater mysteries.* And yes, my cousin and her gaming friends are featured on this cover.

*okay that last one is pulled directly out of the definition from Google of Live Action Role Playing.

Again, just like the first, it's extremely dense-not so much concentrated on the extensive background dump, but more concentrated on the characters and their  respective KSAs, as well as the assorted ephemera that makes a fantasy world function.

The third book seems to be the only part of an entire box that was left behind somewhere. Not knowing much about RPGs, I'm gathering there's other components that are needed in order to successfully play this particular adventure called Torg: The Possibility Wars.

If you check out the link for West End Games, it goes into greater detail about the origins of this game, and the company, which was found in the late 70's, and created a lot of well known RPGs for some very popular IPs such as Star Wars.

~~~~~

My views on all three games are decidedly mixed. On one hand, they have really opened my eyes to the amount of worlds building that is required to have a successful RPG (or fantasy series, both written and celluloid), so having top notch writing skills is a major plus, with a solid imagination a good second (especially if you're creating  your world from scratch and not using an established IP.

On the other hand, the amount of world building, along with the extensive KSAs involved with that particular world, is incredibly daunting and challenging to a neophyte such as myself, who has a very hard time putting that much effort to playing an RPG to begin with (which is why I never migrated beyond sports when it came to video games in my young adult years).

In spite of this kind of game not being my cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination, I do like learning about a facet of life that a lot of people enjoy participating in because it works both as a stress reducer and  a way to build a skill set that you can successfully apply to the real world.

Gaming is a great way to improve your critical thinking and problem solving skills, no matter what type of game you enjoy playing. Try one today. Or as my cousin used to say on her podcast, "happy gaming everybody."

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #316: A Typical Day In The Life Of Your Gen X Writer

This...is about as much as I'm willing to show of myself on social media in 2026. Photo was taken some time after 2006 and before 2015.

Yes my friends, you're reading the blog post title correctly. Gen X is defined as someone being born between 1965 (me) and 1980. You're welcome for the sticker shock. Oh and one more thing, Gen X invented the modern curse called the Internet. Again, you're welcome.

Anywho, I don't think I've done a post like this in quite some time, if at all, on this blog. I know I've done on my other now inactive blogs (thanks Internet AI!) periodically, because, you know, easy blog filler.

And this one will probably be the same, as in easy blog filler. Maybe. But we'll have some fun just the same. So to over use a tired cliche, "are you ready?", and a classic British humor line, "let's begin from  the beginning.", we shall indeed, start at the start.

Note: since we're in the early throes of using tweezers on our hair follicles due to editing, our routine will be focusing on that.

7:30-ish in the a.m., we turn around to face our $660+ ASUS Chromebook, because if your love for M$ stopped at Win7, this OS is for you, and continue where left off editing, which in this case is our fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". After we get our morning dose of procrastination out of the way, it's now 9-ish in the morning and it's time to close up shop....I'm just kidding. In all seriousness, we spend a maximum of 1 1/2 hours either to continue editing the chapter we left off at the previous night (for the purpose of this post, we're editing chapter 21 of book #2); or finishing the chapter, printing a fresh copy, download a Word doc of the completed chapter for backup, putting away the old chapter and pulling out a fresh one to edit.

9-ish in the morning to about 1-ish in the afternoon, we live the relaxing life of someone who took an early retirement now going on five and half years, which mainly consists of getting our morning calisthenics, followed by our extremely self-regulated socialized media fix (about fifteen to twenty minutes on Meta, longer if I'm performing my M-W-F posting on my author's page with about one hour watching/commenting on YouTube). Oh and, can't forget our very regimented, calorie-wise, lunch. Regimented as everything is properly weighed per the serving instructions on the packaging.

1p-ish in the afternoon to about 2:30p-ish in the afternoon, we perform a repeat of the aforementioned 7:30a-ish phase of our day, unless I have a pressing errand(s) to run that cannot be done in the evening (e.g. banking). Then we do maaaaaybe a half hour of editing before running our important errand(s).

If no errands are to be had for the afternoon, then we get our afternoon calisthenics in, which lasts from 2:45p-ish to 4p-ish. I should note that Sunday thru Friday I break up my modest goal of 6k steps into two easily digestible parts, hence the twice a day calisthenics. I should also note that this year's winter's cold has been extremely nasty to me, to the point where anyone over the age of two can move faster than I can.

So with that bout of whininess out of the way, we're now, for the sake of the post, back home nestled in the warm comfort of our den, sipping a cup of hot chai and dreaming of monetary goodness and being recognized by others for the excellent books that we've written. 

Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

At that very second, the sound of a t.v. with the volume jacked to eleven hits you with the force of a five gallon bucket of ice water suddenly brings you back to the reality of the present (my reality is being a political elephant in a large extended family of political donkeys, although there may be hope for a 2nd cousin). You turn your heater back on, move the mouse to activate the computer from sleep mode, and spend from 4p-ish to 6:30p-ish doing absolutely nothing related to your current project, but you are posting snarky comments to Meta posts and YouTube videos, all while devouring the evening meal of pizza and fries, with a veggie and sugar free pudding for dessert.

However, you do feel motivated enough to spend perhaps fifteen minutes writing a future Meta post for your author's page, because you taught yourself how to write sixteen lines totaling 220 words or less for each post, so fifteen minutes is all you need. And you pat yourself on the back because you're able to apply what you've learned from others.

It's now 6:30p, and you're sitting there, in your chair wondering just exactly where the day went and most importantly, why you're still sitting in the chair. So you get your (allegedly) tired butt out of the chair and force yourself to make....yeeck...contact with....people, yet again. You don't really want to, but you still have your evening errands to run (like clockwork, because, schedules baby). So you spend anywhere from one half to one hour running your evening errands, before you go back home and call it a day. You change into your jammies, pour yourself a hot cup of chai and settle down in The Comfy Chair to dream about those huge paychecks coming from your writing.

{cue very long record scratch}

Reality: You go back down to your semi-cold den and after brewing yourself a cup of instant coffee of the Walter Martin variety, you turn on your computer and proceed to spend from 7:45p-ish to 10:00p-ish performing the following writing projects: editing your series as per the opening paragraph of this post. This overall project is interrupted by two infomercials called 'handwriting upcoming posts for Meta' and 'upcoming blog posts like this one', both of which require you to get off your butt and do research.

At 10p-ish, you tidy up your work area, turn off the power to your computer and printer, fix the settings on your computer so that 95% of your computer programming is throttled to conserve power (seriously, my computer has settings that allow you to drastically throttle most of the background programming, etc when you're using battery power. It stops when you turn the DC back on), and either spend that last half hour-ish of time working on the aforementioned projects or doom-scroll YouTube, because you like to fry what few remaining brain cells that have been untainted by the written word. Then you finally go to bed, get your five hours of sleep and experience the rapturous joy of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day.

And yes, we ran the gamut for your p.o.v. pleasure in this post, because, you know, practice makes perfection. I hope you enjoyed this snapshot of a typical day in my writing life, and remember, being a good writer is about rising above your redundancies and turning slop into an above average fast food meal. 

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #315: Let's Talk Celebrity Books!

"Here he comes to save the day...maybe!"

I like books that are either writing about celebrities or are written by them. In regards to the former, I enjoy reading those that are created with at least the tacit approval of the subject in question. Those tend to be the most interesting because the biographer can often perform a deeper dive into the subject when they know they have unfettered access to them.

Example: I recently read a very good bio of R.E.M. Even though the band declined to be interviewed directly/participate, they made it known that they had no qualms with any member of their families or extended friendship circles actually participating.

Now I have read or almost read biographies of those who did not want to participate and made it known that they were not nor would they going to give their approval, so the finished product had a tendency to be wanting. Robert DeNiro, Paul Simon, Ringo Starr and John Prine fall into this particular book category.

In regards to the latter statement, books written by 'celebrities' have a tendency to fall into two distinct categories: memoirs and topics that they have an in-depth knowledge of. While I enjoy both, I should let everyone know that my definition of 'celebrity' is probably a complete 180 from yours. To me, a celebrity is someone who is well known from any and all walks of life, and not from the usual fields of sports and entertainment.

For example: over the decades I've reads memoirs from a diverse group of people such as Eric Roberts, Sissy Spacek, Mike Campbell (founding member of The Heartbreakers), Dave Grohl, Steve Boone (The Lovin' Spoonful) and John Lyndon (aka Johnny Rotten). 

However, I have also read memoirs from people who are well known in their chosen field, however niche it may be, but not known to the general public.

For example: I have read a memoir from an internet personality with the nome de plume of The Bitchy Waiter (who also has a movie out); a very strange bio about one half of a duo that makes up the popular YouTube channel Jolly (the book was ultimately written as fundraiser for a theme park in Australia; and a memoir from a popular TikTok/YouTube personality, Hayley Morris.

Now if we switch over to the other type of 'celebrity' book that I have enjoyed, you'll find that my reading list is just as eclectic. I have read memoirs that doubled as history books.

For example: professional wrestling. I've read memoirs from Bob Backlund and Pat Patterson, both of which also cover the golden age of what is now the WWE prior to Hulkamania. I've also read (and have a copy) a memoir from Lynn Denton, who was a professional wrestler under the name "The Grappler" and worked primarily in the Northwest part of the US. His memoir doubled as a history of territory wrestling prior to the massive national expansion of the WWF/WWE

If we switch one more time, we move on to books that have been written by people who are very well known in their chosen niche field. A well known Michigan attorney, Steve Lehto, has written a slew of books covering true crime and the automotive industry. The only title that I have is "American Murder Houses: A Coast-to-Coast Tour of the Most Notorious Houses of Homicide". It's actually a really good & fascinating book and I highly recommend it and his other books.

Another book that I have is written by podcaster Patrick Wyman. He's a former MMA sportswriter turned legitimate historian who specializes in Medieval, Roman and early World history. His 1st book is called "The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance and Forty Years That Shook The World 1496-1530", and he examines that forty year period through the eyes of ten real people. Highly recommend this book as well.

In general, I enjoy reading books written by people who are well known in their particular field of work and have become 'celebrities' in their own particular way to the media platform they choose to use. I enjoy  memoirs written by people who may not be what we sarcastically call "A, B, C, & D" list celebrities, but are still celebrities in their own right.

One more thing: I often find those quirky memoirs and biographies at my local public library, from FB, from YouTube and from podcasts. These platforms have a tendency to weed out the fluffy ghostwriter money grubbers from those who actually know what they're talking about and are willing to show the good, the band and the fugly about themselves.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #314: Writing! It's Noiseless Matte Schtuff!

I'm looking at you because this blogger couldn't come up with anything witty to say, because my cuteness has simply rendered him speechless.

I haven't done a writing update in what seems like ages, so I thought I would give everyone an idea on what's been going on in the slightly unbalanced writing worlds of G.B. Miller.

1} Sister vs Sister: The Series.

I've been making slow and steady progress with my editing process. On the positive side, I've managed to come up with two viable titles that effectively replace the two place holder titles of "kidnapping" and "the campsite".

I'm currently working on book #2 and the only hiccup I've had so far involved having to deconstruct/reconstruct four chapters. To elaborate, I decided near the tail end of book #1 to change how I presented the multi-layer/multi-point of views so that head hopping wouldn't become an issue, and in order to make everything uniform it required me to fix four chapters, which took me about a week in total to accomplish.

2} Facebook.

About a month ago, I talked about what I could do with my stagnant Facebook page and I came up with the novel idea of blogging about the editing and publishing journey with my fantasy series. Suffice to say the early results have more than exceeded my expectations, in that I've had a good uptick in engagement with others and have gained a few new followers.

Naturally this has led me to the joyful concept of multi-tasking, which means having to create enough content to stay the course of posting twice a week on FB, and to a smaller degree, more content for my blog, all while keeping up with the current pace of my editing.

Sometimes, it can be very beneficial to have multiple projects going on at the same time.

3} Graphic designer (cover).

Facebook's algorithms will often populate a user's newsfeeds with page/people suggestions based on your current habits, and sometimes they will unwittingly make a suggestion that turns out to be a blessing in disguise.

I happened across a suggested person to follow (college professor/author from Vermont) who was talking about a bad customer service experience he had while helping someone obtain a refund from a graphic design company.

Long story short, the screenshotted e-mail correspondence featured the company that I'd used for my last two novellas: 100 Covers. Naturally I started reading through the comment section, and suffice to say it was quite the eye-opening experience (basic business rule #1: treat the customer like how you want to be treated, because a bad experience travels at the speed of light in the digital world).

After doing a bit of reading, I decided to ask the author of the post for his recommendations on who he would use. It took him about a day to respond, which was quite thoughtful and enlightening.

He suggest to me MiblArt and said he was highly impressed with their work. And you do know that within a day of receiving that recommendation, I started seeing ads popping up in my newsfeed for that company.

If they're good as they say they are, and judging by the ads that include fifteen to thirty seconds video shorts, I have no reason to doubt their word, I will be using my 3rd graphic designer in the past five years.

And depending on how they do on my next book (a re-write of a previously published book), I may have them redo the covers to my novellas. I do detest having to spend money needlessly, but sometimes you have to take the bad with the good, although it seems I'm getting the bad more often than the good.

So my friends, I hope you enjoyed this little writing update. If you want to re-experience a deeper dive into my fantasy series, please check out the tag Hot Mess; or, if you want to experience the condensed version in less than 220 words twice a week, feel free to follow my author's page on Facebook.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #313: Re-Visiting, Re-Reading and Re-Examining

Got a bit of those winter blahs, so here's a little something from last summer.

Back in the day I used to participate in a monthly writing related blog hop sponsored by the Insecure Writers Support Group, a writing community that supports new and established writers. They have their own blog and have a killer newsletter that is jam packed with all kinds of writing related info, both of which I highly recommend.

In the newsletter, they always offer a question that you can answer during the monthly blog hop (which is always the first Wednesday of the month). I thought that this month's question was so up my alley that I decided to give it a whirl for my weekly blog post.

"Have I ever re-read any of my early writing, and what was that experience like?"

The short answer is: I have and to quote an old song, "oh boy!"

The long answer, which is this post is: It has definitely been an eye opener. When I re-read the stuff that I wrote early on and compare it to what/how I write now, I cringe so hard that I sometimes pull a facial muscle.

While a lot of it has been all kinds of level of cringe, a good chunk of it has been salvageable to the point where I've been able to successfully rewrite and either publish/re-publish or have it soon to be published.

A few examples spring to mind:

1} Both of my recent novellas, The Mortality of Familial Love & To Live Is To Die Young, are re-imagined versions of previously poorly written stories of the kind that would forever languish in a slushy pile never to see the light of day.

2} My current fantasy series was re-imagined from the ashes of a (very) badly written novella that went  nowhere fast over a dozen years ago until I changed the way I write my stories and decided to revisit that cringey story.

3} I have a novella that I plan on republishing this year, because the original version that was published over a decade ago was not up to my current standards as a writer. I realize it shouldn't have been and I'm now trying to rectify that. I've already did this with a previous short story collection, because the mid-2020's me absolutely hated the late 2000's version me.

4} And finally, I was able to successfully re-write nearly a dozen short stories because again, this version of me was severely disappointed with that version of me's mediocre writing (and it was).

So yes, I have spent the past half dozen years pulling all kinds of Calvin & Hobbes faces when reading all of my early writing, but during those same half dozen years, I've also been channeling my inner Calvin & Hobbes can-do attitude when it comes to re-imagining those admittedly bad stories into something 20x better.

I think perseverance is a must have quality for a writer, especially when you're able to find a few good pebbles in the proverbial sandbox of badly written stories, no matter how old those stories happen to be.

Life as a writer is often good, but it's better when you can resurrect an early badly written story into something that you can be proud of.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #312: I Want My (Sugar Free) Candy!

This was taken the week prior to the snow bomb that dropped over a foot of snow that ultimately shut down the state for a day and a half.

Like most normal intelligent people, I love candy. When I was able to eat normal candy, more often than not my faves were 3Musketeers, Snickers, Milky Way and Mars Bar with Almonds. I tried a whole bunch of others (thru the age of 21, so about 15+ years), but these are my top four.

Fast forward forty years and although I still love candy, it does not love me like it used to back in the day when I was a sugar junkie. Instead, it loves me like a plan "B", in that the only way to get some loving out of me is to go sugar-free, which we all know is not conducive to living a good sugar junkie life.

Now I have eaten a lot of sugar free candy since 1985 (this is when I was officially diagnosed as a diabetic), and for me they fall into three categories: good but expensive; average for the price point; and slop not worth the money. So without further ado, let's begin at the beginning.

1} Good but expensive:

There aren't too many candy companies that I've come across, either highly commercialized or niche regional, that can produce a quality sugar-free product. In fact, I know of only  two that I can personally offer my positive opinion on.

Russell Stovers: Now we all know that Russell Stovers makes a quality chocolate product that you do pay a premium for. But their sugar-free product is something that you pay a premium price for because it's a quality product.

I often go out of my way to buy their sugar-free product because it's a quality product, and honestly, a quality sugar-free candy is hard to come by.

Muson's Chocolate: Is another example of a good quality product that is worth the premium price if you can find it, as most stores do not carry a large selection of sugar-free chocolate. 

2} Average for the price point:

Most sugar-free mints and gums fall into this category: they get the job done and don't make you sick if you go overboard consuming them. And really, this is what you basically want out of your sugar-free mints or gums: to fulfill that craving without making yourself sick in the process.

Granted, there are some candies that should not have a sugar-free version if the company has a regular version. Let's face it, most confectioners should not make a sugar-free version when there is no call/clamor for one, because why expand your market when you feel there isn't one.

Which brings us to the last category: slop that isn't worth the money.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Hershey's chocolate is mediocre.

Now it was never this bad throughout most of their history, because if it was, you wouldn't see the vast economic empire that is Hershey's today. Instead, you would see maybe a niche chocolate company that was swallowed up by their rivals.

Some thirty plus years ago, Hershey's radically tweaked the process in which they made their chocolate. The end result of this tweaking is a product that those outside of the US would only consume as an absolute last resort.

I was a so-so fan of Hershey's as a child, with their offers being a top fifty choice unless they were launching a new product. As an adult, I am not even remotely a fan of their sugar-free product.

I used to be in the beginning, because sugar-free candy was often a crapshoot and when you can find one to add to your very short consumable list, you do. But it eventually became apparent that their product was not worth the higher price tag (on average, sugar-free chocolate is up to 50% higher than normal chocolate).

Compared to others, most notably Russell Stovers, the taste was off and the contents inside (e.g. peanut butter cups) was roughly textured (sometimes when you bake with a sugar substitute, the quality can be...off).

Hershey's, in my personal opinion, is a mediocre product to begin with and has devolved into one of those companies that everyone knows about due to their oversaturation of their product (think any Kraft product or Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce) and buys based on that oversaturation and not on taste or price point.

There are few other sugar-free chocolates that I've found over the decades, but the ones listed above are those who I've had extensive experience with. I sincerely thank you for allowing me to offer my five cents (no pennies as they've been discontinued) about sugar free chocolate and other assorted sugar-free options.

Remember, sugar free doesn't always mean it's better, it just means it doesn't have the sugary taste that you crave and love. So consume your sugar free products with your eyes wide open, your taste buds wide open, and most importantly, that bottle of Imodium within arms reach.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #311: My Bookcase {4}-Capitalizing Thy Punishment

A kindly heads up to my readers: I rarely talk about hot button issues on this blog, simply because of the amount of static I would receive and the fallout afterwards. This is one of those hot button issues that has divided the nation into two distinct camps: pro-criminal/anti-victim and pro-victim/anti-criminal, and you can probably guess which political party today is the former and which is the latter.

I am a very strong proponent of capital punishment. Always have been, always will be. I always believe that if you commit a heinous crime that involved multiple people or certain types of people becoming a fond distant memory for others, then you should suffer the ultimate consequence. This philosophy has made me a very usual person in my very blue state of Connecticut, as the pro-criminal/anti-victim Democratic party eliminated the death penalty in the early 2010's.

I won't go further into the weeds or how broken the system is and other assorted tangents, because this post is not about the (mostly) factual rantings of a "senior citizen". This post is about a book whose topic of choice is Texas's death row.

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I'm not entirely sure when I had picked up this book beyond narrowing it down to the late 2000's. I've always been interested on how death rows work in the states that do have them, so I figured, 'why not?'.

The book itself is an interesting read, as it first spends a few pages talking about how the death row in Texas is run; the rules and regulations, and the like (fun fact, no tobacco products are allowed with your final meal). The rest of the book is set up encyclopedia style in chronological order (but not in the way that you think).

In short, each entry contains the following:

1. The name of the criminal(a);
2. Brief synopsis of the case;
3. Brief bio of the inmate;
4. The amount of time spent on death row;
5. Last meal, if any;
6. Last statement, if any*.

*There is an appendix for some of the inmates who gave very lengthy (usually one to two book pages) statements.

I should note that this book covers the modern era of the Texas Death Row, when the lethal injection was the standard method of execution, starting in December 1982 through the publication date of this book,  April 2007.

I will say that this book is a good read, although not terribly enjoyable for the average person or even true crime aficionados. People who are into criminal justice or social justice may find it a very good read, as well as those who enjoy reading about the history of capital punishment in the U.S.

This book does not sugarcoat the heinousness of the crimes the inmates were convicted of, and the author presents a well balanced look in at capital punishment in Texas.

As I stated in the beginning, there's a lot of things wrong with how capital punishment sentences are carried out, and this post isn't about the end result of a deep dive through the internet (among other things), just a book review/recommendation for those who are curious about the death penalty and how it's applied in the U.S., with a specific focus on Texas.

Thank you for coming to my blog today, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #310: Time Now, For The Editing Portion Of Our Program

An oldie but still a goody from last summer. Sunflowers for a sunshiny day. A harbinger of a cool spring this year, perhaps?

And so it begins that zero day is upon us. Or to be more precise, over one thousand three hundred pages spanning five books totaling one hundred twenty chapters are now officially knockin' on my front door.

On February 6, 2025, I wrote the proverbial 'the end' to my fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Besides deciding on the overall title of the series and coming up with the necessary sub-titles for all five volumes, along with the previously mentioned page edit note taking, I spent the rest of 2025 performing the following:

Front-to-back-to-front note taking and reviewing.

Basically, on that first read through, I performed another round of editing and making sure there were no continuity issues going forward. I then did the exact same thing again going backwards from the end looking for the exact same issues.

After that particular read through and letting it rest for a few weeks, I turned my attention to fixing a few characters so that they were consistent all the way through. In other words, a few characters started off being portrayed a particular way, but by the end had evolved into something completely different.

For example: The Pod Queen's hair spirit started off in Book #2 as being her bff, but by the end of that book had morphed into being her sister. Thus a continuity issue that needed to be addressed.

I found another continuity issue with another character that was portrayed one way and as the story progresses performed a one-eighty by the end.

Overall, I found about five character/plot continuity issues, of which a couple were actually fixed while I was writing the series. So while I have my work cut out for me, it's not as bad as it could have been.

I say "not as bad as it could have been" because I made a concentrated effort to be clear and concise with my note taking. As most of you know, my handwriting is garbage, so my printing has to be clear enough for me to decipher. Believe it or not, this is a serious on-going issue for me. If I become too tired, my printing becomes just sloppy enough not to be legible, which has created problems over the years.

So this is my life for the next year, and just like in 2024, I will publish the third of my four projects (revamped/rewritten novella) sometime in the spring while working on these edits. And just like previously, I will be journaling my continuing adventures with my fantasy series, with a brief summary here and a slightly more detailed post on Facebook. If you have Facebook, please check out my author's page (link on the right hand side of the front page).

Have a good rest of your week.

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #309: When The Hard Part Suddenly Becomes Easy

Up until very recently, I always found it really hard to accomplish three particular writing related necessities for my books:

1} A title for the story;

2} Synopsis, both long and short;

3} Tag.

In a timely manner. Didn't matter what I was writing, these particular items always gave me a migraine when it came to actually doing them. At most, I would be able to come up with a title in a reasonable time frame, with the others having to be dragged kicking and screaming. This novella is a prime example of this onerous process.

Click for details

With my last novella, for some unknown reason, everything fell smoothly into place: a title, the multiple synopsis and tag took a title of three days to complete. Easy peasy lemon squeezy.

Click for details

The reason as to why I'm broaching this headache inducing topic today is that I'm just about ready to publish the third of four projects that I had promised myself to work on during my retirement.

To refresh everyone's memory, about six months after I had retired in 2020, I decided to get really serious about my writing. My jumping off point was republishing this short story collection with a new title and cover. By the summer of 2021, I had four other projects lined up, all of which were rewrites in one form or another: the two aforementioned novellas, my fantasy series (see the tag Hot Mess for further details) and the novella that is the subject of today's post.

Back in the mid 2010s, I had self published a novella that I grew to loathe during the next decade: I didn't like the title; the cover was too cartoonist (I had tried a different graphic designer for this go around) and the story seemed to be a little...choppy.

Fast forward to 2023. I had decides to do a major gut to the story by changing the p.o.v., tightening up the word count (I had fluffed it out by adding excerpts from other books), creating a new title and new long and short synopsis. Surprisingly, at least for me, all of these items I was able to accomplish in about three months.

The p.o.v. went from a 3rd to a light present tense; tightening the word count was ridiculously simple, as cutting the excerpts dropped the word count by almost 50%. But the three items that normally induces a major headache for me became very easy to do.

Since this story was ultimately about vengeance, the title took me about a half hours' worth of doodling on a piece of paper; the two blurbs were basically reworked from what I had originally, so the only thing left to do is the tags, which should not be too difficult to complete.

I don't know about you, but I managed to have two completely different experiences when it came to completing the previously mentioned bullet points with three consecutive novellas. The first one I had the usual headaches: title (about a month which involved a couple of polls); long and short blurbs (again, about a month that involved other members of my now ex-writing group) and the tag (that took about two weeks involving just the windmills of my mind).

Basically about 2 1/2 months were spent on those bullet points, which is actually a little below par, like a birdie, for me.

The next two, I managed to zip through, in an aggregate total of for each of one week. With the former, the one thing that I had going for me was that I was so driven to the point of obsession to get everything nailed, which surprisingly enough I did to the wall and beyond.

With the latter, the one thing that I had going for me, was the fact that this was a previously published novella. So the motivation was that I had a very good idea on what I didn't want for a title, for blurbs or a tag line.

The one common thread that all three of the novellas had, was the fact that they were all rewrites of mediocre stories, none of which I was proud of in their original form. Oddly enough, the first one felt like I was using it to practice writing blurbs, tags and titles. Then with the practice out of the way, the two remaining novellas became easy peasy lemon squeezy.

The other common thread that the last two novellas have as opposed to the first one listed is motivation. With the first novella listed, the motivation was sporadic at best. Sure, it was definitely there when I wanted to get it completed and published, but it started wavering when I had started running into, but not through, the proverbial adobe wall when I was trying to complete the aforementioned bullet points. Once it started wavering, it became increasingly difficult to get it back again. Ultimately I pushed through and gave birth to in 2024.

With the other two, the motivation was absolutely there. I was stoked about each story, so I wanted to do my best to complete those three bullet points in the shortest time possible, which I did with my recently published novella. With the one I want to do this year, it was a little different. I had the new title already chosen back in 2023 when I first started rewriting it, and in 2024, it was very easy to take what I had already written for blurbs and re-edit them into something that fit more securely with the overall story.

What it boils down to, at least for me, is motivation. Motivation is the key to whether that bullet point process gives me a migraine, or gives me a good summer breeze blowing through the patio of my mind.

Have a good week everyone!

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #308: Were You Ever Given Bad Writing Advice?

Coffee so mediocre that it didn't want to be open for fear of polluting the air with the coffee beans that were lying around on the ground beneath the coffee bush for a year before someone finally took notice and showed pity on them.

I gotten plenty of good advice over the years in regards to my writing, with the majority of it being indirectly (i.e. reading about it from reputable people) acquired, for which I am very grateful for.

I've also gotten a bit of bad advice over the years, some of which that cost me money and reputation (i.e vanity presses and agents). Others had given me advice that basically cost me time and enrollment in the school of Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Once such piece of advice that in 20/20 hindsight was bad, was to create an author's page. This was suggested to me by my one and only publisher back in 2009, as a way to promote myself and my book(s). Naively, I went along with this suggestion, not realizing until many years later that I could've done the same by simply promoting my regular personal page for my writings.

Over the years that page had more or less stagnated, as it got to be very time consuming in posting fresh content on that page. But earlier this year, I had the ability to cross-post/share from my personal page to my author's page, which in turn generated some mild interest and a few extra eyeballs.

But as we all know, all good innovations introduced by FB must also be taken away because it was a good innovation. So as a matter of record, I lost my ability to cross-post and to share to my page. And thus, I once again found myself with a stagnant author's page that averaged at most, one post a week, which was a link to my latest blog post.

I realize now that creating an author's page was redundant, and I also realize that I should've kept it deactivated when I had the opportunity to do otherwise (not sure if I can deactivate it now w/o messing up my personal page). I also realize that I simply can't abandon the page no matter how much I want to, again we circle back to the sunken cost fallacy that I had mentioned earlier.

So I came up with a plan that if anything, will hopefully make people inquisitive enough to check out my writings and blog: posting my editing/publishing journey as it relates to my five volume fantasy series.

For past couple of weeks, I started writing short blog posts that are less than 200 words in length*, first with pen & paper, then transcribe to the computer before doing the very predictable copy/paste (lesson learned from long ago when I would be halfway through a good FB post, only for my computer to suddenly glitch or me hit a stray button and POOF! no more post).

As of the day of this post, I have thirteen posts completed and ready to be launched. If I couple it with my weekly blog post, I have either thirteen weeks of FB posts (one per week), or six and a half weeks if I add two per week. I haven't quite decided, but I'm leaning heavily towards two per week, if only because I play to start editing in earned this month and I don't want to be writing about the editing of book one when I'm starting on book two.

*fun fact: because I was never able to uncramp my printing from previous decades spent filling out forms with ludicrously small spaces, I gave myself to hard caps for writing these FB posts: maximum of thirteen words per lone and sixteen lines per post. this gives me a standardized  goal of 208 +/- words per post, which translates to one quarter to one third typed.

I'm not sure if I will do this with anything else that I might create in the future, but at the very least I will enjoy shaking my tired groove thing while trying to drum up a few more eyeballs my way. If anything, I have a new pseudo blog to play around with that won't involve any of the inherent stress that this blog sometimes brings to me (general purpose vs one specific purpose).

{c} 2026 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved