Episode #289: We Be Reviewing & Promoing Local Authors

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

Up first, the promo

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

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

~~~~~

And now, the review.

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

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

Here's a snippet of the back cover blurb:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~~~

The teaser blurb:

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

The short blurb:

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

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

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

The long blurb:

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

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

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

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

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

~~~~~

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

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

Episode #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 #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 #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 #262: Casually Moving From That To This

No hidden meaning behind the pic. Just pining for the warmer weather of Spring after battling the nasty cold of Winter.

I have officially put my five volume fantasy series "Sister vs Sister" to bed, as the final seven chapters {113-120} was properly transcribed, printed, three hole punched, stashed in a three ring binder, and had the requisite editorial notes written on their formerly pristine pages before it was lovingly tucked away in a plastic milk crate so that it could rest up for the next few months, because as you all know, editing is where the wannabes are brutally separated from those who are.

Of course, the issue now facing me is...what do I do next? I mean, I just spent 2 1/2 years working on a project that theoretically took over every waking moment of my life, and now I'm just supposed to find something else that would also take over every waking moment of my life?

The obvious answer to that question is supposed to be a resounding YES. But to be perfectly frank with everyone, the well has run temporarily dry when it comes to churning out fresh new product.

But, even though the well has run temporarily dry, I still got something up my proverbial sleeve that I can work on. Something that I actually finished work on around 2 1/2 years ago, when I had finished up a second round of edits, and just before starting my fantasy series: a re-re-re-re-worked novella that actually has the working title/blog tag of Average American Novella.

Funny thing about this novella, which is a fast-paced fantasy crime drama of the R rated variety, is that throughout the entire time I was writing it, it felt like I was possessed by it. No, seriously, I think I was possessed by the story itself. I mean, once I was finally able to find a good plot line to work with, {on the fourth try, hence the re-re-re-re-work} it just...took on a life of its own.

I mean, the time that I had spent on this novella just seemed to fly on by, especially when I did the switch to handwriting the final nine chapters. Now that I had some time to reflect on it, I made the switch from straight computer writing to pen and paper midway through because the hand fatigue that I was suffering for the past several years was getting progressively worse, so I figured it was time to try something new. And, as the tired cliche goes, the rest is history.

My goal with this novella is to have it published in 2025, so to that end, we're starting off the process by applying another round of edits and printing out a fresh copy to play with. Once that's been done, the next trio of issues that I will need to tackle, which are the usual bane of any writer's existence: a title; a medium length blurb; and a short length blurb.

There are few other issues that I will need to spend some time on, but those three are the main ones that will require my immediate attention once I get everything printed out again. While not completely taking over my life like my fantasy series did, it will demand just enough of my attention to keep my writer's brain from atrophying through non-use.

Tune in next week when I should have a better idea on what I need to blog about in regards to this novella, since the last time I had blogged about it was nearly 3 years ago. But hey, redundancy can be a good thing, right?

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

Episode #257: How Do I Edit Thee? It's A Seriously Zen Level Of Nerdvana

The tranquility of a waterfall is the perfect outlet to bathe your brain in the zenith of the moment before you wash it with the tonal sounds of the wind meandering through the tentacles of the universe.

At the close of the last post, I stated that the fat man (moi) had a final aria to perform prior to the intermission of Act III. Suffice to say, to semi-quote a well known lyricist, I can't dance and I certainly can't sing. But what I can do is channel my inner microscopic micro-manager and present to you a blog post on how not to edit like normal folks. 

For the past umpteen years (translation: a number between the high end of a tween and mid-nadir of young adulthood), no matter what length of story I had decided to write, a printed copy I did create for editing purposes. I was one those seriously short attention span people who could not stay glued to a computer screen to read a story for longer than ninety seconds (which is why I do not own an e-reader). So editing my work straight up on my computer screen was not a viable option for me employ.

However, what was a viable option for me was to print out a story, use a pen to write copious amounts of notes/make copious amounts of corrections, and then add those edits onto the original computer copy. Simple enough for a short story. But....would that same philosophy apply to something longer than a short story, like a novella or a novel? Well, as you're probably no doubt aware of, the answer to the question is a resounding YES.

Let's use two projects as good examples of this philosophy: an upcoming novella for 2025 and my current five volume (I pinky promise) project that should be finished (I triple dog dare myself) by the end of this month.

Novella: This upcoming 2025 novella has a boatload in common with my 2024 novella: long gestation period (10+ years); no current title after multiple tries (7 I think); no real blurb or synopsis going for it either; lots of R-rated violence, just to name a few. It also has the very odd editing philosophy applied it as well.

So when we were writing draft #4 (I think, maybe it was #5?) we would simply print out each completed chapter, three hole punch that bad boy, pulled out a 1" three ring binder (note, if it says 220pg capacity, they are lying like a sleeping chow-chow), a bunch of dividers, and shmashed it all together into a cohesive pile numbering 126 pages containing just a kiss under 56k words.

In the course of one day, with my handy-dandy generic version of a Bic pen, we took copious amount of notes, circled incorrect words and typos, and generously added blue and black ink to those formerly unblemished pages of a intelligently written story. Those copious notes were actually written on the pages themselves, because you know, short attention span theater here.

Anyways, we washed/rinsed/repeated a few more times before putting this lovely story back into the Comfy Chair's estranged sibling, the Comfy Bed. In total, it took me about three weeks of manual editing before deciding it was (at that time) good enough to move onto the next phase, which were creating a title and synopsis (long and short). Novellas are easy enough to handle without getting a professional involved until you got to the nitty-gritty portion of it.

Now if you thought this was a time consuming and perhaps that time would be better spent editing on the computer, then you're very welcome to your own opinion on performing your editing chores. I, however, found editing on the computer actually hindered my ability to make any kind of writing progress, which was one of the main reasons of editing this way. The other reason was that it was a great meditation tool.

With my current project, with the odd blog tag of Hot Mess, I settled down into a routine of writing two chapters (later expanded to three until constricting back to two), transcribing those chapters, and doing all of the stuff mentioned earlier with the novella before editing. The way it became a meditation tool for me was that until I had finished editing those chapters, I simply did not produce any new writing. 

This had produced a few pleasant side effects: 1) it allowed me to concentrate on how each particular plot line needs to move in that particular direction; 2) it allowed me to mentally plot out how best to continue each plot line; and 3) it became my bi-weekly sojourn into non-stressful me time, which was something that I've been able to continue on for the past 2 1/2 years.

So my friends, this is how I edit my work: write it, transcribe it, print it, then manual edit. I should note that I have yet to apply ANY of the editing notes/corrections that I have made so far, as I want to wait until I type in the proverbial, "The End", which marks the completion of this five volume journey. And let me tell you, that's when the genuine milkshake is going to consume the inside of your lungs as you try to inhale that goodness through the straw, because the edits I have to apply will, at the very end, make me want to pluck out my mustache follicles with my fingernails.

Happy Monday to one and all.

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

Episode #240: And You Are Called?

Books By G.B. Miller

Today's pic is a 100% honest attempt at promotion. This novella is my latest release, a dark fast paced rural/urban fantasy that doesn't slow down until the end. Available at most major e-tailers in e-book and print. Click the link for further details.

There are three things that I absolutely loathe as a writer: 1} picking a title for a story; 2} writing blurbs for a completed book and 3} choosing characters names.

As much as I would love to rant about my trials and tribulations in picking character names (and there are a lot) today's post will be about my trials and tribulations in picking story titles.

Now, I don't know about you, but I've always, ALWAYS, had problems in choosing/brainstorming titles for my stories. More often than not, the titles that I pick for stories would often have absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the story whatsoever.

One example, the original title for the novella that you see standing before you. Prior to the final title that you see, I originally went through almost seven different iterations of what this story was known, and I only remember what the previous title to this novella was, "Blackness In The White Sand". Could not remember why I came up with that title originally and it took me over 8 years to come up with the title that you see before you, and I had to use the very sound advice of a writer's group to help me come up with that.

Another good example of a very bad title was the original title of my adult fiction novel The Inner Sibling, which was Line 21. This was a title that absolutely no one understood the meaning behind it. Twelve years later, even I came to the conclusion it was a crappy title. For those who are curious, the original title refers to the old version of the 1040A form, in which line 21 is where you put the amount of miscellaneous income that you had earned for the year.

Now let me give you a couple of examples of titles that I had given to some short stories of mine. Red Stripe and The Right Thing. The former story is featured in my collection called What Is Life? and it tells the story about a day in the life of a punk rock musician. Why I titled the story after a bottle of beer is anybody's guess, because the story has absolutely nothing to do with beer. The latter story is about a day in the life of a guy who was cheated on by his girl with another girl, and it uses the backdrop of a town festival for the story to unfold. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. The latter story can be found in my collection called A Trilogy of Love, which is actually a replacement title for the same collection under the name Broken Promises.

Now to the present. When I had originally started my current project, which has the blog tag Hot Mess, it was called Dandelion Tears. Again, I have absolutely no idea as to why I had chosen that title to begin with. I mean, it's mentioned very briefly as a place of employment for one of the characters, but that's about it. I have, however, come up with a working theory as to why I choose bizarre titles for my stories: I simply latch onto a particular word, regardless whether it actually applies to a story, and viola! it becomes a title for a story.

However you want to break it down, the real challenge, at least for this series, is to come up with an overall title for the series. My saving grace this time around is that because I have the four volumes broken down by events {kidnapping, 1st recovery attempt at a campsite, 2nd recovery attempt is a pitched battle, and the final recovery attempt takes place at the place} I will have no problem it titleing those four volumes.

Literally, my entire writing journey is littered with stories that have absolute crap titles that I now have to rectify with brand new titles, and it hasn't been easy. I have succeeded in renaming a previously published story with one that actually makes sense, while another novella desperately needs one beyond the placeholder of the "Average American Novella". In addition to those messes, I have nearly three dozen short stories from my defunct short story blog that needs new titles so that I can create new collections.

Basically, I suck at picking out titles for my stories, because apparently I subscribe to the bizarre philosophy that some musicians apply to their works, which is to pick a nonsensical title for the c.d.'s, which leaves everyone collectively scratching their heads trying to decipher the reasoning {example: The Boomtown Rats, who had that cult hit "I Don't Like Mondays" titled their album "The Fine Art of Surfacing", which contains that cult hit}. I guess you can call me "The Muddler" when it comes to story titles, because my muddle choices often make no sense to anyone, including myself.

Happy Monday to one and all, and remember just because the world doesn't revolve around you, you can take comfort in the knowledge that people used to believe that the Sun revolved around the Earth.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #237: I Worship At The Altar Of My Muse

This pic was taken during the second to last vacation (early 2010?) that I had decided to treat myself and the wife to. This glass tower is located at the Indianapolis Children's Museum. This was a suggestion made to me by a long time online friend. Indiana is a cool state, and I would love to get back there again someday.

I am very attached {to the proverbial hip} to my muse. If my muse had a thematic entrance, her music would be Judas Priest's The Electric Eye. My muse can simply give me a look that would make me shrink in fear and grovel at the bottom of her knee high leather boots.

You might be wondering, "G.B., what gives? How can a simple literary muse have such a stranglehold on your entire being?"

It's a bit complicated to explain, but I will give it the old William T. Sherman's March to The Sea try. 

To start, my muse is an amalgamation of the many wonderful women that I have/had the pleasure of crossing paths with in the past 40+ years of living/working the good life. All of these fine people had character/personality traits that I had come to admire, and when I started my blogging/writing journey in 2008, the first thing that I needed was a muse. A muse that contained the traits/qualities that I had most admired/appreciated among the women who had crossed my path. A muse, that most importantly to me, was female.

Now I know that sounds mighty strange, or to quote a former co-worker of mine, "You're weird sir.", but truth be told, I've always felt comfortable writing stories from a woman's perspective, which originally showed itself into having strong women and, to use a crass modern term, soy boys. But as I slowly improved my writing skills, the soy boy characters gradually fell by the wayside, and were replaced by male characters that were incredibly nuanced to the point of normalcy.

With the back story out of the way, we move on to the meat of the post: my muse. My muse has influenced my writing in numerous ways, ranging from having a light touch/influence to using a crowbar to muscle their way in, kick me out of the chair and perform a coup d'etat on my person {in the early years of my blogging, I wrote some nifty free-from blog posts, like this one featuring my muse, that largely involved random acts of humorous violence against myself}. In general, she has been my guiding light to how I write my female characters and story scenes.

She has given me solid advice throughout the years, mostly in the form of research. Whether it's been observational nudges {aka people watching} or delicate questioning of others about certain...things, she has been my literary anchor to all of my endeavors. She has managed to nudge me out of my comfort zone by adding certain real world elements to my stories.

With my current series, she has managed to really show me what she's theoretically made of. No matter what idea I'd managed to come up with, she was able, through the sheer force of her personality, show me how to properly work it in without it coming out like a bad screenplay for a bad...movie.

Note: before my muse found her footing, I wrote really, really bad stories that were more suited as outlines for adult movies.

So, she helped me flesh out the concept of a matriarchal monarchy with a devilish twist; a predominately female protagonists/antagonists story line; clothing and other types of accessorizing; and at least a half dozen other concepts, ranging from pre-modern to modern to futuristic/steampunk. In short, with her traveling the path more congested, thus more varied, she has turned herself into a force to be reckoned with. She has gained my trust so completely that I find myself inserting slivers of her being into some of the characters that I write about.

My muse does not have a name, per se, only descriptive pronouns that actually make sense to normal people. But she has earned my respect just the same, which is why she gets to go on mini-vacations to all of the sunny Oceanic hot spots whenever I take a break to do transcription.

This is the story of my literary muse, a vivacious lady with the attitude to match. We all should have a muse that propels us to do better with our writing, no matter what the gender may be.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #231: Research Is The Writer's Way Of Playing Roulette

For the past week, our neighborhood has been visited by a doe. So far, this lovely doe has grazed in our front yard, snoozed in the shade in the back yard and grazed in the side yard. Note: I live some twenty feet away from Cedar Mountain, and this photo was taken while I was walking home on 7/11/24, at a distance of about fifty feet, give or take.

Over the past fifteen plus years of writing, I have done research on a plethora of nouns and other assorted parts of grammar, both the old fashioned way and the modern way. By old fashioned, I mean waddling my butt down to the local library and thumbing through the Dewey Decimal card catalog to find a particular book or wandering through the library shelves looking for a particular subject {e.g. baby name books or classical literature}. And by modern, using both the Google and Bing search engines AND by asking people certain sensitive questions.

Let me clarify the statement of asking people sensitive questions. I was actually doing a bit of research as well as soliciting a bit of feedback while writing my first novel, and a former friend had pointed out that I was writing a few of my female characters unrealistically. She clarified when I asked how, which sent me on a very odd research mission that could've gone so terribly sideways if my coworkers didn't know that I was doing that serious writing gig.

T.L.;D.R.: I asked a coworker of mine about what the letters A, B, C, and D meant as it pertained to bra sizes.

Now, the other bizarre research question that stood out from that same time period had to do with breast milk. At the time, I was writing the original 1st draft of Hot Mess series, and I thought it would be really interesting if one of the main characters had the ability to produce breast milk at will. So I actually asked this question in a blog post from that same time period, and the consensus was that my readers were even more enlightened than I was on this particular plot device.

With the two person-to-person research questions out of the way, let's discuss the overall oddity of what research I actually performed for my various stories.

In general, because I was such an early fan of having hybrid people {half human/half animal} in my stories, that required quite a bit of research into the lives of the various members of the feline species, both domesticated and wildlife. This animal research obviously involved other species such as horses and other types of wildlife.

We then went off on a small mechanical tangent doing basic research for certain cars and motorcycles (how to drive a true manual motorcycle was an adventure, since the required info translated to just one measly sentence in the aforementioned first novel). With my current book that is now out, that research delved into about a half dozen types of cars before splintering off to other things like...

Nature. I'm a big fan of Mother and Father Nature, to the point where I often write various parts of that charming couple as anthropomorphic beings. We've also done a large chunk of research into one of my very favorite topics...

Religion. Specifically, the aspects of what I consider to be very malleable to play around with: Hell and Purgatory. Oddly enough, I have always been drawn to those two members of the afterlife than I have to Heaven, probably because they've been more interesting to doodle around with. When I got more serious about my writing, those two particular topics opened my fictional world to endless possibilities.

Possibilities like, Hell being run like a well oiled family business in my current series, military style. Or in my recently released novella, the main villain is a modern day version of Satan. But seriously, I did do a moderately deep dive in both concepts, as well as a few of the archangels.

People. This one was one of my bigger research projects that is perpetually ongoing, with the methodology being almost even divided between asking people, observing people and the strange world of the Internet. The observing and the asking people almost exclusively dealt with clothing and everything associated with it, with a few related tangents such as body art (metal and inking) and hair; while the Internet was used to basically brush up on a few historical generalities, like different cultural time periods (e.g. the Aztecs, Incas and Mayans), certain pop culture events (e.g. the world famous "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the 90's) and even certain mores/values of a given time period. Using the Internet also allowed me to confirm certain things like...

My memory. This is an interesting research topic, as a lot of the background info that I use for my stories involve my home state of Connecticut. I've done a lot of intra-state traveling in my lifetime, and a moderately sized chunk has made it into my stories, either as a major part or a minor touching upon.

For example, in a novella that I'm looking at a 2025 publishing date, I have references pertaining to Connecticut sprinkled throughout. Like, a major highway and state routes that run South-to-North and from North-to-South; I've used a few major towns and cities as minor-to-major focal points; I have used an semi-abandoned hospital and my local mountain as key turning points.

In another example, two stories within this particular trilogy, take place in my local park and local library, while the other takes place at the local town festival; while in another short story collection, one story takes place inside my local mountain and the other takes place, weirdly enough, in the center of town and my house.

One topic I do enjoy researching is names. I was never that much of a fan of using regular names for my characters. I was more in the realm of either using mythological names, old fashioned names, regular names that are misspelled, names based on other languages or names based on different types of nouns.

We delved deep into various kinds of mythology: Roman, Greek, Incan, Celtic and Christian. We dabbled a bit in the Victorian age, The Edwardian age, other languages and the classic cartoon age. And because a few of my female characters from my current WiP are a neat-o mixture of amoral/psychopath/sociopath, we researched a few various plants of the mortally dead variety, like various off-shoots of Nightshade. So those particular characters are named after Atropa Belladonna & Brugmansia, two very lethal members of that particular genus.

In regards to classic cartoons, back in the day, I watched (and still do) a ton o' Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies cartoons, and I grew to appreciate some of the very old fashioned names used, so I decided to use a few of them on my secondary characters.

Finally, as odd as this sounds, especially since I do not write the type of fiction this knowledge would be needed for, I did quite a bit of research on the human body (almost exclusively internal). For better or worse, I have a slightly above average quantity of violence (both gratuitous and non) in my stories, which required me to have an above average understanding of the human body.

So not as to not gross anyone out, I now have a passable understanding of the human body as it pertains to my type of writing. I know it's something one shouldn't really brag about, but for better or worse, it's something that I managed to cultivate over the years and successfully apply to my storytelling.

Grammar. I am a lover of the English language (mostly American but some occasional forays into British), but it became a full bloom passionate love affair (shhh...don't tell my muse nor my wife) once I began blogging/writing in 2008. I absolutely fell in love with the dictionary and thesaurus, and was always on the lookout on how to properly work in different words to express the same thoughts without turning any reader off. I simply started with reworking old cliches/adages and it just blossomed from there, to the point where I liberally sprinkle viable words that actually mean/say something in my stories. Grammar is the be all to end all when it comes to writing.

I think that about covers all of the very odd research I have done, and still do, for the stories that I create. So, what kind of research that people have looked at you rather oddly, that you have done for your writing?

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode # 226: The Almighty Power Of A First Name

I loves me some flowers. Call me old fashioned, call me quaint, call me appreciative, but I do enjoy the simple beauty of a singular flower. I love how the simple act of stopping to admire a flower allows me to press the reset button on my day thus far and start anew in a slightly different direction.

I've had a very long and quixotic relationship when it came to names of the old-fashioned variety. For many, many decades, I always thought it was very odd for people to be called by their full first name. Whether I was reading old books/articles or watching t.v. shows/movies, it just seemed...odd.

It wasn't until the mid 1990's, when my first state job was participating in a microfilming project, did I start to understand and appreciate the morals/values/reasonings of the 18th, 19th and the early part of the 20th centuries when it came to using proper first names. The full appreciation/understanding of using proper first names really solidified when I started on this writing journey of mine.

I decided to start using proper first names, instead of short versions/nicknames, for the bulk of my characters, because I equated using proper first names, no matter if the character was a protagonist or antagonist, for people of power and intelligence. I know this sounds odd, but this is how I decided to roll with the majority of my stories.

I started off on my journey by using the name "Charles" in my latest novella, The Mortality of Familial Love. I always thought it was a good solid first name, no matter which way I decided to go, so I turned the character into a psychotic antagonist. I wound up using the name "Dmitri" for one of the protagonists, because that was one of the few Russian names that I had respected over the years.

After that novella, I moved on to another novella, which I'm hoping to publish in 2025, by continuing to use proper full length first names, thus the names of Bradley, Melvin, Terrance and Frederick for men, and Alexia, Claire and Xandra for women came into usage. Again, these are the seldom used versions of popular names, thus allowing me to really flesh out the characters for the stories.

For my current project, I went feral hog wild, so to speak. Because I was dealing with a multitude of different time periods and cultures, I had to go down the proverbial rabbit hole to find the proper names that would seamlessly fit in my books series. To whit:

1} I used a little Greek/Roman mythology when I chose the names Nyx and Myla for two of my protagonists; Adeola was a name that was used in the original draft of the story, and since I liked it so much, I simply kept it for this story. Now, as part of an extremely extensive background dump that is peppered throughout the series for the first two, I gave them the names Alexandra and Alicia.

2} Continuing on a theme of Southern European names, I chose the name Thanatos (mythology) and Mateo (Italian for Matthew) for two other protagonists/antagonists. For other male characters, I used Roberto, Armand, Felipe and Silencioso for first names. Again, all proper full length first names, save for the last, which is either Spanish or Portuguese for 'silence'.

3} In regards to using full length first names for the rest of my female characters, I performed a very deep dive of my memory archives and Google in order to find suitable names that would fit with the various time periods being referenced in the story. In no particular order of importance, we came up with the following:

• Melissa: I have an affinity for using names that begin with the letter "M", and I often have a very hard time finding a story to use them in a respectful manner. This is one, of two, is a combo protag/antag that I'm finding an increasing amount of ease in having them jump to and from (like Jekyll and Hyde).
• Emilia and Eleanor: both of these names I pulled directly from an old Bugs Bunny cartoon. The were portrayed as being extremely old fashioned ladies (think Victorian or Edwardian era), and I just fell in love with their portrayal. The former is a sentient being whose host is Melissa, while the latter is a sentient being, albeit a sister, to the Pod Queen.
• Macha: I was looking for a strong warrior type of name for the Pod Queen, and doing some mythology research brought me to the Celtic universe, where I found that Macha was an upper echelon deity in their mythological universe.
• Millicent: the various stories/articles that I've read over the decades have always portrayed women named Millicent as strong, independent and resourceful individuals. So I did the same with my Millicent, but added in the fact that she's a human/sentient hybrid.
• Lady Nordic: I know it doesn't look like the moniker doesn't fit, and I admit it was used as a descriptor for her ethnic background, but by the final volume of the series, I gave her the name of Agnes. Again, very old fashioned, but I'm writing her as a complex character, in that she started out as a fearsome warrior but gradually transformed herself into a reluctant pacifist.
• Isiah: at one point I had three humanoids, two of which had Southern European names (Anatole and Arturo). The remaining humanoid, Isiah, his was pulled directly from the 19th century, when parents had a thing about using biblical names for their children. Because he was created, quite literally, from scratch, he has a certain naivete that is slowly being infused with his real world experiences.
• Chaska and Chasca: These two names were an unusual choice at first glance. I originally had them named Frankie and Nan, but due to the fact that I was using a small chunk of Incan mythology/culture in my story and decided to make them distant cousins to certain others, I needed to change their names. Hence, after a twenty minute walk through Incan mythology, we settled on these two minor(?) deities.
• Ilka and Bella: I will grant you that these aren't strictly old fashioned names, these were two more names that I had kept from the original story. The former is one of those family religious names that aren't really used in day-to-day settings, only on official paperwork; the latter is probably one of the few nicknames I decided to use, at least initially. Once I got deeper into the story and gradually transformed my two protagonists into antagonists, I decided to use two names that fit quite snugly with their increasingly poisonous demeanor: Brugmansia and Atropa Belladonna.
• Supay: Being somewhat immersed in Incan mythology/culture required introducing a deity that would help make one the secondary plots gel smoother with the rest of the story. Since we have a thing about death and dying permeating throughout this series, bringing in a deity that rules the Incan underworld made perfect sense. This particular deity is what they call "an intergender" (?), in that they're portrayed as both male and female in a given mythology.
• Vindictive: This one was also not an old fashioned name, as I decided to use this as a substitute for a real name that does not and will not exist. However, I did use a modified version of it, Vindi, for the sentient being it was attached to.

Using these types of names, proper formal as opposed to casual/nickname, is now an essential part of my writing handbook. For me, it lends some solid cachet to my writing, in that I can explore a deepness to my characters that I haven't done previously. Especially when the type of characters I write about/use (e.g. sentient beings and hybrids) require that type of depth to begin with.

Thank you for coming along yet another side tangent of my writing life that I rarely share with others.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #214{a}: The Mortality of Familial Love Is Now Live...Mostly

Soul collecting is both a dangerous and lucrative business, and no one knows better than the netherworld’s premier soul collector, Dmitri. Creating enemies is part of the job, but when a simple favor for a friend turns out to be a set-up, Dmitri finds himself in the crosshairs of a contract hit. Tangled in a web of sex, lies and violence, the collector must do whatever it takes to survive.

Survival is a brutal game, but Dmitri is playing for his life in this fast paced dark fantasy.

My latest novella, The Mortality Of Familial Love, is now available as an e-book from Amazon and Smashwords for the very reasonable price of $2.59. Get your copy today!

Details on the print version TBA at a later date (possibly the day of this post as I've submitted it for publication the day prior to this post), but will be available at Amazon and Books By G.B. Miller

But seriously though, my latest book was well over ten years in the making, going through at least one editor, a multitude of changes as we grew/matured into an slightly above average writer, and finally, a title that was at least four months in the making as well. I am very proud of this novella and I hope you feel the same way about it as I do.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #214: The Waiting Is Always The Hardest Part

So today's post, as suggested by ye olden music video of a song that originally came out when I was still in high school, is about waiting. Specifically, waiting to publish my upcoming novella, The Mortality Of Familial Love. Last week, while I was going through the very informative {no sarcasm here} KDP process of publishing my book, I encountered a small....snag. A snag that KDP/Amazon politely pointed out to me.

In a very professional way, they stated that I had six spelling errors that needed to be fixed before I could continue with the process. Two were words that I had made up/heard elsewhere while the other was a non-capitalized version of the word, so those were easily fixable by me choosing the "ignore" option.

The others I had to contact my lovely formatter, Go Published, and asked if they could correct the errors that somehow slipped by me at least six times {seriously, I used spell check that many times}. She said that it wouldn't be a problem, sent me the correction form, told me how much it would cost, which in this case it fell under under 5 errors {thus no out of pocket cost for me} and afterwards, told me that I should have all of the corrected files some time next {this} week.

So, here we stand, patiently waiting for my manuscripts to be fixed so I can continue with my uploading. In the meantime, I started working on the final chapter of book #3 of my Hot Mess series, and I'm happy to say that as of the day of this post, I have finished book #3, and even written a very short bullet point of what characters aren't going forward.

Also, I would like to mention that KDP/Amazon is now asking authors who use their platform how much, if any, AI was involved with the creation of your book. It looks like they're simply tracking, but considering they're now limiting people to uploading three books per day (or per week, I'm not exactly sure), perhaps this is part of that crackdown as well.

Oh and, for those who also use Smashwords as a platform, they started migrating everyone to Draft2Digital. They're moving all of the easy ones and leaving the complicated ones, like myself, for later.

A very happy Monday to all and I hope to have good news by this time next week.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #209{a}: The Mortality Of Familial Love

Slowly the pieces of the puzzle have been properly assimilated. After 8+ years of work, from inception through multiple re-writes (like over a dozen), I now can show you the cover, which was expertly designed by 100 Covers/Book Cover Design, to this long gestated novella. I just sent this cover off to my formatter of choice, so I am looking to do a March 2024 release.

Blurbs

Revenge is a brutal game, but Dmitri is playing for keeps.

Soul collecting is both a dangerous and lucrative business, and no one knows better than the netherworld’s premier soul collector, Dmitri. Creating enemies is part of the job, but when a simple favor for a friend turns out to be a set-up, Dmitri finds himself in the crosshairs of a contract hit. Tangled in a web of sex, lies and violence, the collector must do whatever it takes to survive.

Survival is a brutal game, but Dmitri is playing for his life in this fast paced dark fantasy.

Thank you to one and all for hopping onto the freight train that is my writing, and I sincerely hope that this book will be the fast paced/adventure story that will leave you craving for more.

{c} 2024 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #202: Playing The Long Game Of '23/'24

A little summer to warm the frozen memories of today.

It's funny how playing the long game can monumentally affect your short game, no matter what your vibe is. I'll give you a couple of examples.

Example #1: Losing weight.

Back in mid October I decided, after seeing a photo of myself looking rather portly (now there's an archaic word you don't often hear), that I needed to lose weight. so I chose to pursue a non-Noom Noom diet (basically, not spending any money) diet, which basically meant that I needed to cut my caloric intake.

T.L.; D.R.: I dropped from 2300+ calories per day to roughly 1200+ per day.

Now the long game here was to lose weight, which I did, so far about 9lbs +/-, but there were some side effects to a very brutal short game. The most serious side effect in the short term was major sugar crashes.

In a nutshell, when you are reducing your caloric intake, you also have to reduce your (in my case) insulin intake. Thus, the brutal short game was about a month and a half of consistently tweaking my day time and night time insulin until I was able to find a happy melding of the tow that wouldn't make me sick.

Added bonus: Changing my diet also started giving me enough energy to tackle the distance I cover in my daily walks. Less calories equals more burning the excess weight. So while the short game was unusually brutal (e.g. bad lows and the side effects thereof, along with consuming certain edibles for the first time in more than three decades.), the long game has been sunshine and a wildflower valley. 

Example #2: Publishing a novella.

This is a little trickier to separate into the short and the long game, but I will give it the old technical school try.

Now, obviously enough, the long game is to publish this novella. But the short game has been just as maddening as the previous example. To whit:

I've had to, albeit reluctantly, pivot to another graphic designer for my cover, because the one that I normally use has been seriously m.i.a since early November. Their socials seem to be kaput with no activity whatsoever (and that includes advertising being sent out via e-mail).

Now this pivot to another graphic designer has created a cascade effect for everything else: I can't use my current formatter because I don't have a cover, so they're now on the back-burner; I had to solicit a few suggestions from the writer's group that I belong to, and having found a potential new one has brought a small litany of other issues, none of which are the potential new designer's fault whatsoever.

For example, while I was deciding on which package to purchase, I was pre-answering a question to their form (as in, getting my answers prepped prior to the purchase). While I was doing that, I discovered that I actually don't like the current title, so I had to come up with a brand new one (title #3). And, oh wait a minute, I found a few errors in the final draft that I now have to fix.

Plus, there are a myriad of other tiny issues that need to be addressed once I purchase the book cover, but before I actually publish. So while the short game for publishing this novella isn't fraught with drastic health issues as the first example, there's still a tone of short term aggravation that has to be addressed before we cross the long game finish line of self-publishing.

In summary, playing the long game often involves a plethora of short term headaches with minuscule rewards, but when you do finally succeed at the very end, it does truly seem that all of the short term aggravation really was worth it in the long run.

And in the end, that is all that rally matters.

Have a happy Monday and splendorous week!

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

Episode #199: Please Wait, Your Call Is Very (Non)Important To Us

For those of you who may not have seen a pic of my daughter in quite some time, this is her, a soon-to-be Summer 2024 University graduate with an undergraduate degree in neuro-science. Very, very proud of her and her accomplishments in the medical field.

With the parental bragging now out of the way, on to the topic at hand: waiting.

I know this doesn't sound like much of a topic to expound and expand on, but have you ever had a week that was basically spent just....waiting. Waiting for someone to get back to you. Waiting for inspiration. Waiting for a train. Waiting for Calgon to take you away. You know, waiting is the hardest part of life.

I had such a week like that. Just spent it...waiting. Normally I'm not a very patient man (having grown up in a household that does not value punctuality has made me become OCD when it comes to time as an adult), but I have mellowed out over the years. Nowadays, I simply try to play the long game with my patience. If I need something really bad, and it's from a person/business that normally is very good about getting it done in a timely manner, I'll be an adult and wait. It's not like I actually have somewhere to be. I'm retired, where am I gonna go?

So, we spent a week being a redundant clock-watcher: sleep, eat, walk, write, walk, eat, write, run errands, computer, sleep. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. I mean, not even doing a deep rabbit hole dive down YouTube was enough to keep me occupied (and if you know what kind of legitimately odd YT content that I sometimes watch, that statement would make you say, "d@mn!") during the week. Nor changing up how I answer the phone was doing it for me.

Note: I now answer the phone like Sherman from Mr. Peabody's Improbable History and tell the people on the other end I'm a tween. If I can get them to stay longer, I'll ask them innocent questions about what they're trying to sell.

I don't believe I've had a week like this before, where the excitement of doing a digital crossword puzzle is an actual highlight of the week. Actually, I should correct myself, as it's a co-highlight. The other co-highlight is mentally working out the 3rd ending to the 3rd volume of my Hot Mess series (no, not a trilogy anymore), which truth be told, ain't easy. 

So, as they say, patience is a virtue that no one seems to have anymore, in any kind of quantity. A droll dry week is just....meh. I should add that Thanksgiving wasn't the misadventure that it usually turns out to be. I got to meet a few relatives that I haven't seen since 2018/19; got a depressing update on another; had a pleasant drive to the gold coast to have that Thanksgiving ("gold coast' here in CT is lower Fairfield County, where a large percentage of those who work in NYC enjoy living and spending their hard earned money); and pleasant return trip, in which I started in sunshine and arrived home at night.

But yeah, waiting in the real world is not like Heinz Catsup. It's more like molasses on a cold autumn day. Just. Slooooow. Hope your Monday doesn't continue a previous mediocre week.

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