Episode #346: My Puny Kingdom For A Sensible Story Title

It's Flashback Friday!

Just to give you an idea on how old this pic is, the RV pictured has been gone for almost 20 years, and that tree was removed to allow solar panels to be installed pre-pandemic.

The original inspiration for this blog post was a series of posts that I was writing for my FB author's page about my one and only traditionally published novel, Line 21. Specifically, I was lamenting about my poor title choice and how naive I was to think that the publisher would actually change it prior to publication.

So that got me to thinking about a task that I absolutely loathed over the years, to the point where it made my top five list of things associated with publishing that I hate to do: story titles.

This has always been a major splinter under my fingernail for as long as I can remember. Because I loathe this necessary evil to my writing life, I would often not even put in the bare minimum effort needed to choose a title. The end result would often be something like the aforementioned title to my trad publisher.

For this post, I thought I would revisit one of my least favorite writing related tasks to see what kind of progress, if any, I happen to be making.

My definition of "progress" is quite simple: am I now choosing titles based on the content of the story, or am I still being cutesy about my titles?

On the surface it does seem that I am making solid progress on the former. While I was spending the first half of 2026 editing my fantasy series, I was also coming up with solid titles for each volume. All the titles were based on the actual content for each given volume, of which the forth volume gave me the most trouble, as it took me almost two days to come up with one, and even then, I had to do some last minute tweaking to make it fit.

Now if we move over to the short story world that I had recently decided to refamiliarize myself with after about a year hiatus (give or take), to see what kind of progress I made there. I will note that the retitling has been a tad more difficult, as the content was more eclectic than normal.

If we take a look at the last story I had rewritten, you would see that the title more accurately matches with the story: a man traveling to Butte, Montana by train, so the story, naturally enough, is called 'Butte, Montana.'

As I thumb through the other fourteen short stories, it looks like I made a concentrated effort to link the title of a given story to the actual content of that given story. Although, it does look like one of them, titled 'Side Hustle', could be tenuously linked to the story content. However, the odd thing about this story is that I had, purposely it seems, added a few elements from my fantasy series.

So in my eyes, I consider this to be a win. Why? Because it's easier to explain a story with a title that makes sense, than to explain a story with a title that doesn't make sense (like my first novel).

I would like also to give a very brief update on my latest novella "Evil Has A Conscience": I should be getting the e-book version back by the beginning of October, with the print version back by the second week.

Have a fantastic week!

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

Episode #344: And Your Archetype Is....?

I was taking a moderately long break during my morning walk, as my legs can no longer keep up with the stamina that I actually have these days, when I decided to take this pic. Even though it's early September, it's still summer in New England.

Many years ago I used to participate in a monthly blog hop sponsored by a writing group called The Insecure Writer's Support Group, and in their monthly newsletter, they would often have a question that you could use during the blog hop.

The suggested question for the month of September I found intriguing enough to actually use it for one of my blog posts. The question that everyone was given is this:

"Do you have a favorite character archetype that you tend to gravitate towards in your writing?"

Now this is something I actually had to look up, because I did not have a clue on what a 'character archetype' was. After a modicum of research, I now have a basic understanding of what one is.

I would have to say that the one I gravitate the most to, is one that Hollywood has been brutally  mutilating for the better part of two decades: the girl boss.

You've undoubtedly seen the Hollywood version: the woman who can do everything, solve everything, control everything, treat people, like men, as insignificant dolts who can't do anything without a woman to hold their hand and guide them along, etc.

Because virtually all of my stories are female-centric, I can say with complete confidence that my female main characters and even the secondary characters, are written in the true 'girl boss' archetype.

While they do ooze that 'girl boss' persona, they are quite confident in their ability to lead, to delegate, and to even ask for help. They are quite compassionate to friends and family, and can be merciless to their enemies. Most importantly, they know their limitations.

My actual 'girl boss' characters will never be mistaken for the Hollywood version of the Mary Sue 'girl bosses'. because we all know that imperfection makes a character resonate more deeply than the shallow that is seemingly forced upon us on a monthly basis.

I believe the 'girl boss' archetype will always be part and parcel of whatever type of story I choose to writer (this was epically showcased in my currently unpublished fantasy series). My stories have been female-centric from the very beginning of my career, and using this particular archetype correctly is something that I will always enjoy writing about.

Thank you for stopping by today and spending a couple of minutes out of your busy day to read my blog. And remember, "no," is the world's shortest sentence, no matter what language you speak. And quite often, the most difficult to understand.

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

Episode #343: I Think, Therefore, I Continually Create Stories

A bobble-head that cost me about 20 Bazooka comics and $10 back in the early 2000's. I also have a half dozen Bazooka Joe t-shirts purchased the same way.  Obviously taken where I used to work back in the bad old days of being a wonky worker bee.

It's been a loooooong while since I did a writing updater. But a lot of things have been going on since my last update, so I thought now would be a good time to do just that.

Since 2021, I have periodically alluded to four different writing projects (originally five, but one was published shortly after retiring): three that involved either re-writing or polishing up and one that involved republishing a previously published novella.

As you already know, I have succeeded on the first three projects: this novella, followed by this novella, and completing a fantasy series under this tag. The fourth project, which was republishing a currently published novella, took me a few years to complete, as I would periodically work on it while working on other things.

During the second half of August, I was able to work with yet another graphic designer, who came highly recommended to me, on a fresh cover for my upcoming novella, entitled "Evil Has A Conscience."

For comparison, this was the original cover for the same novella, entitled "A Taste Of Pain".

~~~~~

I've also been busy on the short story front. For the past few years, I've been going through my over-sized pile of mediocre short stories that were previously published on my now closed short story blog, and cherry picking those that seem to hold the most promise for being revisited and rewritten.

To date, I've written fifteen short stories overall, with three being one hundred percent original. All of them range from G-rated to that R/NC-17 rating that would sometimes make people cock their eyebrows, and I would like to think that applying a skill set that has evolved over the nearly fifteen years since they were originally written, vastly improved the original content of the story.

My main goal with my short story writing is to finish with at least twenty, so that I can create two balanced short story collections. A small side quest to this particular goal, is to write more original short stories, because if I'm being perfectly honest, what I have left for short stories to pluck from is more than a little south of 'meh.'

However, on the bright side, I acquired the ability of writing from a basic outline, as I'm now treaty those originals as a jumping off point in which to create a better story from those original elements.

That's about it for a writing update: republishing a new and improved novella, and learning something new when it comes to re-writing short stories. I sincerely hope that your week is going in the direction that you're driving towards, and that moving at the speed of slow is always a good thing to explore.

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

Episode #340: We Be World Building 2.026 {4}

I'm still doing the occasional hike in the mountain, as some of my leg strength is reappearing due to the p.t. I've been taking for the past month.

Read part one here, part two here, part three here.

And now for the 4th and final installment of my world building series

There were two more crucial elements that I needed to add to my world building: sentients and the alternative lifestyle.

In regards to the former, I will simply say that ever since I first saw the concept in Star Trek DS9, I became utterly fascinated and enthralled, and I was determined to integrate that concept into my stories, which I've done with some success over the years.

Now onto the topic of the latter: alternative lifestyles.

I made a conscious decision early on to portray those who are practicing members of the alternative lifestyle as realistically as possible. I also decided early on to have them face real world problems associated with that alternative lifestyle. I personally do not have an issue with those who are "L", "G" or "B", which is why I wrote a few of my characters as such.

Now I had those characters face real world scenarios/issues that one could realistically go through in their lifetime, with varying degrees of complexities.

Like staying in the closet with only a select group of others knowing who you really are, and having to wear a facade out in public.

Or perhaps, you're not quite sure if you are or aren't, but also you're not quite that ready to delve any deeper yet.

Perhaps you're 100% a member of that alternative lifestyle, yet you choose to perhaps experiment just once to see what it was like, aka 'scratching that itch," and to get it out of your system.

Or perhaps, you live in a society where it's quietly tolerated so long as you're discrete about it (a modified Don't Ask, Don't Tell).

And I did some research into how certain cultures/societies handled that particularly thorny issue. Did they have total acceptance? Did they have total rejection? Was it a mixture of both? I tried to sprinkle answers to those questions throughout the series, because I do believe that fictional stories should contain snapshots of what the real world often reflects and what the writer's personal views are.

At my age (61) and because of the era I had grown up in, I have a tendency to see things in B & W motif. That is to say, very cut and dried. But that isn't to say that how we go through life influences that B & W motif, because it does.

And that makes me a more well rounded person in the long run.

~~~~~~~

I sincerely hope you have enjoyed my mini-series on world building as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I certain enjoyed sharing a tiny sliver of what makes me tick as a writer.

Have an enjoyable week!

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

Episode #339: We Be World Building 2.026 {3}

I have seemed to hit the mother load of deer encounters in the past calendar month, as this pic was part of a group of seven (plus video) that I took on one of my twice daily walks back in late July. He/she were approx 150 feet away from me when I took the pics, happily munching away on the greenery that you see in the foreground. I believe the encounter lasted about three minutes or so, before I thanked them and took my leave.

Read part one here, part two here.

The first thing we needed to do was to build a society that was not only both regressive and progressive at the same time, but also had both feet entrenched in the old way of doing things (traveling by horse) and the new way of doing things (telepathy, sentients and computers, etc).

Step one: we immediately pitched the idea of a foreign country and changed it to being a planet in another galaxy system. This was done because I had used a tunnel (think wormhole from Star Trek) early on as a method of transportation.

Step two {a}-Progressive: based on my knowledge of world history, we turned the Pod Planet (as it was now called, again based on my early novella) into a strictly matriarchal line of succession.

Step two {b}-Regressive: again drawing on my knowledge of world history, the Queen had no real power, as a select group of men pulled the strings, like a puppeteer who controlled a marionette. Also, sex was crassly weaponized, in that if you perform this humiliating duty, you will receive a nominal increase in power.

Step three {a}-modern society: the kingdom implemented/used the latest technology, e.g. computers, video surveillance, and the latest in modern medicine.

Step three {b}-old fashioned society: the main mode of transportation was horse flesh; the population had the look and feel of an agrarian society at the beginning of the industrial revolution, yet was not.

One way you can look at step three, is as a rudimentary steampunk theme, with a mixture of modern and old fashioned elements being shown as societal norms.

Now with the next few societal steps, you really can't pigeonhole them strictly into the progressive/regressive categories, you have to be more flexible in your thinking.

For example, I had to create a brand new language for the Pod Planet, because you can't have the denizens of another planet simply speaking English. So I created one that sounded like a mix of a clicky-clack toy, a bicycle bell, and a toot whistle.

But I did add a few twists, one of which was that all citizens must be conversationally proficient in Pod and I also made the planet bilingual. Another that I had added in, which I took inspiration from all the regional dialects here in the US, was different dialects of the Pod language that were not based on where you live, but on what your class status was.

to be continued

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

Episode #338: We Be World Building 2.026 {2}

The malevolent squirrels in restful response, during our brief cease fire earlier this year.

Read part one here.

Now if there's one thing that you should know about me, at least as a writer, is I do not like to plan anything at all, if it can be avoided. And let me tell you, I avoid planning/outlining my stories like it was a dirty piece of cutlery.

I think this abject hatred of outlining anything stems back to my high school days, where I had an English composition class and the teacher always wanted what she would call "details" to an essay, but would never elaborate on just exactly what they were. So I did my best and garnered a few flags (as Fs' were called back then). Ultimately, I barely passed that required class but never did figure out what she meant by "details", even 45 years later.

Back to the story.

This story, based on the character I was writing and the story idea I was executing, was going to need more than the drib-drabbling I was doing previously. It was going to need a world of some kind.

As I said previously, I knew of the concept called 'world building'. and have seen it executed very well throughout all kinds of fantasy and sci-fi genres. But with me being mostly a pantster with just a hint of planning in my veins (for my previous novels I would print out a previous chapter so that I wouldn't ever too far off course), this was going to be uncharted territory for me.

However, I did make a promise to myself early on, which was to meet every challenge head on and rise to the occasion, and world building was definitely out of my comfort zone by an urban mile.

Now I did have a sparse outline of an idea on what kind of world I needed to build, which was based on two characters that were introduced early on in the novella: a country with a monarchy based society and a Queen at the apex.

Now to be perfectly honest, I have no genuine idea as to why I originally chose to have a Queen as a ruler, but I would like to think it was keeping in the same structural viewpoint of doing things differently just for the sake of doing things differently.

Speaking of doing things differently, I'm from a generation where reading and learning about other cultures was actually a normal thing to pursue, and just because things are a certain way now, doesn't mean they were always that way.

to be continued

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

Episode #337: We Be World Building 2.026 {1)

We all like flowers in the wild, as they be harbingers of a brighter today and a buoyant tomorrow. 

Blogging note: This particular topic was one that I had previously touched upon in great detail back in 2024 (see tag "Hot Mess" for similar posts), but I thought I would revisit this from a different viewpoint.

I understood the concept of world building early on, mostly as a reader, so I had no problem in reading stories that had a meticulously created background for them. I also understood it as a writer too, although I didn't make too much of an attempt at creating brand new worlds beyond writing stories where certain concepts were already presented as a given.

In other words, whatever oddity I had introduced into a given story, say a character with a tail and some fur or one that collected souls, it was treated as an everyday normal occurrence. I think, at least to the best of my recollection, I did this because I wanted to treat anything out of the ordinary as a simple and ordinary occurrence.

For about a decade, I was quite happy to sprinkle a little of not normal people/concepts into normal situations, and treat those things as normal. A slice of insanity dropped into a very sane world, if you will.

Fast forward to May/June 2022. This is when my mercurial muse decided that their life needed a bit of chaos thrown into the mix. They knocked on my chamber door to my brain and said, "You need to do something out of your comfort zone, and I'm going to help you do it."

I answered with some trepidation. "And what might that be?"

"World building! Doesn't that sound like fun!"

"Nooooo!"

Reality check: Fast forward to May/June 2022. I had made the conscious decision that I would tackle my next project by composing the entire thing by hand (hence the first month listed), then transcribe it to the computer (hence the second month). That next project was, by process of elimination, this fantasy series.

Now I knew early on that the dribs and drabs I was presently doing with my stories simply was not going to pass muster, with this series. Although at the time, turning this story into a series was the furthest thing from my mind.

To refresh everyone's memory: this story originally started as a mediocre novella that was ultimately shelved in the 2010s with about five chapters written (I think). When I had decided to make it one of my post-retirement projects, it became the first one to start off as 100% handwritten.

It quickly blew up, and from that novella sprang forth five full length novels that ultimately required a brand new world built from scratch in order to make it believable.

And here is where the fun and the stress of creating a whole new world(s) rears its beautiful (fun) and fugly (stress) head for the next three years.

to be continued

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

Episode #335: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {3}

Had another visitor in the backyard the other day (7/10). This was one of three pics and a seventeen second video clip that I took that day. About a minute later, they made an exit to the neighbor's back yard with a graceful leap over the fenxe.

I certainly do love living next to a mountain.

~~~~

This last post was, at the time, acknowledging something that I initially thought would never really happen to me: genuinely caring about the characters that I had created for a given novel.

to be perfectly frank, with all of the stories that I had previously written, the level of caring about my characters shown by me in this series, was basically non-existent. Don't get  me wrong, I cared about the characters in my stories, but not to the lever that I had with these characters.

So, without further ado, here is part three of our original FB series covering how I chose to kill off a few major characters.

Let me tell you, killing off characters that you have grown to love as a writer is hard. It's doubly so when the story requires you to show that sometimes the consequences for a particular action can have a spidering effect.

I can safely say that the aftermath of both characters' deaths affected everyone profoundly, both in the story and the person who had to write it. For me personally, even though I considered these two specific story arcs (out of the estimated fifteen the entire series contained) to be some of my best writing, nearly three years later, and numerous re-reads for editing, it still moves me to tears.

I think as a writer, if you can write something, like an entire storyline that makes you emotional, you should high five yourself. Because if you can become emotional at the deaths of two major characters, imagine how your readers will react to it.

I'm not sure if I'll be pulling any more of my unpublished FB posts for my blog, because I'm nearly certain that the topics that I had wrote about for FB were covered nearly two years ago on this blog. But I did want to pull this unpublished posts and publish them here, as I don't believe I've read anywhere about killing off a major character in a story before.

But I did want to share my thoughts on how difficult of a decision it was, and the aftermath of that decision, and how deeply it has affected me, and continues to affect me some three years later.

A fantastic Monday (or Tuesday and beyond) to one and all.

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

Episode #334: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {2}

This pic was taken nearly a week ago, after I had finished my morning walk and was in my backyard refilling the bird feeders. If it looks washed, it's because while we and the deer were in the shade, the backyard was bright and sunshiny. About a minute later, they had gently hopped over the fence and back into the mountain.

Part two of our series about death, talks mostly about the process I had used in order to make an informed decision on who (singular and plural) I should kill off in the series.

I am one of those writers who's a mix between a pantser and a plotter. I used to be a 100% pantser, but I soon realized with this series, I was going to have to add a little planning into the mix.

So what I did next, I really wouldn't recommend, especially if you're a planner: I stopped writing book #3 so I could properly plot out which character(s) were going to be kill outright; which would determine the direction that the rest of the series would go in order to achieve the pre-determined ending.*

*note: at the very beginning of this series, back to when it was a nearly four dozen page dreck of a novella, I had a definitive ending in mind. So we're talking nearly a dozen years holding onto an ending for this story.

So I waited until I was at the midway point with a chapter completed, before temporarily putting the book to the side. I then pulled out my handy-dandy clipboard, pen/paper, and spent the next two days charting out which character could be participating and their relation to others.

Then I worked out what I felt was the most important aspect: Once dead, do they stay dead?

I also sketched out a few different scenarios that would reasonably answer both of those questions. By the next day, I had made my decision on how I should answer the important question of "once dead, do they stay dead?", by selecting a character from both sides.

Was I 100% comfortable with my decision making process? Yes, I was. I am one of those people who, upon realizing that making informed decisions about a particular scenario, whether real world or the fictional world, likes to gather upon as much info as humanly possible.

Was I 100% comfortable with the choices that I decided to make once I had all of the information needed? Not entirely, but those choices were, in my honest opinion, the easiest to write to a satisfactory conclusion, because they both lived up to the expectation of the title of book #4, and we hope to the expectation of whatever the title of book #5 will be.

I would like to point out that this particular series of posts were originally written back in March/April of this year, which is why it states that no title was picked for book #5. As we all know, a title was picked prior to editing book #5, just like I had done with the previous four books.

(to be continued)

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

Episode #333: When Dying Is Your Story's HEA {1}

This pic was taken the day after the juvenile bear invasion. At least once a year we find deer in our backyard chilling out.

Today's post features a topic: killing off a major character, that I had originally written for Facebook, but due to circumstances beyond my control (hack/scam attempt using Meta's own services, among other things), I decided to hold it and a dozen others at bay for the time being.

This will be a three part series, as I had specifically designed it to be on Facebook. In fact, I have gotten pretty good at keeping within the specific parameters I had created for myself: nor more than seventeen lines per post, which translates to about 220 +/- words. Without further ado, here is part of one of how I went about killing off a major character.

~~~~~

I never really had an issue with killing off minor characters in my stories, since they were mostly disposable pieces that primarily moved the story along (see my novella "The Mortality of Familial Love"), nor did I suffer emotionally when killing a major character as a realistic consequence for the life he was living (see my novella "To Live Is To Die Young"). I think the main reason for my reaction to them boils down to that they were simply stand-alones.

However, killing off a major character(s) in a series is always a risky proposition. You don't want a series of any length to not have someone suffer the consequences of their actions, but by the tail side of the coin, you don't want to have someone die without it have a lasting effect on the story.

In this series, it was inevitable that at least one major character was going to die and their death was going to affect the rest of the story in a myriad of ways.

My issue at the time, was deciding which major character(s) I was going to 1} kill off; 2} how I was going to present the immediate aftermath; and 3} how the story would unfold for the remaining two books.

Note: the climatic battle scene takes place in book #3, which sets the stage for the remaining two volumes.

(to be continued)

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

Episode #331: What I've Learned From Writing "Sister vs Sister"

Mr Crow and Mr & Mrs Blue Jay having a three birdseed martini business meeting.

Lost. Empty. Sad.

Great descriptors that are used for when something bad happens to you on a personal level. Head scratching when those same descriptors (or their synonym siblings) are used to describe you as a writer.

I know that sounds like an odd thing to say about a writer, but bare with me, and hopefully it will all make sense in the end.

I'm not sure if anyone has experienced those feelings mentioned at the top of the post, but this is entirely new and uncharted territory for me. Even when I was going through the various stages with my first novel, I never had those types of feelings about it. But with this series, I did.

I'm not completely sure as to why I'm feeling this way about my series, but I will try to make an educated guess as to why. In total, from original gestation to applying the first round of edits, I spent around sixteen years "working" on this excellent series.

But if we go back to where I decided to turn the original dreck of a novella into this outstanding fantasy series, then we've been working on this series virtually non-stop from May 30, 2022 until June 11, 2026, eight days beyond four full years.

Now I quickly became enamored of this series, so much to the point where I did not write this series like others who would write a series: piecemeal. What I mean by "piecemeal" is that they may get the first one or two written, then stretch out however remaining volumes there were to be for "x" number of months/years.

I wrote mine in one fell swoop: all five volumes actually took me almost three years to write. I won't go into great detail about how much of a challenge this was (e.g. titles, page counts, chapters, word counts) other than to say that I actually resolved those issues listed during the editing process.

Being enamored of the series gradually changed to treating the characters in my story like they were close family members. I became quite invested in their backgrounds, their present lives, even what they were going through/experiencing. It became especially hard when I had decided to kill off two of my protags.

This was a decision that I had struggled mightily with. I'll save the details for a future post, but suffice to say, almost two years after I'd written that particular arc, which naturally altered the course of the story, still affected me in a particular fashion.

As I made my way through the final three chapters, which I had to expand our to six due to excessive word count, I found myself not wanting to complete the task I assigned to myself. This was directly due to the fact that I was now having an extremely hard time of letting go.

I felt like that finishing this story meant that I had to say 'goodbye' to a group of characters that felt more like family than characters, and I wasn't ready to say goodbye. And as you read at the beginning, I fired myself to finish up and say, 'goodbye.'

If you don't believe that old axiom that characters write the story while you're along for the ride, I can truthfully dispel you of that misguided belief. My characters ultimately took over writing my story, and for that I am eternally appreciative.

Have a fantastic week and while you're at it, thank those characters of yours for making you a better writer.

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

Episode #330: Being Fresh In A World Of Inadvertent Redundancies

A classic overview from the early 2000s, before the Democrats decided to run the capitol into the ground by allowing the tail (criminals) to wag the dog (the law abiding citizens).

Eighteen years of blogging can often bring unintended consequences into the mix. What do I mean by 'consequences'? In this particular scenario, eighteen years of blogging created nearly 1,800 total posts, give or take, which can, and does, lead to the issue of being redundant from time to time.

For example, while I was performing another round of edits on book #5 (even though I was doing computer edits on #4, I was still doing edits on the next book), I came up with the brilliant idea of writing about world building for a blog post. The next day, I remembered that I had covered this topic quite extensively in a series of posts nearly two years ago, so writing about it now would be a tad redundant (If you're curious, search the Jan-Feb 2024 posts called "How We Go Here From There").

With that particular topic now scratched off the list, we pivoted to the topic of how I enjoyed writing in the fantasy genre. Specifically, how the fantasy genre really has no rules on what you can and can't write about and how there's no given formula for a successful book (unlike Romance, which there's one strict guideline you must adhere to). But like the previous topic mentioned, we wrote about this extensively in a previous year.

Thus, we pivot to searching for another topic to write about, and then searching our memory archives to see if our potential topic(s) have been touched upon previously. And guess what, we found a topic that we hadn't touched upon in any great detail previously.

I am an anomaly in the word of writing, in that my political viewpoints can be described by the seldom used descriptor as 'centrist', and by the modern descriptor as 'moderate'. Now, I wasn't always like this, because back in the day, I was heavily influenced by family political leanings.

My father was a conservative Democrat, who was moderately involved in town politics and union politics (then as now, you needed to be a Democrat), and in my younger years (70s & early 80s) I had the impression that Democrats were good and Republicans were bad, so at 18, I was a registered Democrat.

Fast forward a decade: by 1992, I was soured on the Democrat party on the state level (then as now, my state has been solidly controlled by the Democrats going on 45 years), so I switched over to being a registered Republican. The original hash tag of 'Walk Away' could apply here, and I've never looked back.

Fast forward to now.

In 2026, my viewpoints have gradually changed about certain things/ideas, while on other issues have remained the same, because unlike everyone under the age of 35, I have quite a bit of historical knowledge of those issues.

Having said that, it saddens me that other writers, who I used to respect, have permanently derailed/deplatform themselves from the reality of what the average person is forced to go through on a daily basis.

These people (I do have derogatory name for them, but I keep it on YouTube and Meta), have allowed themselves to be influenced by the MSM's visceral hatred of President Trump to such an extent that you simply cannot have any kind of adult conversation with them, w/o them taking leave of their senses.

So basically in 2026, I practice the concept of simply scrolling on by whatever comments my FB friends make about certain events, because everyone has the right to post what they truly believe in. I can respect that, so I simply don't engage because I believe it isn't right to argue an opposing viewpoint on someone's personal page with someone else.

As I said, I am an anomaly among my writer friend's/acquaintances, because my political viewpoints are centrist in nature and based in reality. And in today's world, the majority's reality is often trampled by the vocal minority's unrealistic reality of feelings don't care about facts.

And that makes me truly indifferent to the perceived problem that an annoying segment of the populace 'suffers' through on an hourly/daily basis.

Have a Happy rest of your week, and remember, step outside and smell the asphalt, because it's certainly a lot better than inhaling stale air, moldy food and UV rays from your computer screens for hours/days on end.

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

Episode #327: Building A Brand New (Fictional) Society Is Not For Weak

As you can see, the Peace Treaty of G.B. Squirrel is now in full effect. Squirrel has claimed the uncomfy chair under the unshady tree as his home away from home, and is no longer interested in hanging from the bird feeder; and I have no interest in chasing after him for munching out of his species class.

Today's post is a deeper dive into a concept that I had first touched upon nearly two years ago, which is prominently featured in my fantasy series: sentient beings.

~~~~~

I had first became enamored with the concept of sentients while watching Star Trek: DS9, when one of the primary characters was a host to an internal being, aka a symbiont/sentient. I had originally seen that concept first applied by Star Trek: TNG, when other beings were often, albeit temporarily, take over another person in order to properly communicate with the outside world.

Fast forward several years to the mid 200s. We had decided to buckle down and get serious with our writing, and so I started searching around for ways to make my storytelling stand out. One way was writing in that vast genre called "fantasy". Another way was to write half of my characters as hybrids (which gradually changed over the years to around 90%); and yet another way was to liberally use the concepts of sentient beings and hosts.

With my first major novel: Line 21 (trad)/The Inner Sibling (indie after rights reversion), I applied all of those concepts mentioned above. I was very happy with the end result, and while it did do much of anything for sales (a mixture of my naivete and the publisher's marketing philosophy), it was a great way to see if that genre was one that worked for me.

I subsequently spent the next decade or so tweaking and fiddling with my usage of sentients in my stories. I eventually published a novella that featured a moderate reliance on having a sentient character.

We now fast forward to the spring of 2022. I started working on the last of four writing projects that I had saved from a minor basement flood in 2021. By the time I wrote the proverbial "the end" in 2025, I had created a brand new society/culture of sentient beings.

Now I went pretty deep with this entire concept, which included such concepts as a Almighty Sentient Deity; a very strict code of ethics and behaviors for both the sentient and the host to follow; guides that would help them in times of crisis; I even included rules where they were allowed to reside on their host's body.

Even though death was a prerequisite for becoming a sentient being, how one came about to be dead was an essential component too: by violence, legal or otherwise.

To me, I equate becoming a sentient being to the concept of reincarnation. So to that end, I wanted to make this particular concept available to only three who had passed away to violence, legal or otherwise. My definition of legal is crimes against the state. In this aspect, they're giving the choice of death or reincarnation as a sentient being, with the option of choosing a host.

I have two examples of this philosophy: one of my sentients was giving a snap choice of being a sentient or experiencing an infinite loop of death for the crime of killing another; the second is of a sentient being who was convicted of terrible crime and not only was turned into a sentient being, but was turned into what 1984 would call an 'unperson'.

The otherwise option is basically this: death that isn't sanctioned by the state; or to put it bluntly for the purpose of this series, military-style raids/battles.

I have three such examples of this particular philosophy: one who was killed during the initial raid that started the series, and returned as a translucent semi-solid; one who was kill during the first attempt at capture; and finally, one who was killed during the second attempt at recapture.

The last one mentioned is the one where I decided to showcase how one became a sentient, from the initial death all the way through to when they find their host. It does make an interesting read about death and reincarnation.

In conclusion, I'm not sure if doing two kinds of world building is something I would want to pursue again. While it was definitely an interesting learning experience, doing world building can be exhausting, if only for the amount of detail that is required to make everything as realistic as possible.

I sincerely hope everyone has a fantastic sunshiny week.

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

Episode #325: "Sister vs Sister"--- Where Are We? Now!

I finally bit the bullet a few weeks ago (late April) and purchased a couple of shepherds hooks and planted them in the side yard where squirrels cannot reasonably jump to and on. Oddly enough, I seem to be getting a different variety of birds with the bird feeders being so close to the mountain.

By the time you're reading this post, I am now working on book #4 of the "Sister vs Sister" fantasy series. I recently completed the first round of editing book #3, and I decided to celebrate my singular achievement by providing the odd statistical* writing update.

*I've always had a thing about finding oddball stats on whatever project that I happen to be performing at the time when the bug bites. And no, this is not a recent phenomenon, as I've been doing it all of my life.

I really do enjoy coming up with oddball stats for my projects and unlike the last one I had done a few years ago that had an emphasis on the actually for this series, this one will not be as labor intensive.

Starting with book #1: the actual editing time frame was January 13th through February 4, 2026, a span of about three and a half weeks. Now there were quite a few things that I did prior to that original start date that would allow me to utilize a new game plan that I had decided on way back in 2022.

Like supplies. Because I wanted to do the entire process correctly, I had purchased 5 1 1/2" D-style three ring binders (with a 375 page capacity based on the same science that says you can get 115 loads of laundry out of 1.17 gallon jug of liquid detergent), and a brand new storage container to hold the original 1st draft, warts and all; I created nearly 1 1/2 dozen initial posts for my FB author's page, as I wanted to turn it into a mini blog by chronicling this journey; and most importantly, an actual title for the book.

Now three and a half weeks to edit a one hundred ninety page novel does sound like an excessive amount of time, but if you factor in things like: living in the real world, and juggling two other writing projects (blog posts and Facebook posts) on top of the editing and the editing process itself, then that three and a half weeks looks a little different.

Between book #1 and book #2, I had a three day grace period, which was unevenly divided between needing time to recalibrate, choosing a title for the and reconfirming that #2 was going to be a slog, as I had some continuity issues that needed to be fixed.

Oh and, unless you're on a deadline because this is your 24/7/365 job, being methodical absolutely does with the race.

Book #2 definitely lived up to initial declaration of being a slog, as this two hundred forty-nine page tome toke me from February 7th through March 5, 2026 to complete. Nearly a month was spent methodically picking through line-by-line-by-paragraph tightening and fixing continuity issues, some of which were quite glaring.

I will not that the amount of words excised were more than doubled from book #1, and I believe that was due to the fact that my prose was becoming a little more purplish.

The break time between #23 and #3 increased to four days, which was mostly spent trying to come up with a title, with the remaining in time spent preparing myself to tackle a book that was at least 41% longer than the previous volume. The primary reason for this was that everything was about to come to head, when the multiple storylines were going to converge before heading back out on a parallel journey to the end.

Book #3 exceeded the limits that book #2 had previously established. The nearly three hundred forty-five page monstrosity took me from March 9th to April 23, 2026. Nearly a month and a half of not only y picking through line-by-line and paragraph-by-paragraph, but also making sure that the decision I made earlier by the killing off of two main characters and the subsequent aftermath unfolded in the way that I had intended. 

Oh and, what I had stated previously that manufacturer's are overly optimistic about their claims for capacity absolutely came true, as I had to purchase a 1" D-style three ring binder to fit the last 9 chapters of book #3.

In general, this volume was a tough edit, as it left me a little drained and a little sad. When you spend nearly two years that spans three volumes (so far), heavily invested in your characters, there's a certain level of pain when you have to remove a few of them.

I'm not quite sure how long the break will be between book #4 and book #5, but I'm pretty sure I'll be spending the bulk of that time coming up with a title for book #5 that will accurately hint or imply what the final volume is all about.

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

Episode #323: How To Respectfully Write A Hot Button Topic {1}

We all need a little flashback to our childhood when life was a little magical and whole lot innocent.

As long as I could remember, I was always ambivalent about religion. I do believe there is a higher power of some kind, and I do believe in the concepts of Heaven, Hell, Limbo and Purgatory.

But I was always inquisitive about those concepts, to the point where I would often search out books and articles, both hard copy and digital, about those very concepts. I think I spent the better part of a decade researching those concepts until my curiosity was (mostly) satiated.

Fast forward to the tail end of the '00s. I watched an old movie that basically changed the way I viewed concepts and cultures as it applied to my writing. The movie in question was Defending Your Life, starring Albert Brooks and Meryl Streep, who plays a man defending his life in the AfterLife so that he can be reincarnated.

That movie inspired me to re-imagine how I wrote about certain concepts and cultures: basically, I turned them into small conglomos/business entities.

While I made a good solid attempt at turning the few religious concepts mentioned above into conglomos that were deeply intertwined with each other in a novel that ultimately fizzled, I spent the next decade or so refining and adjusting that particular concept into something that once could consider to be commonplace.

Fast forward to 2022.

I'm two years into a happy retirement and I'm starting the fourth of five writing projects that I had originally set up for myself in the spring of 2021: this fantasy series.

I had decided early on in the story that I was going to turn the Aztecs into a modern day crime family , thus they have their fingers/hands in all kinds of illegal pies. And just like a modern day crime family , they are judge, jury and executioner, all of which ties in perfectly with their real world application of human sacrifices.

The other modern day reality: during my belated research, I was not able to definitively ascertain what the Aztec's cultural views were on homosexuality, either through the real world or their mythology. So I decided to have them implement the infamous (in some quarters) "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the US military in the 1990s. I won't bore you with the gruesome details of the policy, but I did apply a vicious little twist to the policy that would satisfy even the most ardent opponent of the policy.

The olden day reality: Now if you take into account, and you really should, because if you know anything about common sense, you should never apply today's often warped societal mores. So because we are dealing with a world where certain customs were just done until modern times, we decided that although the Aztecs did believe in the concept of marriage, they did not believe in the concept of divorce. But they did believe in a concept called 'unmarriage', which I would venture to guess (which is odd, because...yeah) it would be similar to what an annulment is.

Another olden day reality that I touch upon is slavery. For those of you who believe that slavery was just a White European Thing, then you deserve the ridicule for how you voted in the last three presidential elections. Slavery was a worldwide multi-millennia hardcore economic realty (and in some places, still exists). Slavery is what the victors do to the vanquished after war/reading parties.

This is also touched upon in a very realistic way, as I drew upon my knowledge of world history and U.S. history, in order to create a very real background for one of my main characters. Which is something I'm very proud of because if you're going to write about a particular culture, you need to showcase everything, warts and all.

Thus ends part one of this two part post. Tune in next week when we cover how I chose to work in the concepts of Hell, Purgatory and Limbo into my fantasy series.

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

Episode #322: The Grooviest Groove That You'd Ever Groove To.

Just before sitting down at this now full screen, I was jamming to a song by Blues Traveler that was going through my head because of the title of the post. Thus, we have Winnie The Pooh chilling on the bench in the bright sunshine.

The writing groove.

Many have searched for that elusive state of being, where the words keep flowing and that you're churning out stories at a continuous pace. Some have found it and are quite happy with their lives. Others have not. They suffer through bouts of not being able to put the proverbial pen to paper on a consistent basis and become completely aggravated with the process.

And then there are people like me, who have extended peaks and valleys with their writing. In other words, Johnstown Flood and Arizona in the summertime. I know, odd analogy, but it's an apt descriptor. You have peaks where the worlds and stories pour out at a frenetic pace until you suffer from epic burnout and you're scrapping the bottom of a tapped out vein looking for sentences.

A good example would be my blogging. I started with two posts every other day; then dropped to one post every other day; then dropped to three posts per week; then dropped to two posts per week; then finally dropped to one post per week. Oh, and I've been blogging since 2008, so...yeah.

But, as a former blogger used to say, I blogress.

I was definitely going through a medium sized valley with my writing prior to my retirement in late 2020. But after digging out the previously mentioned (repeatedly I might add) manuscripts, I started working on them in 2021, and I slowly started digging myself out of the valley that was my current writing home.

By 2022, when I was hip deep in year one of writing my fantasy series, my writing groove was mostly back. Although I wasn't doing any original writing of stories, I was enjoying blogging once again, and I was a Happy Boy.

Later in 2022, I got bit by the short story bug, and for the next several months, I wrote there short stories. I didn't write anymore after those initial three because I didn't want to get too sidetracked while writing my fantasy series.

Fast forward to 2025. I had written the last sentence of my series in mid-February, and I eventually hit that small rut that everyone goes through after completing a novel. But I wasn't terribly worried, in that I was busy getting this novella published and that usually takes me four to five months to complete.

Oddly, or strangely enough, depending on your viewpoint, I got bitten by the short story bug again. This time, in addition to writing original stuff, I thought I would take a crack at rewriting old stuff. Now if you're like me, you never really toss old stories away into the circular file, you just stash them inside a three ring binder and pray you don't forget them.

Now I do want to point out the underlying reason why his short story bug came back to bite me after being dormant for three years: I had forced myself to take a one year sabbatical before I got back to the serious business of editing the final master draft of my series.

So I dug out several extra stories to rework and rewrite, which is what I spent all 2025 doing. With one of the stories, after I had reworked/rewrite to my satisfaction, I made four different attempts at turning it into a novella.

After that fourth attempt, I decided that I didn't want to spend months researching and writing a novella that would have taken time away from my fantasy series.

Fast forward a few months to 2026. I decided that I would document my journey to publication on Meta (aka Facebook), like I've been doing on my blog. I initially wrote about 15 posts from Dec '25 through Jan '26, then once I got in a good editing groove, kept stockpiling more posts (I publish twice a week on Meta), as well as writing updates.

Now we're here in mid-April and not only am I still stockpiling posts and writing updates to my editing (still slogging away on book #3), but now I've also started stockpiling posts for a novella that I wanted to re-publish this summer. So I can definitely say that once again, I've found my writing groove.

Or, as the Blues Travelers opines, "it's all in the groove!"

Happy Monday and may your week be a dream on your reality check.

{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 #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