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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A very happy Monday to one and all.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode #259: My "Hot Mess" Is Now "Sister vs Sister"

This pic from the late '00's represents the fire that was first lit in June 2022 was finally extinguished on January 23, 2025.

June 2022. The sentence, "Jhon staggered into the bathroom, flipped the light switch and screamed in pain as the soft white light shot a dual laser beam directly into his eyeballs.", was the opening salvo to a story that immediately took hold of me much like my only trad published novel.

January 23, 2025: The sentence, "Fifteen seconds later Blanco and Akhal took off in the same cloud of dust towards home.", was the closing salvo to a truly epic fantasy story.

In between those two sentences, we wrote an estimated 600k words, totaling an estimated 1,320 pages, contained in 120 chapters, spread across five glorious volumes, with the overall series title being "Sister vs Sister". This particular project was not only an obsessive labor of love, but it was the first to be written completely by hand before transcribing it to the computer.*#

*t.l.;d.r.: less digital distractions, more meatiness to the story.

#longer t.l.;d.r.: basement flooded in 2021, recovered four writing projects in various stages of completion, this project was the third of four to be worked on to completion.

The interesting thing about this particular series, is that when it came time to finally tidy up all the loose ends once we arrived at the original conclusion, it became remarkably easy to actually write those conclusions. Over the years I've always had major problems in writing personally satisfying endings to my stories, which I think had a lot to do with trying to reconcile what I wanted to see as a reader versus what I actually wanted to write. Writing by hand helped me tremendously to properly resolve the nearly one dozen story lines that I had woven throughout the series.

A few random observations to give you the reader a better understanding of what it took to write this series.

1. The page count given equates to the minimum amount of notebook paper used as 660 sheets: two pages of transcribed text per sheet. However, the reality was more like this: 1 1/2 pages of printed text equates to one page (give or take a paragraph) of transcribed text. So this in turn, bumps up the amount of notebook paper used to nearly 1,000 sheets (1,320 transcribed pages at 1 1/2 handwritten pages per one page of text equals to roughly 1,980 handwritten pages, or about 990 sheets). To put this in perspective, I probably wrote out the equivalent of nearly three Harry Potter novels in order to write this series. I think I was a medieval scribe in a previous life.
2. The amount of pens and assorted items to fix corrections was mind boggling. For starters, I employed a rotation of 4 pens, two black & two blue, to write this series. Using a rotation like this helped me limit the overall total of pens used to about 25-30 for the entire 2 1/2 years spent writing this series. This total includes the two cheap ten packs bought, but also several others that were simply gathering dust in my pen box. As for the fixing of mistakes, I employed a two prong attack: liquid paper and address/file folder labels. In regards to the former, I did not have the hand strength to use the standard stuff, so we switched to the liquid stuff, of which roughly 10 bottles were used. As for the labels, a pair of scissors allowed me to squeeze out two to three strips per label in order to fix large errors. I won't even tell you what I used to do to fix seriously egregious errors like making a character go into a direction not of their choice and having to bring them back.
3. There really is no number three to speak. I mean everything else that was associated with this project was just part and parcel of my editing routine: reams of paper (currently finishing #4 and will be purchasing #5-8 shortly) and toner to print everything out; three ring binders (8) along with the requisite dividers (20 packs in total as they ranged from 5-10 per); and bullet point chapter synopsis so that I could easily find a particular point in the story (stopped after chapter 96).

Like I stated earlier, this project was very much an obsessive labor of love, and unlike the previous stories written where I had stressed about how to get from point A to point Z while making sure that I touched on the remaining letters of the alphabet, my stress level was significantly lower this time around. I'm pretty sure that the new writing routine was a large contributor to reducing my stress level (if you go slower, you can see further ahead) thus allowing me to pursue the statement in parenthesis to its ultimate conclusion.

Thank you for joining me on this Don Quixote-esque journey exploring just how far I can stretch my imagination while staying strongly tethered to the reality of today.

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

Episode #255: Research Is The Essence Of Good Writing

Our doggo Oreo chilling out in preparation for a very busy and fulfilling Christmas day.

As any good writer will often tell you, on the point of poking you very hard in the chest, thoroughly researching the main topic of your book, along with the other various tangents that make up the meat and potatoes {or the bean burger and organic fries if you're a veggie} of your story is essential to creating a fantastic product.*

*sorry, but old work habits like using three dozen words instead of an eighteen pack to explain something never really goes away, they just stay dormant.

Since I write fiction, today's post will be about doing the required research in order to make your story as realistic as possible, no matter the genre.

I've always been a bit of a macadamia when it came to researching a particular topic, whether it was work related or personal amusement, and I took that macadamia-ness to a whole new level of neurotic clarity when I started writing. For example, with my first published novel, some items of note included motorcycles, the adult entertainment industry and the feminine form.

The more that I grew as a writer, the more widespread my research efforts became for the stories I was creating. Even though at this point I was writing mostly fantasy based stuff, I still wanted certain elements of the story to have some basis in reality. So my current project became the ultimate test of my research skills.

Different cultures: I became enamored of different cultures a few decades ago with all the books/documentaries/videos that I was consuming, so it became a no-brainer to introduce those elements into my current project.

So I performed what I considered to be a deeper than normal research dive for the cultures that I chose to have a larger than normal focus on in the story: Aztecs, Incas and Mayans. And when I say a deep dive, that included things like family life, language, certain culture norms and deities. In regards to the cultural norms, I made a conscious decision to err on the side of being conservative, since I had no real way of knowing how those cultures felt about certain elements that were woven throughout the story (except maybe the Incas). And can't forget that I created a whole other culture from scratch that had all kinds of other historical elements woven into their fabric.

Different time periods: This probably could go hand in hand with the previous point, since I decided to have different time periods intermingle. For example, I had various characters that were part of the aforementioned cultures, directly or indirectly. A few other characters were part of the modern civilization (mostly North America), while another was part of the late medieval time period. 

Modern/old-fashioned technology/norms: This particular aspect of the story is where I had the most fun playing with. From a modern perspective, both major areas of action (Earth and Pod Planet), were heavily peppered with references to the use of modern technology: drones, cctv, computers, weaponry and digital media; old fashioned technology like having the horse as a main mode of transportation.

Odds and Ends: This particular category is for mostly all of the various bits of research that I had to do for various subjects like grammar (description mostly), certain concepts that I wanted to make sure I was using properly (e.g. slavery & sexual orientation), animal/personal traits (e.g. can horses sleep while walking and certain human characteristics), and other assorted items that would randomly pop into my head while writing a particular scene and I would want to know if it would fit or not.

Names and languages: This one was an ongoing issue throughout the entire series. First, I wanted to make sure that the names made logical sense for the adventure I was writing about AND that they emanated a powerful aura; Secondly, except for one made up language, I wanted the languages to be universally known and used. Which is why I chose English and Spanish as the two dominant languages that were used throughout. I also threw in the languages of the Aztecs (Nahuatl), Incas (Quechua) and Mayans (Yucatec Maya), as those cultures are moderately featured throughout the story. And I threw in ASL, as I have one character who uses sign in addition to telepathy.

One should also note that I didn't use any of the actual languages involved beyond English. A very good editor told me years ago that one should state what foreign language is actually being used in a given conversation, as opposed to actually using the language itself. Less aggravation and definitely less verbiage.

So overall, I enjoy most aspects of research, whether for personal curiosity (e.g. a used c.d. of a band that I've never heard of before) or for writing (clothing was in the top three of the biggest non-culture items that required heavy research). I find it's always better, at least in writing, to sound like you know what you're talking about, as opposed to actually knowing what you're talking about.

{c} 2024 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 #234: Do You Challenge Yourself Like This?

A question I'd asked on FB to a similar pic taken at the exact same Dollar Tree store (on a serious note: it's my favorite go-to discount store, as it has a better corporate vibe than Dollar General and ten times cleaner, and this store is one of the newer ones with items in the $3 & $5 range too) was "what month is I in?"

Best answer given so far was "Jultober".

Over the course of the past 15+ years of writing, I've always asked myself, as well as my muse, "have I rehabilitated myself?" "have I challenged myself as a writer?". More often than not, I would utter a 70's pop culture meme, before answering "have I?"

Which is a pretty funny thing to say to yourself, but to cereal up for a moment, I like to think I have. For example, back in 2008, I decided to challenge myself by blogging, and 16+ years later, through one active and five archival blogs, I done wrote, not including this one, 2,081 blog posts. Think about that for a hot minute: this means I posted anywhere from one to six blog posts a week since 2008, with only two short vaca breaks in the early 2010s as interruptions. So I guess that can count as a successful challenge.

Let's see....what else have I done as a challenge....oh yes. Back in the day when I was deciding to become a writer (I think 2007 or a bit earlier) I decided that I was going to write EROTICA! and make my living doing that. Even bought a "how-to" book on writing/submitting/publishing erotica. Suffice to say, my early stuff was perfect script material for adult movies, but not for the general public. So, that was an unsuccessful challenge.

I did successfully switch gears to writing adult (18+/21+) fiction, and it's something I've become remarkably comfortable in doing. I also became quite comfortable in writing fantasy, because I found it to be the only genre that allowed me to explore all facets of life, both current and historical, that I wouldn't get raked over the coals for (I mean, can one really be raked over for creating a whole new world, new people and a new language?), so that makes a total of three successful challenges. Oh and completed a side challenge in that my daughter has stated that she will not read any of my current writing. So let's make that a half completion.

Let's see....oh yeah, I challenged myself to write a story in a genre that I normally don't write in. To elaborate, while I enjoy ready all kinds of age appropriate material, that doesn't necessarily mean that I want to actually WRITE age appropriate material. But, the challenge was issued, so I managed to bang out a 100% legitimately age appropriate (MG, aka middle grade I believe) short story entitled Cedar Mountain, which can found in this nifty short story collection called What Is Life?. So let's consider this to be a successful challenge.

Think G.B., think...oh, I challenged myself to get published the traditional way. So a book I was extremely gung-ho in writing (I think it took me six months tops from beginning to end), became the guinea pig to this challenge. In 2012, I was able to have traditionally published The Inner Sibling, under the name Line 21 (lots of issues on my part for its failure to launch, including the initial title). So we considered that to be a successful writing challenge as well.

What, you want one more challenge? Well, this next one is an ongoing challenge with no real end in sight. After my basement gained a couple inches of H2O in 2021, I was able to salvage three nominally completed manuscripts and a partial. After reworking the three completed and publishing one of them: The Mortality of Familial Love, I decide to take a crack at working on the partial. 

By the beginning of 2022, my hands were pretty much shot, as it applied to my keyboarding skills (on a good day, my speed was about 14 +/- wpm). So I made the conscious decision to write the old fashioned way: pen and paper, then transcribe the finished product to the computer. Now this particular manuscript has been extensively covered for the past 2+ years on this blog, but I will say that one side challenge that has been presently successful, is that I've been able to do deeper dives/character explorations while writing the old fashioned way, which has really made me grow as a writer.

So what we have here for a record is 5 1/2 challenges completed and 1 unsuccessfully completed challenge. I think I've done pretty well for myself in regards to challenging myself as a writer. Oh, I just thought of another. In addition to challenging myself to get traditionally published, I also challenged myself to get a short story published, and I succeeded with two, the aforementioned Cedar Mountain and and another entitled Red Stripe, both of which are found in the short story collection mentioned above.

So the corrected record now stands at 6 1/2 to the positive and 1 to the negative. Overall, I think I managed to accomplish quite a bit as a newbie-ish writer. I think I need to find a few more writing challenges for myself. 

Have a fantastic week everyone!

{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 #211: How We Got Here From There {6th}

You would think that a town that preaches/teaches all of the properly "progressive" ideas about life would still have something like this hanging around the local elementary school. You would be incorrect in that assumption. It's now just a patch of....something...surrounded by a white picket fence.

Please find part the 1st here, who is desperately trying to fend off the attacks of the 2nd and his loyal peon the 3rd, who is dragging the rebel 4th kicking and screaming, while the 5th is mocking his cowardice.

~~~~~~

And now, I present to you the final post in this limited edition series. Enjoy.

~~~~~~

This particular letter "G", has been a bit trickier to deal with. On one hand, it kind of makes it nice to have one appear from time to time in my stories, but on the other hand, having one appear from time to time begs the question of how to tastefully and realistically write the character. Personally, I've been annoyed about the stereotypes that seem to populate most media these days, so I decided that if/when I would venture into the realm of that particular letter, I would do it realistically.

I have a male character called Silencioso, who one could call in the traditional sense of the word bisexual: likes both men and women. However, I decided to throw a few intriguing twists into the mix, in that I wanted to apply both modern and historical angles into the mix.

For starters, I decided not to make my character a traditional bisexual in the sense of the word, where he would decided which way to flow based on a variety of factors (yes, I am being general here, as I have not done any kind of delicate research into the mind of someone who is bisexual). Instead, I made it so that it would happen organically and it would be something that he would have no control over. His mind would decide that they wanted to go a particular way for a while, and they would drag him along for the ride.

As for both modern and historical aspects, it was, for me, a no-brainer. I wrote our Silencioso as a young man who worked in the palace livery stable, was in his mid-twenties, toned but not buff, like a typical stable hand. However, because the Pod Planet exists in a cultural and historical mish-mosh: modern tech yet has late medieval/early renaissance cultural mores, we've also hinted that he was very discrete with his encounters with the ruling class, which in turn made him a natural choice for this assignment. Because if you know anything about world history, discretion for anything out of the norm, no matter what class of people, was highly valued.

Now for my remaining female MCs, as it applies for this segment. One I haven't done much yet with, beyond having her be hetero, telepathic and the ability to create other beings such as animals. And maybe connect with the spirit world, but I haven't really decided on that yet. But for her daughter (yes, please enjoy this almighty swerve), I have made her to be quite the interesting individual.

For starters, I turned her into a genetically modified denizen of the Pod Planet, although that wasn't the original plan for her. About a dozen years ago, back when I had originally written this story, I gave my character a particular trait that was so far out of the realm of normalcy then (and now if applied in the way that is stated in the book) that I actually had second thoughts about continuing this extremely odd trait. In fact, I actually wrote a blog post about it to solicit my reader's opinion about it. Most had no problem.

Fast forward to now. Like I stated earlier, I made my character Nyx, a genetically modified denizen of the Pod Planet. The reason is pretty simple, in that our Ms Nyx is quite the buxom lady, and long story short, a decision was made to turn her into a feeder for the masses. I am quite confident that you can pretty much figure out what this very non-sexual trait is (I am being 100% legit serious here).

That is pretty much the entire back story I'm willing to put out here in this blog post for this particular character. I would also like to mention that she is the aforementioned host of the sentient siblings mentioned in an earlier blog post and that she also has a lover/slave under her nominal control as well.

I believe we have gone as far as I can comfortably go, exploring the complexities of what I decided to have for female characters, at least in this particular series. My male characters will always be the same mixture of toxic masculinity and Walter Mitty, with the occasional deviation whenever a particular scene/plot/story calls for it.

😎

I sincerely thank you for sticking around to the very end of this series exploring my world viewpoint and how it shapes my writing. So I sincerely wish you a Manic Monday, my Tuesday's Gone With The Wind, have a lovely conversation with Wednesday while pursuing a Throwback Thursday during a viewing of the original Freaky Friday.*

*we have a song from the 90's, a song from the 70's, a beloved cartoon/t.v character, a meme that everyone can enjoy and a Disney classic.

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

Episode #210: How We Got Here From There {5th}

This photo was actually taken on December 28, 2023. Four aisles down on an endcap was/is a display for St. Patrick's Day. Feel free to either facepalm yourself to your knees or scrape the bottom of your jaw off the floor with a spatula. You're welcome.

Part the 1st is here, waiting for the 2nd, the 3rd and the 4th.

~~~~~

While for the most part, I have diligently worked on showing the (mostly) tolerant side of homosexuality, I still needed to have a balanced and more nuanced perspective showing how cruel the world can be to the gay community. 

Adeola, who is Jhon's ex-wife, is even more of a complex character than Myla. So let's get that T.L.;D.R. out of the way. Adeola is a lesbian with almost zero (physical) interest in men. Was forced to marry and divorce Jhon and yet still pines for him.

Obviously, there is a cargo ship more to unpack here, and I will do my best to move beyond the preceding 24 word T.L.;D.R.

As I've mentioned elsewhere, I do like creating ruthless corporate entities out of historically corrupt entities, e.g. Hell and Purgatory, or in this particular case, the Aztec Empire. For the purpose of this story, I have turned the Aztec Empire into a criminal corporation on the scale of a well oiled drug cartel, in that they have their fingers in all kinds of illegalities. And yes, I have brought along their more unsavory practices into the mix.

Anyways, just like with most criminal organizations, the Aztecs have the strange standards when it comes to certain things, like homosexuality.

Note: I know that this isn't historically accurate. It's called "artistic license".

With the Aztecs, I have made their legal system based on the old nineties policy of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". In a nutshell, there were certain military rules and regulations on the books regarding homosexual behaviors, but so long as you didn't tell them, they didn't ask about it nor did they prosecute. But if someone does tell, they are legally bound to investigate. For an added bonus, I made it so that the person making the accusation suffered the exact same punishment as the guilty party.

Enter our mercurial heroine Adeola.

I decided from the beginning to make Adeola a truly unique individual, which was directly inspired by the original version of this story. So, I made Adeola a solidly strong lesbian. Now I know you're saying to yourself, "Whaaaaaaaat?", but there is a method to my madness.

To begin at the end, with the end being Adeola summoned out of her ex-husband's collar. Why was she there to begin with?

Well, here is how it unfolds, which is based on info that comes out in dribs and drabs throughout the series. As I'd mentioned a few paragraphs earlier, I created a judicial system that has an official "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy. If you know anything about US history from the mid-90's, the military had a policy of not inquiring about a soldier's sexuality, nor did they expect you to tell them (please see the preceding paragraph for a longer explanation, then Google the above phrase for an in-depth explanation).

Unlike the real world policy, this fantasy version would investigate if someone made a complaint. Someone did and Adeola was convicted for being a lesbian. Her two-part sentence was carried out, think Middle East/Inquisition style punishment for the first part, with the second part being an arranged marriage to Jhon.

Another concept I decided to introduce was that the Aztecs don't believe in divorce, only forced annulments performed by the judicial system. This was done to her because Jhon fulfilled his onerous contract with the Aztecs, but she was able to negotiate a parole, in which she would still be able to keep in contact with Jhon, thus taking up residence in his dog collar.

I should also mention that in addition to being on parole, she's still deeply in love with her ex-husband, even though their marriage was more like a friends w/o the benefits of them being husband and wife.

So this is where we stand with Adeola: a woman who acknowledges her sexuality, but because she has chosen to play by the rules she truly abhors and has done so with grace, has been allowed a greater degree of freedom within that society that probably would not be allowed to someone else in a similar situation. A woman who still cares deeply for her ex-husband, but is also willing to tentatively and discreetly accept feelers of all kinds from the women that she is involved with within this rescue mission.

Exit ramp #6: So far we have covered the letter "B" and the letter "L". Now it's time to cover the letter "G".

Doing the bossa nova back to the highway.

Tune in next Monday some time in the early a.m. for the 6th and final post in this nifty little series. Here's to you having a Blue Plate Special Monday, a Taco Tuesday, followed by a Wayback Burger Wednesday, Tortellini Thursday and a Fried Plantain Friday.*  

😎

*note: local radio station in the 80's had a program called "Blue Plate Special", not sure what kind of music was played; we all know Taco Tuesday; Wayback Burger is a regional chain located mostly in New England and the East Coast; I like different kinds of pasta; and my daughter turned me onto plantain chips.

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

Episode #209: How We Got Here From There {4th}

Your tax dollars hard at work feeding the elite.

Find part the 1st here, part the 2nd to the right of here and part the 3rd to the left of here.

~~~~~

Exit ramp #4: I really decided to up the ante and complexity with my other queen, Myla, by applying everything that I was able to wring from my observations of the real world and other various audio and verbal actions.

Thugging my way back to the highway.

So with another one of MCs, Myla Ventura (strangely enough she and her husband are the only ones with last names), we decided to infuse her with all kinds of personality traits and character flaws. The main reason she was made a "Queen" is a bit convoluted, but the T.L.;D.R. version is that she's a sister to the Pod Queen. Now while I did create her to be a smokin' hot beauty, she is very much the physically flawed smokin' hot beauty, with serious physical and psychological wounds.

Even though she is married, it's very much a complicated marriage, but while she does her husband wholeheartedly, there's quite the volatility to their marriage (think Walter Mitty except that his daydreams comes to life), as she found out that's not his first wife but his second. Obviously she was angry at first, but after hearing the (almost) complete story as to why, she became more accepting.

As time marches on, to use ye olden cliche, her friendship with wife #1 Adeola, deepens and gradually moves beyond the realm of besties into something possibly more fulfilling on a personal and spiritual level. there's now a higher level of intimacy with her words, her gestures and her feelings. While it's not quite reciprocated by Adeola, due to some legitimate concerns about family, it has moved on to that level of a pseudo-sibling relationship.

Myla does have an inkling that Adeola might care about her in the same way, but is very careful and very discreet about moving their relationship into a deeper co-existence, because she too is very concerned about familial ramifications.

Things do come to a head for her during one of her dream adventures, where she wakes up to find herself au natural, with two others "keeping her company", so to speak. After a bit of discussion with her minders, she surprisingly finds herself on trial for being a bisexual woman. She defends herself very well about the various accusations made, handles the delicate subject about coming out with aplomb, and has the charges ultimately dismissed. She then gradually comes back to the present, none the worse for wear, and continues on her incrementally slow process of exploring the other side of her life with her bestie Adeola and others.

Exit ramp #5: I decided early on to bring in some real world realities while exploring this sensitive topic. Things like one country's laws are not applicable in another country's, or in this case, planet's realm. For example, for the sake of open-mindedness, I made being homosexual completely legal and acceptable on Earth, while on another planet or even within a small private entity on Earth, may state otherwise (I'll elaborate on this point later).

Tip-toeing my way back onto the highway.

😎

Tune in next Monday for part the 5th of our series. I do hope you like Happy Mondays, listened to 'til Tuesday, rocked to Wednesday 13, slammed to Thursday and grooved to Fridayy.*

*every single day of the week is an actual music artist

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

Episode #208: How We Got Here From There {3rd}

Sadly, the Michelin Man's younger brother Frosty disappeared before the Christmas season ended. No puddles to be found, but perhaps he was taken away by the wind, for he was lighter than air.

Part the 1st can be found here, while part the 2nd can be not lost here.

And I apologize for the length of this upcoming post, as I got a little carried away with this particular part of my creative process.

~~~~~~

I have a lot of different relationships at play in my current project and each has their own separate complexities that are involved.

Let's start with siblings. I did start out with three sets of siblings, but somehow along the way, one set of siblings, sisters, got changed to cousins. Of the two remaining, one pair are sisters, with the other being brother and sister, and each has their own unique set of characteristics.

The brother and sister pair are sentient beings with a host (as I mentioned in the story, this is what happens when you make decisions while being highly intoxicated). They have that special connection that siblings often have, and they are analytical as well. And like their host, are one hundred percent hetero.

For the other set of siblings, while on the surface it seems to be very straight forward as it applies to that special sibling connection, everything else is heavily implied. While one of the sisters is hetero, she is very understanding and accepting of her sister, who is not. This is very heavily implied early on, based on the emotions and physicality that the sister shows to her artist friend until at one point it comes plainly stated by virtue of the actions performed by her sister.

As for the cousins, I haven't written them in a way that implies one way or the other. This is directly due to them not really becoming a force of any kind until very late in book #3 of the series. Presently I have them acting like bff's who have to depend on each other in order to live their lives to the best of their ability.

Moving on to three of the six remaining female MCs. These three have hair spirit/sentient beings, which each having a specially unique relationship with their host. Let's start with the character with the least amount of baggage with her hair spirit: she goes by the name Melissa, while her hair spirit goes by the name Emilia.

Emilia came to Melissa via judicial decree and has a week in which to convince Melissa to accept her wholeheartedly. Emilia is very much a newbie with her interactions with Melissa and is also very much an orphan, as per her background. So subsequent interactions with Melissa are more on the level of mentor to student than anything else.

Macha the Pod Queen is a complex case. Even though she's the actual catalyst for this entire series, she is quite the multi-faceted individual, with conflicting morals based on her job duties and privileged upbringing.

Exit ramp #3: Even though it has been determined from the very beginning that she is hetero, her relationship with hair spirit was one that I was able to explore more in depth with some degree of intimacy.

Muscling my way back onto the highway.

Like I stated in an earlier blog post, Macha is the latest in a long line of rulers in a strictly matriarchal hierarchy, albeit one that still has men calling some of the shots as members of the ruling class. As I also stated earlier, Macha often has to weaponize her natural attributes to the best of her ability (which is required by law) in order to get what she wants and needs for herself and her people.

Now her hair spirit is a sentient being that goes by the name of Eleanor, and she has quite the special relationship with their host. This is because Eleanor is actually the half-sister to Macha, and she became her hair spirit in a most peculiar and heartbreaking way. 

Early on Eleanor knew that Macha was destined for a life of privilege and power, even if Macha herself did realize it. So in their late teens an incident occurred in which Eleanor was forced to throw herself the proverbial bus in order to protect her half-sister. Eternally grateful, she made her half-sister a permanent part of her life.

So they remained sisters in all aspects of her life, which allowed them a deeper familial intimacy and tolerance that is rarely shown to the outside world. Comforting words and phrases that one would use with a partner. Very intimate gestures with intense displays of affection and tenderness. All of which are hallmarks of a warm sibling relationship, but in her case goes both ways, in that Eleanor has unfettered access to her sister's most personal memories, thus allowing her to return the gesture with a deeper level of familiarity and affection.

😎

Again, barring any pleasant surprises that might nudge this train to a temporary detour, tune in next week on this same day for part the 4th. Have a Fantastick Monday, a Tony! Toni! Tone'! Tuesday, with an R.J. Reynolds Wednesday, Thundercat Thursday and Felix the Cat Friday following close behind.*

*For those of you who are too young to remember, in successive order we have: a musical play/movie, a music group, a tobacco company, a mid 80's cartoon and a classic cartoon strip/cartoon short.

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

Episode #207: How We Got Here From There {2nd}

Alas this flower is no more either. Bereft of life, it has joined the avian choir invisible. This is an ex-flower now residing in an herbal tea bag.

You can find part the 1st here.

~~~~~~

I started putting the process in motion when I had started writing, or rather, rewriting a few short stories. Nothing really hardcore, but did apply what I had learned previously and started trying to really flesh out one of the characters, with a concerted effort made towards female MC's as opposed to male MC's.

Exit ramp #1: Way early on, like at the very very beginning of my writing journey, I had developed strict guidelines for myself on how I should write both sexes. I would like to note that I have judiciously deviated from these rules from time to time, but overall I have stayed true to those guidelines.

Guideline #1: Males are to be written with both toxic masculinity traits as well as Walter Mitty-esque traits. 

Guideline #2: Females should be written always as strong independent woman (i.e. girl boss) with just a hint of vulnerability.

Reentering the highway.

Now what I mean by a concerted effort to make my female MC's more fully fleshed out is a bit convoluted, but I will try to explain the best I can.

I've always admired strong independent women, no matter the ethnicity, which for me translated to having better platonic work relationships with women, as opposed to men. So this has basically bled quite heavily into my stories, creating composite characters based on real world observations, etc. Because of this, I have been more comfortable in fleshing out my female characters.

Exit ramp #2: Way later in my writing life, I came to appreciate and understand certain aspects of the real world, so I decided to incorporate them into my storylines. You are forewarned.

Reentering the highway once again.

Now that comfort level of writing female MC's has spilled over into the way I write about relationships. Not so much M&F, which can be complex if the situation calls for it, but very much when it came to F&F, no matter where the pairing might be on the relationship spectrum.

Now truth be told is that over the preceding years, I have become quite accepting of what is common place behaviors or PDA among all segments of society (I'm 58 1/2, so it's taking me a bit of time to tweak my views), and because of this I have started to make a concentrated effort to work all of these emotional and physical complexities into my stories. While I have written some characters to have either lesbian or bisexual tendencies in my stories and novellas (one of my novellas has a gay secondary character that is featured throughout the story), it has become completely fleshed out in the four part series that I am currently working on.

Now that's not to say that every single character in the story leans that way, either blatantly or subtly. On the contrary, I used very normal and very intimate gestures and words to lend some ambiguity to the story, which also depends heavily on where and what the situation may be.

I can comfortably state with confidence that a little suggestive ambiguity can go a very long way towards implying how a certain scene should be interpreted. It has taken me quite a bit of time to learn how to show more by writing less. For years I thought sledgehammering to get a point across was the way to go. Turns out that using a hammer that is more suited for decorative or detailed work will often get the point across in ways that sledgehammering won't.

Now, I can use intimate gestures and words to get my point across about a particular character in ways that sledgehammering could never accomplish. And if I take those same words and enhance them with judiciously dropped background info, it can show these characters in a brand new light.

😎

Barring any pleasant surprises that may force a minor change in posting, you can tune in next Monday for part the 3rd of my series. Have a Spaceman Spiff Monday, a Transmogrification Tuesday, Dromedary Hump Wednesday, Turbo Tax Thursday and mourn the fact that TGIF has closed almost three dozen under-performing restaurants this month nationwide.*

*For those of you who might not get certain pop culture references, in successive order we have: A Calvin & Hobbes subplot x2, a type of camel, a tax software program and a restaurant chain that has taken the first step towards a possible chapter 11 bankruptcy.

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

Episode #206: How We Got Here From There {1st}

To reminisce of days gone by. Sadly, this particular bucolic scene no longer exists, as the flowers were turned over when the pond was filled in, while the statue was moved over to a side garden to stare out to the mountain.

Note: This post kicks off a series that specifically focuses on the deceptively complex question of, "Why do you write your male and female characters the way you do?"

I was originally inspired by one upcoming event that will split off into two intertwined pathways, which in turn brought me face-to-face with the fact that to give this event my complete attention, I needed to make sure that the blog would be set for posts until mid February. The event in question, is of course, publishing my novella, with the two intertwined pathways being the cover and formatting the manuscript. After all, when you're dropping quality cash for a quality product, you best be paying attention to all aspects thereof.

So with that being said, onwards and upwards. One other thing I must mention, is that this series does delve rather deeply into issues that may be offensive to the eyes of some people. Reader discretion is strongly advised.

~~~~~~~

From time to time, I would often wonder how I had arrived at this particular junction in my writing life. I mean, back in the day, back when I still had remnants of hair follicles growing out of my scalp, when I had made the conscious decision to start writing, I always thought that my genre of choice would be romance, or something along those lines.

I mean, how difficult could it be, right? I mean, have two people meet up, have a series of misadventures, throw some intimacy in, some conflict, mix it all up and viola! A romance novel.

BWHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!

It took me about a year to reach that conclusion and about five more to extricate myself from that mindset. However, during that extrication process, I did try other kinds of themes/genres, in a genuine attempt at finding one that I felt very comfortable writing in.

As I searched, I obviously grew as a writer. I gradually figured out what I could and could not write if I wanted to stay within my own personal boundaries (strangely, one was writing a G-rated story). But we preserved and eventually found a consistent level of sorts on what direction I wanted to go and what kinds of themes I wanted to explore. 

I eventually got the hang of writing sex and violence that contained varying degrees of explicitness for each type, taking great care and finesse in not going "Hustler" on the former and gratuitously disgusting on the latter unless it was very germane to the plot/scene.

On the former, the only time we reached "Hustler" territory was with my one and only traditionally published novel Line 21/The Inner Sibling, which was directly due to the fact that the MC had to jump feet first into the waters of the adult entertainment industry. In regards to the latter, we have not crossed that line, but we have tip-toed right to it (my upcoming novella pretty much pulverizes that boundary in a barely non-gratuitous fashion).

Eventually we settled on exploring various relationships as an overall theme to apply and nurture my writing mindset. With one of my short story anthologies, What Is Life?, I was, to a certain degree, all over the relationship platform, which was due to the twin themes of the four seasons of the year and the four stages of life.

The relationships explored were pretty generic: Story #1 featured a mountain's relationship with the outside world, like a year in the life; Story #2 featured the relationship between man and nature; Story #3 featured the trials and tribulations between a writer, his work and his spouse; and Story #4 was a musician's relationship with their music and their manager.

With our other short story anthology entitled A Trilogy of Love, we started concentrating a bit deeper on human relationships. Story #1 featured a young man going through the heartache of being dumped by his girlfriend and being pursued by a secret admirer afterwards; Story #2 is about a strangely platonic relationship between two besties (M&F); Story #3 is also a story about two besties who do a "friends with benefits" scenario.

Story #3 is important to me, as it marked what I believe to be a very key turning point with my writing in multiple ways. First and foremost, because the scene unfolded between two female friends, I wanted to make sure that I didn't divebomb into an adult entertainment area of descriptive prose. Because to be perfectly honest, I didn't think at the time I had the ability to do that kind of deep exploration of a relationship in this particular story. So we kept it to a happy medium between softcore and hardcore.

After finishing that particular story, I went off on and odd exploration of relationships, in which we covered a few particular types: platonic with a deeper bond, besties on different levels and FWB on deeper levels too. And because I enjoy challenging myself, I throw in siblings as well.

Now sufficiently armed with a travel bag filled with endless possibilities for writing, we set off to have a little creativity in overdrive.

😎

So ends part the 1st of our multi-part series. Barring any pleasant surprises, stay tuned for part the 2nd on this must read blog series. Here's to your spiffy Monday, as well as your Tubular Tuesday, Hump Day Wednesday, Ticonderoga Thursday and Feline Friday.*

*four of the five day adjectives are self-explanatory, while the fifth, Ticonderoga, can be interpreted in a number of ways, from being a village in New York, to a Revolutionary War battle and military foot, to even a comedy bit for the Three Stooges and others from that era.

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

Episode #204: Language Makes The Mundane Intriguing

This city view of Hartford CT was taken over a decade ago and is for illustrative purposes only, but man, this was the peak of cleanliness for this part of the city.

I love different languages, or rather, I love listening to different languages. When I was residing at my last state agency {2006-20}, I truly enjoyed the white noise that was predominately Spanish in my humble office (Payroll/HR}, and in fact actively moaned whenever my "white noise" wasn't there.

So fast forward to now.

Because of that fondness for foreign languages, I tried to incorporate as much as I possibly could into my current 4 volume series with the blogger tag of Hot Mess. So this fondness has morphed in the following ways:

1.  I started off everyone speaking English, but when I had female MC #1 Myla's ladies-in-waiting make an appearance, I had her speaking Spanish to them. 
2. Eventually down the road I had her ladies-in-waiting switch to understanding Portuguese, because why not.
3. With female MC #2, I need a language that could be used for certain private conversations, so I introduced Greek to the mix.
4. Note: I did not use the actual Spanish/Portuguese/Greek language for the conversations. Using a tip that an editor of mine nicely informed me of and of which I saw being used elsewhere, I simply stated at the beginning of the conversation what language was actually being used.
5. Here's where it gets quite interesting. As I needed to do background research for a few characters, I had to perform a shallow dive to find out what kind of language was used and a deeper dive to find, if any, a Google translate for that language.
6. For my male MC, because I had him working for the Aztecs {note, for kicks and giggles, I love turning cold, impersonal historical entities into ruthless business conglomos} prior to getting married a second time, I decided to have as his second language, Nahuatl, which is what the Aztecs spoke.
7. Not to leave any of the other female MC's out, I had #2 & #3 speak Quechua, which was and still is, the native language of the Incans. This is in addition to the Spanish/Portuguese/Greek/English. As for #4, in addition to her speaking English & Portuguese, I also have her speaking Nahuatl as well.
8. Now just for other ha-ha's, because I had to create a whole other planet, I had to create a whole new language, which was spoken by female #1, as well as the denizens of the planet itself.
9. And all of this isn't even adding in the fact that telepathy is being used as a base of communication, no matter the species. Or the fact that a couple of the MC's understand avian and jaguar. And can't forget the legendary hounds of Hell, Cerberus. Two minor characters know Morse code, while three other semi-minor characters speak in sign language {I decided not to differentiate between ASL & BSL}.

So as you can see, I have run the whole gamut with the languages being used in this series. And for an added bonus, I have made a concentrated effort to add the necessary background info for everyone involved, which breaks down to: Central and South America {Aztec and Inca}, North America {US}, Europe {possibly late medieval/early modern U.K. and the mainland for a time period} and of course, the Pod Planet. So that way, I'm not using the languages for the sake of using them.

Next week will be a lighter post about this and that, before I start a Mariana Trench dive into the characters that make up this series. I think this will be something that will make you go, "I did not know that about G.B."

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