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

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

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

1} Sister vs Sister: The Series.

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

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

2} Facebook.

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

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

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

3} Graphic designer (cover).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode #309: When The Hard Part Suddenly Becomes Easy

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

1} A title for the story;

2} Synopsis, both long and short;

3} Tag.

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

Click for details

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

Click for details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week everyone!

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

Episode #307: One Exception To Total Silence

This was not my view looking out my back door this past Christmas was the brownest brown that you can have in mid 30 degree weather. But one can still dream, right?

As most of you have been able to pick up on throughout the years, I need to have near total silence in which to write effectively and efficiently. I say 'near' because of where my den is located (under the living room), so if I get at least 97%, I'm good. If it drops below that, I'm not so good and I have to find someplace else to write, or blog for that matter.

There was only one time that I had made an exception to rule, and that was strictly due to a plumbing issue that ultimately deposited nearly two inches of water into the basement early summer 2021. So naturally, I had to relocate my computer and printer up to the dining room for the rest of the year.

In addition to those two pieces of equipment being relocated, I was able to save four manuscripts from permanent destruction, so that I would have material to work on.*

*manuscript #1; manuscript #2; rewrite of previously published novella; and my fantasy series.

So here's where the exception comes into play. Dining room is on the 1st floor, with the kitchen directly behind me and the living room directly to my left. Because I do not play well with others when it comes to my writing, we whipped out the headphones, opened up the endless world that is YouTube and went exploring.

Now we didn't just choose any old music to serve as my temporary white noise, we needed music that was completely lyric free. Like the only words I want to hear is someone introducing a song. Because I had an early childhood exposure to classical music (thank you Carl Stalling), classical is what I went for first.

Any possible woodwind or string instrument related to classical, I found every conceivable type of music for. Once I had reached my tolerance level for a particular instrument or composer for that instrument, I moved on to another type of music or instrument, or even obscure stuff like Medieval choral music.

I eventually finished my classical feed bag and moved on to the type fantasy music that one would create for RPGs (aka role playing games), followed by metal bands that would create that kind of music, which was then followed by fantasy music of the ASMR variety (trust me on this one), We soon pivoted to Americana and Bluegrass instrumentals.

I eventually finished my instrumental journey by listening to a few movie soundtracks (e.g. spaghetti westerns), which worked out perfectly for me, as within days of finishing I had to vacate the dining room, as the basement was reasonably cleaned, pipes were fixed and everything was put back in decent order.

I calculated that I listened to nearly two hundred hours of instrumental music of a variety of types stretched across at least a half dozen genres. I came to that educated guess by assuming that, on average, I listened to two hours of music per day, seven days a week, for about five months.

Not since that fateful summer, now going on 4 1/2 years, not one note of classical music (although I do play snippets while running my evening errands) or any fantasy music has knocked at my chamber door. I know it sounds odd, but think of it as having to consume something out of medical necessity for months on end, then when the medical crisis ends, you never touch that item ever again.

There are a myriad of sacrifices that we make when we're in the writing groove, but this was the only time that I had written original material to music for my entire fifteen (and counting) year writing career. Every other time I've listened to music while transcribing, which is another story for another blog post.

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

Episode #298: A Smattering Of Ideas & A Plethora Of Verbiage

As the title of the blog post suggests, we have a smattering of ideas to play with. Why? Because our tired brain (allergies that morphed into a good old fashioned chest cold) couldn't quite come up with one solid idea in which to latch upon. A plethora of verbiage? Well...duh. I are a writer, are I not? Writers are known for pumping out all forms of grammar onto the digital page in the vain hopes that they will magically reassemble into semi-coherant sentences.

Caught this little birdie tripping across the hood of my car the other day.

So I thought that since I have multiple ideas for blog posts, today's post will lightly touch up on those ideas, which in turn, we hope, become a meaty post. So to quote John Cleese, let us begin at the beginning.

#1: I decided to start another novel. 

I'm pretty sure everyone is saying, "well, duh. that's what writers are supposed to do." And you would be correct in every sense of the word. However, at this particular juncture, I was/am quite happy churning out short stories, as I was taking a much needed break from novel writing (I had just finished my five volume fantasy series earlier this year, and I don't intend to seriously start diving into it until about this time next year). 

But one of the short stories I had written started calling out to me. Like, "I want to be a novel!" So I said, "why not?" And because I absolutely love a challenge, the story in question fits more like a chapter of a novel than an actual beginning of a novel. So the challenge for me has been to build a novel that comfortably surrounds that story, plus a few actual plot lines to make it gel. Oh and, need to rewrite the story to make it fit a particular time period. Oh and, decide how much fantasy it needs to be infused with. Fun, fun, fun!

#2: I joined another writer's group.

I did quite a bit of searching on Facebook this past summer for another writer's group (to refresh: I got suspended/blackballed/gaslighted from my previous writer's group for posting a link to a blog post that I had previously cleared with one of the admins), which required me to really study/parse out the group rules for each potential group. Suffice to say, there were a few who had rules that in good conscience I could not follow, so they were dropped from consideration.

The one that I did join had rules that I could comfortably live with, and I was able to get clarification on a few of the rules posted. I also found out that every single post made in the group had to be approved by the creator of the group (group has a five to six digit membership).

One of the curious aspects of this group was its complete loathing of anything associated with AI writing. Posting AI covers were verboten (except for show and tell when people were trying to explain a vision for a cover) as well as AI created snippets. Overall this group has been an eye-opener for me, with all the good information/writing tips that I've been able to acquire from other successful writers. I think this one is going to help me in the long run.

3#: My bookcase.

I have a warped sense of humor. I grew up in the 70's & 80's, where humor was raw, offensive and no one had zero f's to give if other people where offended. So naturally I would be on the lookout for books and audio that would cater to my particular taste in humor (e.g. Steve Martin & Cheech and Chong for audio, say Bloom County for the written word).

I found this fascinating book at my local B & N some 15 years ago, because bad humor has always been my thing. James Napoli is a well known writer, comedy performer and filmmaker who has eight other books in the same warped humor vein as this one.

Sarcasm is great to listen to, and even funnier to read about, and this book covers general sarcasm from Alpha to Zed. The cool thing about this book, is that the sarcasm for the topics involved still rings true 15 years later.

Examples: 

Canada-free healthcare, low crime, birthplace of William Shatner. two out three ain't bad.

Dress-something that does not, I said not, make you look fat.

Health-a type of insurance plan that covers everything but the rare condition you managed to come down with.

Haircut-something a man would notice his girlfriend had gotten only if she came home bald.

If you like the kind of humor that was popular in the 2010's, he can be found on Amazon, which seems to be still active and in print.

And that, is that, although that is not this, nor is this that or the other thing. Either way, was this trip really necessary and I don't think I'll be making that left turn at Albuquerque again anytime soon. I think my best bet would be to run to the hills, or yell, "Run Lola Run!"

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

Episode #283: How To Keep Busy While Publishing

This was taken during my first real long distance hike up Cedar Mountain. The deer was gracious enough to allow two photos to be taken before they made a right turn down the mountainside (as you're facing the photo).

I know the blog post title sounds just a tad redundant, but I made the mistake of trying to publish my book in July, which is the busy season for publishing. The end result to this madness is that timelines are often stretched out, which for people like myself who don't have real deadlines to meet, are sometimes put on the back burner.

So the seriously obvious answer to the question posted above is keep writing. But what should you specifically write to keep yourself occupied? Short stories? I cranked out about ten short stories of various word counts from a low end of 2,500 to a high end of about 12k. How about a novel? I don't quite have the brain capacity for writing another full length novel. What about writing a novella? I might have the brain capacity for that.

But where would I get the germination of a story idea for a novella? That is a toughie, but it was a problem that I was willing to tackle, so to speak. I had one that I had recently put on the back burner this past spring because it was becoming a cluster....bomb of a mess, so I actually thought about taking another look at it. But the idea that I eventually came up to fix it was one that would need some serious brain capacity to work on and that was something I really didn't want to pursue (changing the character focus completely around by making the incidental characters the main focus and the main characters the incidental focus).

So I turned to the short stories that I had previously written, which I had previously talked about here. While nine of the ten stories written were major rewrites that ultimately used the original story as a outline, nine of those stories didn't possess anything that would inspire me to explore further. But that tenth one, it had everything needed to nudge me to take that risk of expanding it.

What did it possess, you may ask?

The short story possessed the ending. I originally rewrote it to emphasize that the assignment that the main character was to carry out was their final chance to actually complete an assignment, or face the ultimate consequence for failing to launch. I'll still have to re-re-write it again to make it fit the setting/aesthetic of the novella, which will be feudal Japan, specifically the Shogunate eras of feudal Japan.

Which if you think about it, is a lot easier to research than it was to research my fantasy series. I mean, one country (Japan) as opposed to four continents and two planets, one of which was due to world building; one time period versus multiple times periods; and finally one ethnicity/culture (Japan) versus six (five original: Mayan, Aztec, Incas, American and English; and one made-up: Pod People).

So after choosing the story that seems to promise a whole lot of prior to that could be successfully written to turn it into a novella of some kind (trust me, I already have, based on the actual content of this story, mentally written the entire outline of how events should unfold leading up to this particular ending, which is something I almost never do), the issue now becomes how much time I can spend mentally/physically working on it while waiting for the creaky wheels of self-publishing to advance back into my personal realm of frivolity.

The main reason as to why I'm waffling about devoting all kinds of time and energy to this novella is once I get the manuscript completely formatted for e-publishing (KDP, e-pub and Word), I'll have to apply the brakes as I need to pass on the specifics for the print version of the cover. And that can easily become a cluster....bomb of titanic proportions if I'm not careful.

So presently, I am following my own advice and have started working on yet another novella while waiting for phase one of my book to come back to me. My only hope is that I can easily pick up the proverbial pieces to the novella and re-start from where I had originally left off at, and not have it turn into something that showed so much early promise, only to flame out faster than a flambe dish at a fancy restaurant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~~~~~

The teaser blurb:

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

The short blurb:

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

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

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

The long blurb:

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

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

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

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

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

~~~~~

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

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

Episode #281: Have You Ever Challenged Yourself?

When your brain is emptier than a plastic garden gnome, you know you be in some deep dark dank pit of creative nothingness...

Anywho, today's chop suey special is called "Challenging Yourself", or if you want to tweak a well known movie quote, you can say in the voice of the well known character actor Strother Martin, "Have you ever challenged yourself?"

Specifically, as a writer, did you ever go out of your comfort zone, just to see if you could produce a quality product?

I've gone out of my comfort zone quite a few times over the years. One of the very early instance of me going out of my comfort zone, was to write a clean story.

No, really.

When I first took my writing seriously, I knew right from the get-go that I was going to write adult fiction. While I enjoyed reading clean stories, my warped dark sense of humor and my exploration of adult....topics...in my younger days basically guaranteed that cleanliness in my writing was like men reading Playboy or Penthouse for just the articles: it wasn't going to happen.

But.....one day I decided that I was in a rut and needed to try something completely different to get out of the rut. So during the course of one day (maybe two), I wrote a G-rated short story called "Cedar Mountain". That short story became one of only two short stories that I managed to get published in my career, with this one being in a now defunct e-zine called "Beat To A Pulp". 

Another challenge that I decided to inflict upon myself, was to write a story in the first person/present tense. Now considering that we're all taught almost from day one that we should be writing our stories in 3rd person/past tense, with the occasional foray into 3rd person present tense, writing a complete story in the present tense is usually an exercise in frustration.

I've been known to do bits and pieces of an overall story in the present tense, but except for maybe a viable sliver here and there, I've usually reworked those passages to make them fit better with the overall story. But I had issued myself a challenge, and the challenge was accepted.

And I had just the perfect vehicle to implement my challenge with: a previously published novella that I wasn't too happy about (trust me, there were  A LOT of things not to be happy about). So back in the hey day of that nasty little thingy that made everyone's lives miserable for the first half of the 2020's (including my house), I took that previously written novella and re-wrote it to the present tense.

Definitely were not easy to do, changing everything from the proverbial "I used to be smart." to "I am smart." left it alone for a few years, then tidied it a bit this year, so when all is said and done it will come out as an e-book only. But, the challenge was successfully completed.

Another challenge that I had decided to do early on, and this one pre-dates the previous two listed, was to write a story in the 2nd person viewpoint, which is considered to be one of the hardest view points to write in. I can't really describe it well, but if you click on the link propagated by Google, all will be answered. But just the same, the challenge was accepted.

On the upside, I succeeded in writing two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. On the downside, I succeeded in writing, rather badly, two or three one page stories in that particular viewpoint. Also on the downside, there are no surviving paper copies, but one of my old XP or Win7 computers may have a copy or two. Maybe. 

And lastly, there was one final challenge that had multiple parts, of a personal nature, that I decided to accept: write a full blown novel. By full blown, I mean something along of the lines of being a supremely detailed, thoroughly researched, with completely fleshed out characters with just enough sub-plots to keep everyone cohesive without being too overwhelming.

I had actually tried this once before with another fantasy series that ultimately died an inglorious death (that is, I recently unpublished both the print and e-book versions), mostly because I was too much of a keyboard commando, for lack of a better term, to put in the work required to fix it/complete it. But that may change in the future....if I remember what the general plot is/was supposed to be.

Anyways, me accepting this challenge was the perfect nudge that I needed. I was waffling about whether or not I should switch to writing my stories via pen and paper then transcribing to the computer, but after writing about a half dozen chapters by hand for my latest novella and discovering the pros (no major digital distractions or chronic hand fatigue, to name just a few) more than outweighed the cons, I took the plunge.

The rest, as they say, is history, as I completed a five volume fantasy series totaling some 600k words over 122+ chapters, with every single page written by hand before transcribing to the computer, during the 1Q of 2025. Total time spent was almost three years, but it was well worth it. I want to note that I did chronicle this particular journey under the tag Hot Mess, so if you want to check out in greater detail about this fantasy series, by all means check out that tag.

And believe or not, I'm not flying on air, but I have decided to challenge myself once again: this time, taking a recently finished short story and turning it into a novella. And for an added bonus, the short story itself will be the actual ending of the novella. So unlike the fantasy series, in which I had the beginning and a nominal outline for an ending as a non-moving goal post, I have to create an entire beginning and middle to arrive at the completed ending.

I believe that you should always challenge yourself as a writer, because you just never know what you can actually accomplish if you don't actually give it a try.

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

Episode #274: A Fugly Tale Of Two Novellas

Pretty sure I posted another version of this photo in late 2024, but I still think it's a cool pic. I mean, when a cat casually appears in the street to survey you, and only you, it makes you feel...special.

It's been a really slow week here in Connecticut, which usually means we're going to blog about something writing related. This time our writing related topic, like the title suggests, is about two novellas, one published and one hoping to be published, and the two radically different paths that were trodden to get where they currently are today.

Let's start at the beginning with the comparison. They were both born during a rather fertile creativity period of the very early 2010's, in which I was churning out all kinds of slop for stories as well as for my blog (I think I was doing maybe three to four blog posts a week at that point). They were both poorly written but they were near and dear to my heart, which of course meant at the time they were ready to be published.

This is where their dual journey took a major diversion at the proverbial fork in the road, with the published book going left and the unpublished one going right.

The published book caused me a whole lot of stress and a whole lot of money. Because I was simply oozing with confidence, I decided to hire a now ex-Facebook friend in 2014 who was a freelance writer and editor, to edit my book. About two to three weeks later and $300 poorer, I had a nicely edited novella and a three to four page critique on what needed to be fixed on it. I read the critique, studied the editing notes that were written on the manuscript....and promptly shelved the entire thing because I was too chicken to actually knuckle down and fix it.

Fast forward to the wonderful world of Covid-19. We're happily retired and got to work on a number of projects, including this novella. Once I had fixed all of the issues and got it to where it was ready to be published, I promptly ran head first into a two-bay garage door.

It took me a total of ten years and an online poll to come up with a plausible title for the novella. I've always had issues creating a title for my stories, and this novella was no exception. The next problem that popped up was writing a long blurb, a short blurb and a tag for the novella. This also took about a month to write both, which included some substantial help from my Facebook writing group to hammer out two rough drafts of the long blurb before nailing it on the third. Had the same issue with the short blurb and the tag, multiple drafts before nailing each.

So overall, the published book caused me a ton of stress because I had a wickedly hard time trying to write 150 +/- word long synopsis, an 80 to 100 word short synopsis and a 20 +/- word tag for a novella that I had a moderately difficult time, due to the complexity of the plot, in deciding what the story was actually about.

Now we move on to the unpublished novella.

The unpublished novella was also similar to the published novella, which also included a complex plot and a fast pace. But that's where the similarities end, as even though it had a complex plot line, the underlying event/reason (drug turf war) was very simple to understand and work with. We performed at least four rounds of editing, both in Gdoc and Word (the formatter I use works in Word as a starting point for everything else) and in that process became overly familiar with the entire novella cover-to-cover.

Because of this over-familiarity with my story, everything else associated with it became the polar opposite of what was done for the published novella. In a span of three days totaling one hour, I had a 159 word long blurb that I was happy with. It took me twenty minutes to write a 91 word short blurb, and another twenty-five minutes to create a title. Because of the difficulty I had in trying to come up with a cover concept on the fly the first time around, I sat down and spent an hour re-reading the novella and taking notes about what I want for a cover. In fact, the only thing that I have left to do for this novella before I move on to the next phase of publishing, is to come up with a proper tag.

So we have a tale of two novellas, both of which took over a dozen years to come to fruition, but took divergent paths to reach the proverbial golden ring. One fed directly into my stress/anxiety of writing blurbs, a story title and a vision for a book cover; the other ignored my stress/anxiety and instead gently stroked my ego and self-esteem to the point where I was able to complete all but one of my goals in rapid succession.

A question that I would have for you: does your stress/aggravation level ebb and flow when it comes to writing the blurbs/tags, creating a cover concept or even coming up with a title with every book that you complete? Or do you find it to be the same no matter what kind of book you write?

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

Episode #268: To Use What You Were Given Sometimes Takes Guts

"My dude has fallen over in shock and he can't sit up!"

Reality is that I have very bad balance and I happened to bump into my c.d. rack, thus the new resting position. But, after reading my post, you may agree with his response.

Today's post is probably going to be a bit of a sticky wicket, so to speak, so I'm going to do my very best to keep it sensible. I would like to also note that I will also try not to deviate too much by covering certain facets that have already been discussed in greater detail elsewhere.

Personally, this particular topic has been a steady part of my writing for the past dozen years or so, which is directly due to me creating super strong female characters that would use everything in their arsenal to accomplish their goals.

The topic in question is weaponizing sex, or as Pat Benatar eloquently stated in a song that was ahead of its time: "Sex As A Weapon". Even though this topic is geared to both sexes, this post will concentrate more on women than on men.

What prompted me to write this post was a particular YouTube music channel that I subscribe to that features a very talented female Japanese guitarist based out of South Korea. It seems like from day one, she initially attracted subscribers using what God had graced her with (with some very creative cosplay costuming that always (barely) stayed within YouTube's ToS) and kept them with her exceptional musical talent. 

So I got to thinking about how this particular issue often plays out in other venues/avenues, sometimes voluntarily: e.g. concerts, cosplaying (of all types, including what's mentioned above) and involuntarily: e.g. pro wrestling, track & field and other sporting events. And fiction, which is a separate category of its own.

note: I am not touching on the topic of adult entertainment, simply because that's an extremely volatile issue that I do not wish to engage in.

Now I'm old enough (reluctantly knocking on the front door of 60) to remember the before of the involuntary weaponization of sex, where the athletic uniforms for track & field weren't so blatantly provocative as they are now. Ditto goes for professional wrestling, where the clothing attire for women was in the vein of one piece leotards (similar to what gymnasts wear). I'm pretty sure that the after of the involuntary is something that most everyone reading this has seen the aftereffects: exceptionally tiny uniforms for track & field, and booty-shorts and tinier than normal sports-bras, along with some....enhancements for female wrestlers (if you think I'm kidding, check out any video/t.v. program/facebook page that involves ladies professional wrestling for confirmation).

For those of you who have partaken of today's music scene, or even going back at least a decade, you have seen performers dress in ways that emphasizes what they got, sometimes modestly, sometimes not. Even though they may draw you in with their talent, sometimes it's that weaponization that keeps you hooked, like a double edge sword.

Whether it's voluntary or not, it still involves making a highly personal decision about how each performer wants to use what they got in order to make money. Some people are very comfortable in their own skin, and thus have no problem in using what they got to get what they want. Others may be comfortable in their own skin, but simply do not want to cross that particular line in the sand.

Now I mentioned that fiction is its own separate category. The reason why I believe this is that every writer often injects their own morals/mores into their stories, because more often than not, a given character in a given story is an extension of some type of the writer.

In my particular case, using sex as a weapon in my stories was always thing, no matter what level of weaponization was being applied to a given story. This was basically showcased in my fantasy series "Sister v Sister" where, for example, the Queen of the Pod Planet was forced to weaponize what the deities had graced her with in order to get what she needed to effectively rule the planet. It wasn't pretty and it was quite humiliating at times, but I tried to make it so that everyone in the Queen's inner circle knew how bad it was, so they tried to help mitigate the degradation she was forced to endure as much as possible.

I think what it boils down to, at least in the real world, on how much is a woman willing to compromise their personal beliefs in order to have the career that they'd decided to pursue. The fictional world is far more nuanced, in my personal opinion, since no matter what the medium may be, it's the writer that builds that character and decides how much of themselves do they want to be injected into their characters.

For me personally, I do not question how a person, male or female, wants to use what the deities of their religion had graced them with in order to have a fulfilling life. As my very opinionated/well-informed daughter is often fond of saying, "my body, my choice.", and that is a mantra that I try to abide by (which is why, for example, tattoos do not bother me whatsoever, and even if some did, my opinion does not matter).

So my friends, what's your opinion about women using sex as a weapon, either voluntarily or involuntarily? Please keep in mind, I'm not touching upon the industry that is exclusively for adults whatsoever. I'm only touching upon what the general public, ages 15 and up, sees on a daily/weekly basis.

{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 #262: Casually Moving From That To This

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode #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