I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 34th

Boy howdy and howdy to the nerdy girl who can kick my butt with little to no exertion and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where nothing is as it seems, and what it seems is highly unlikely to actually fit in the rectangular hole.

My week has improved from last week to the point of feeling like I'm looking at my reflection in the window of my mind and wondering just exactly what the H-E-double toothpicks am I dong here.

To whit:

It was officially confirmed, after hearing it from multiple reliable sources, that my particular department will not be moving next spring.  Instead, our department (Payroll), will be realigned with Fiscal. Thus, instead of contemplating an early retirement and looking for a job in the real world at the age of a double nickel, we will now be contemplating whether or not our digs will move from one floor to another.

Also, the headache that I mentioned last week about picking up another payroll is only a temporary thing, since we are interviewing next week for another payroll clerk, to replace a good one who went back into the private sector to work at a company that specializes in backroom functions for multimedia companies.

Thus, the stress for work has been largely tampered down.

Things with the family are slowing coming around. Daughter will be moving in late August to college, and I will have to confirm the wedding rehearsal sometime next week. Additionally, I got "invited" (read: told I really need to be there or else) to a Jack & Jill thingy next month. Yay me, for I get to meet all kinds of people that I will probably never meet again (much) after the wedding in September. The only blemish this month was the passing of this little guy:

He lived a very long 18(?) years and he had a very good summer to enjoy before he left us. On his very last night he was surrounded by family and gradually drifted off to that big old backyard in the sky so as to play with the previous members of the household: Carbon (poodle); Cinders (shelter dog part boxer, shepherd and beagle) and Bubbles (ferret).

In regards to writing, I haven't yet. Still have way too much stress to touch my book, but I've begun to take some baby steps, in that I've started to re-familiarize with the 45% of book #3 that I've already written. That way, when the time comes (and it will) I'll have a basic grasp of what I need to do.

The main reason why I have so much work to do on book #2 is this: I wrote everything ass-backwards.

Normally, the iron-clad rule of thumb when writing a series (of any kind) is that you write it in proper chronological order. Ya know, book #1 (the beginning), book #2 (the middle) and book #3 (the end). You do not, repeat, do not write book #3 (ending) twice, followed by book #2 (the middle), then book #1 (the beginning).

What you accomplish is this: instead of trying to make book #2 bridge everything from book #1 into book #3, you have a bad bridge to book #3 while making book #1 look like it was written to fit book #2, instead of vice versa, with book #2 written to fit book #1 while bridging/transitioning to book #3.

This, my friends, is the monumental mountain that I need to climb and conquer so that I can continue on with my writing life. I actually do have a self-imposed deadline to start this thing, so come hell or high-water, I will get this thing completed by next year.

I tell ya, it ain't easy being a writer these days, especially when you're trying to work around the other aspects of your life in order to accomplish something.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 33rd

The song up above pretty much not only sums up my week, but my year as well. 

Every once in a great while in the literary world of G.B. Miller, stress in all of its hideous forms comes crashing down all at once. When that happens, it usually makes him quite non-competent in his writing, which usually lasts for an incredibly long time. This is one of those times.

All facets of my life have conspired to make me pretty much non-competent with my current writing project, which is volume #2 of "The Friendship Trilogy". For this particular writer, background distractions need to be very minimal at the very least. I have monster issues that need to be corrected with this book (when you have to fix every chapter, yeah, it's just that bad. some day I will elaborate on this self-inflicted shot in the foot) and unfortunately, every facet of my life has a serious stress issue that has taken precedence.

1} Family. Lets start off with the easy part. Daughter has graduated high school and this weekend we finally had her graduation party. No real stress there, but she is going to a local college here in CT to earn a masters in Social Work. Thus the beginning of stress. The plan is for her to live on campus, so all kinds of stress involved with moving, meal plans, living money, textbooks, etc. More stress is involved when it comes to tuition. Fortunately, the Fall 2019 semester is fully paid for ($34k), so we have about a fourth month gap before we have to worry about the Spring 2020 semester. So, hooray for college stress.

2} Family II. Continuing on a theme, Son is getting marred in mid September (about two months from now), so we have a copious amount of stress involved there. My particulars stress revolves around two things: wedding rehearsal dinner and the wedding itself. The rehearsal dinner is mostly a monetary stress, in that I have to pay for this particularly fascinating endeavor (looking at between $650 and $700}, while the wedding itself will be majorly stressful. Note, the last time I work a tux when about a decade ago when my brother got married. So, hooray for wedding stress.

3} Work. Ah yes, the 1200lb/kg elephant in the room. Where to begin...well, for starters, my employer (the state of CT) is looking to consolidate its backroom functions (i.e HR, Payroll, WC, FMLA) into one antiseptic-morale-crushing location, where you're not allowed to have anything personal adorning your cubicle and you become one with your new agency. A lot of people, including myself, are extremely unhappy about this move. On a personal level, I've started job hunting within, looking for something that will prevent me from transferring out to that other agency. Barring that, I am giving strong consideration to early retirement, of which I will qualify for after my b'day in May 2020, taking a crappy pension and looking for a new job in the real world.

Also, I just picked up another large payroll, so there's a lot of stress involved with that. And this not a completely unexpected move, because a wonderful co-worker of mine is going on a six month maternity leave in roughly two weeks, so her payrolls have to be covered and other job duties will have to be covered. On the upside, I will be losing a payroll once a new clerk gets hired (yup, more stress). So, hooray for work stress.

So all of these absolutely lovely background distractions are the concrete reasons as to why I haven't given thought one to tackling the behemoth that is volume #2. There are a lot issues involved with this novel that have to be fixed, and next week, I will post a very cautionary tale on how writing out of order can create an epic blowback that can take months to recover from

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode IWSG the 6th

IWSG

Boy howdy and how you all doing these days, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, who likes to talk the talk, walk the walk and ruin the rune

As ya'll know what day it is, and it certainly ain't Joe Camel day, we'll dispense with the usual intro and move on to the very post in question. Or the nub of my gist.

The topic of conversation today is: procrastination.

Yes, that bane of every writer's existence and the cause of everyone's collective brain cramp.

One case in point is this blog post. I procrastinated in writing this blog post so badly that I literally started writing this thing around 8:15 last night (EST/EDT, I can't keep track any more). Nothing like the fear of being invited to leave to get yourself off your buttocks and get the job done.

Another case in point is getting back to the item that you shelled out serious wampum for someone to edit the living daylights out of, and of which still needs serious work on to make it extraordinarily presentable to the masses.

I got my wonderful little novel back (complete with a solid 10 page chapter summary, a very solid 38 page editorial overview, the edited copy and the super clean final copy) in very early June. Now, I actually didn't look at it for about two weeks, since I had an extreme amount of family stuff (not drama) going on in those two weeks that prevented me from giving it my fully undivided attention. But I did read the editorial overview, just to give myself a basic understanding of what I was looking at.

Then, nothing.

I didn't look at it, didn't think about, didn't even crack open the edited copy on my computer. Why? I don't rightly know. Maybe it was because I had to face the reality of having to major add-ons/clarifications for each and every chapter. I've done this before with the previous book, but that took me about one hour total to work all the suggestions in. This, was something that was (and to a certain degree) way out of my league.

Finally, during the last weekend of June, I made the decision that come the July 4th holiday weekend, I would return to my novel, crack open the edited version, whip out that chapter summary and get to work on making it something truly unique yet a 100% perfect bridge novel for this trilogy.

Procrastination. It's a horrible thing to have and an even more horrible thing to go through. But sometimes, you just gotta give yourself a good swift kick in the ass to get you moving.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 28th

Amazon

Girl howdy and howdy to the boy who freezes people in mid rant with a raised eyebrow, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where talk is cheap, action is expensive and everyone is celebrating the 70th anniversary of 1984.

First off, we would like to apologize for the one day lateness of today's post. I belatedly realized that if I want to apply what I usually do at work when presented with an issue that requires a down-the-road deadline (i.e. 4 days) in my blog world, I need to start writing the post in the middle of the week, as opposed to the either the day before or the day of.

Last week, we touch upon the fact that we received our manuscript back from our wonderful editor, which presented us with the brilliant idea of baring my writing soul to the blogging world {note, no sarcasm is intended or inferred}, which we promptly acted on.

So I thought for this post, I would cover what I managed to do right (the positive feedback that we all need to receive as writers) with The Friendship Continues. Within the next two weeks, we will cover what managed not to do write (critical feedback that we all need to receive in order to grow as writers).

1} To lightly paraphrase my editor, she said the following: "This is a hugely inventive world you've presented here, straddling comedy and sex in a proficient way, and demonstrating areas of solid humor. You've got some very good one-liners and I think your sense of humor leans naturally towards prose phrases and a celebration of incongruity."

Being that this was my first really solid attempt at world building, I will take this sliver of goodness and use it to stroke my ego.

2} I was complimented on my distinct lack of serious info-dumping, instead relying on small tidbits sprinkled throughout the story.

I've read stories where entire chapters were devoted to info-dumping, which really turned me off as a reader. So I vowed not to do this as a writer.

3} Sometimes, you write in a p.o.v. that you absolutely no idea that it actually existed, and simply thought you were writing in a default p.o.v. In this particular case, I wrote in the omniscient voice, apparently with full chutzpah and enthusiasm, with my previous novel and this one. And I managed to follow one of the rules quite well.

Unless the characters are psychic, do not give them psychic powers.

4} My sense of humor just shines throughout the story in all kinds weird and wonderful ways.

It has taken me years to refine my sense of humor to make it palatable for the written word. Blogging has definitely helped, as well as dealing with co-works, who are bottomless well of straight lines.

Those 4 positive points are all what has jumped out at me after reading my 36 page editorial overview twice. I'm sure there's a few more buried within, but those are in the "this-is-good-but-this-over-here-has-some-issues-that-need-some-attention", which we'll go over in not-quite-so-excruciating-detail next time. Also for next time, I will share with everyone what her ultimate conclusion of this novel as it presently stands.

Until then, have a sparkly non-chaotic week with one and all!

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 27th

Books by G.B. Miller

Boy howdy and howdy to the ingenue who can destroy others with just a pout and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where cliches go to become resurrected and turned into a nifty little song, and originality is groomed to be the Master of my Domain.

So, we've gone off the proverbial path as it applies to my writing for the past few posts, and while it was refreshing change of pace (at least for me), it's time to get back into the swing of things and return to our chosen path of destruction.

Earlier last week, I finally received my manuscript back from my editor. I actually squealed with delight upon receiving it, because that meant I would be finally able to move on to the next phase getting book #2 published, which is getting a book cover for it, and since I'm currently on an almost week's vacation, I figured it would be a good time to work on it.

Right.

I printed out both the chapter review summary (20 pages) and the editorial overview (36 pages) and got ready to spend a few hours this past Saturday reading and digesting what the editor did to/for my manuscript.

As per my norm, I started reading bass-ackwards. Suffice to say, shock and awe was the call of the day, and I mean that in the positive way that it should be taken. Once I picked up my jaw from the grass and reattached it, I started reading the editorial overview. I stopped after eight pages. Not because I didn't agree with what was written, which I 100% absolutely did, but because I quickly realized that I needed to carve out a better block of quiet time with no distractions (I had originally started reading this while listening to music on my smart phone), so that I could properly digest and comprehend the good, the bad and the ugly.

Long story short, I wrote this trilogy strangely, in that I wrote book #3 first (about 20% completed and tossed), book #2 second, book #1 third and book #3 will be written fourth. Weird I know, but this is the brutal end result of inspiration.

From what I gleaned from the 8 pages that I'd read, I did some things quite well, but properly writing a series was not/is not one of them. Suffice to say, I do have a moderate amount of work ahead of me in order to make this book shine. I did have to do some additional work with book #1 based on the sound advice that a different editor gave me, but the additional work needed for this book will be uncharted territory for me. Thanks to my wonderful editor, this book is about 85% ready for publication. The remaining 15% will be entirely up to me, which I will attack with gusto once I read the editorial overview from cover to cover as well as the chapter summary (again) to see just exactly what I need to do.

So, in the end, this post becomes the intro for a new series of posts about editing, specifically, what I need do to make this book the best it can be. Next week, I will cover the good, the bad, and the ugly of what my strengths and weaknesses were with this book.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stores To Tell! Episode the 17th

Girl howdy and howdy to the boy who enjoys being a manly-man in public, a manly-man in private and a girly-man in music videos, and welcome to the irregular triangle literary world that is G.B. Miller, who takes no guff (archaic phrase), no lip (another archaic phrase) and will never offer you a tissue for your issue (chat room insult).

Before we get into the topic of today, we must first present the picture of the week.

Spring will soon be springing, so don't forget to stock up on those hot-dogs and buns for those warmer days that you to do some out door grilling. Thems good eats fer shure.

The topic for today's post is blurbs.

And you know how I just simply love writing blurbs. They're in my top three list of writing related projects that I do not like to do, right behind the dreaded synopsis and query letter.

As a point of reference, it took me 13 attempts before I succeeded in writing a blurb for the first book in my trilogy, The Friendship Has Begun. Most of the failure was due to 1} starting at the wrong reference point, 2} starting at the right reference point and 3} procrastination.

For book #2, The Friendship Has Continued, I decided to be very proactive. This was primarily due to the fact that the option that I had chosen with the freelance editor that I had hired, was a 9 week turnaround. This meant, among other things, that I would be a bit more involved with editing process with this book than I was with the previous book.

So with roughly a three week window of down time to play with, I got right to work on writing the blurb. On the plus side, because this was the middle book of the trilogy, I had the benefit of referring to the 1st book. On the minus side, because this was the middle book of a trilogy, I had the unenviable task of working in a smidgen of the 1st book into this blurb.

After the 2nd attempt, I posted a snippet on my FB page in order to 1} show people what kind of progress I was making and 2} get some advice on how to make it better. Got quite a few likes on the former and some excellent advice on the latter.

So off I went again with advice in hand. One day and two attempts later, I had my blurb. All 264 words. Granted, it does seem to be a bit long, so I do plan on doing a little judicious editing, but basically, this is it.

As Nikia prepared for her wedding, little did she know the exchange of the two sacred words would change the lives of her and her betrothed in ways they could never imagine. After her surrealistic return from an alternative world, how many of the friends she had made there would infiltrate her new life? 

Pushing that slice of paranoia to a seldom used corner of her mind, Nikia turned her attention back to helping her sisters get ready. She cajoled surly attitudes, massaged bruised egos and pumped up dual self esteems to a high glossy finish. Only when her sisters had gotten to the point of equaling her in lusciousness did she feel confident enough to step outside and present her total self to the family and friends that had gathered to witness what they long thought inconceivable.

The Friendship Has Continued continues the journey that Nikia Robinson had taken up, by focusing on her unforgettable wedding to Raymond Hugo as well as her equally memorable honeymoon. Does her new found strength and attitude help her carry the day? Or does she slip back into who she was prior to? Even worse, do her newly made friends from a few weeks ago show up to infiltrate and potentially ruin the happiness that she and her sisters had finally found for themselves?

From the raucous wedding celebration in rural Connecticut to the utter weirdness of Southern Virginia, The Friendship Has Continued will put you front and center on a surrealistic journey that will continue to push it to the very core of your emotional and spiritual well-being.

Let me know what you think.

Tune in next week, when we'll go off on a related tangent that just might turn into another short series of what makes G.B. function as a writer.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 12th

A boyish howdy and howdy to the girlie girl who knows how to ground and pound 'til the opposition screams for mercy and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where the four seasons exist in a way that brings happiness to all and not necessarily in the traditional way.

Today's post is being composed a few days early, as opposed to the usual day before/day of, which is basically due to the fact that it's pay week at work, and with the next upcoming holiday (that's right, your tax dollars are super hard @ work paying 95% of all guv'ment employees to sit on their collective duff and doing nothing of import) I'll be frazzled into obnoxiousness.

Kind of like politicians, right?

Another heavy duty factor that is somewhat related, albeit peripherally, is that I have to buy a new printer and make a decision on a new editor this week. For some unknown, and probably very expensive, reason one half of my printer decided not to work. After much aggravation, which included dealing with the worst tech support that a tech company could ever have (HP), we have isolated the issue to something being wrong with a component that deals with toner.

Suffice to say, it will be cheaper to buy a new printer than it would be to get it fixed. I won't say time is of the essence, but considering M$ is ending support for Win7 in early 2020, it's imperative that I have a printer that is still compatible with Win7. Once next year rolls around, Win7 will become my writing computer and a Mac of some type will become my main computer of choice. Ye olden XP will be lovingly packed away never to be heard from again...unless I can't make a ye olden floppy disk drive work in Win7.

In regards to a new editor, I posted an s.o.s in one of my writing groups and received a few suggestions, one of which came from well known writer (in the U.K.) and was 2nded by the admin of the group, who is also a well known writer in the U.K. Turns out that the editor in question is well known in my writing group under a pen name and I've had the occasional contact with him throughout the past year.

If he does a good job, this will put me into a bit of a quandary for my 3rd novel, in that I'll have two good editors to choose from. I don't want to disappoint either one of them but this will be a difficult selection when the time comes to publish the final novel of the trilogy.

As always, you can follow me on FB and check out my writings via the book covers. Have a good week everyone and I'll talk to you again next Sunday, when the topic of choice will either be cliches or throwaway scenes.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 11th

Boy howdy and howdy to the boy who enjoys teasing the girls but secretly has a man crush on himself, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where souls hardier than myself drive scooters when the wind chill makes the real temperature drop to 'tween land.

Today's post will be semi-fluffy, in that I don't have much in the way of meatiness to write about, only seafood samplers for topics.

We'll start the festivities with ye olden Tumblr intro quote. Today's quote is from my post of April 8, 2017. The post itself covers one particular plot device {motorcycles} that I'd used in book #1, The Friendship Has Begun.

Greetings and welcome to the wonderful skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where improper language is the norm, excessive verbiage is Norm and we don't own a cute kitten named Nermal.

Kind of brief, which was due to having fun with the word "norm", and to the point.

I'm finally finished with my 4th (or was it 5th?) round of editing for book #2, The Friendship Has Continued. However, I have run into a very small snag, which is that the editor of choice is solidly booked until August. Fantastic for her, because being gainfully self-employed is a very good thing indeed. Not so good for me, since while I'm not working on an insanely tight deadline, I do have one, which is late Spring/early Summer 2019.

Which leaves me where? Where is checking out the editing services that my formatter has as her side hustle. She charges a flat rate of $50 per 10k words, so I'm looking at an initial cost of between $250 to $300. I'll probably do a little more thinking about it but it looks like I'll be using Go Published for all of my editing and formatting this time around.

One of the toughest things for me to write, besides an outline and a synopsis (of any length) is a blurb. Blurbs are what makes me procrastinate so badly that I would rather listen to bad hit pieces about the President than write one. But, it had to be done.

While I was busy transferring updated chapters/book from one USB drive to another, I found the remnants of one that I wrote for a writing prompt in my writer's group last year. It goes something like this.

She was an hybrid woman who who had just escaped from an abusive relationship and was near death from starvation when he unexpectedly stumbled across her while out doing his morning jog. He crawled back over to check out her condition and what he saw turned his stomach and made his blood boil. He picked her up with the intention of carrying her to the local veterinary clinic when he suddenly felt something wet run across his ear. He turned and raised his eyebrows questioningly. She responded by flashing her teeth before pointing at his neck and pleading with her eyes. Quickly swallowing back a rising tide of nausea, his first reaction was to drop her and leave her to the whims of Father Nature. But, after staring deep into her eyes, he decided that maybe, just maybe, this could turn into something so far outside the norm that it would be a delightful relationship to pursue. So he nodded, she caressed his check for a moment before sinking her teeth, with as much delicacy she could muster, into his neck. And that, my friends, was the start of the most outrageous love/hate relationship you've ever seen.

For a first draft blurb, it's pretty decent. Covers all the major points and would work quite well if the book it was attached to was a stand-alone. But since the book is volume #2 of a trilogy, it will have to be severely tweaked. But it seems like a good piece to start with, which is twenty-five of the battle being won.

As always, you can check out my writings via the book covers on the side, or peruse my vast blog archives (via the page tab up top). Have a very fascinating Valentine's Day this week, no matter who you love or lust after.


{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 9th

Girl howdy and howdy to the girl who is girlie enough to be the happy mistress of the light but butch enough to bring out your submissive side publicly with no shame, and welcome to the nifty literary world of G. B. Miller, where the perpetual question of "If I was up, would you be down?" will never, ever be answered by him.

As per the norm, a picture from my vast 10+ year archive of photos, of which the majority can be found in my pictorial blog Pictures for Smarties{front page tab is provided for your ease of convenience}.

I have no real comment on this but it sure is cute, eh?

I thought I would add something new to today/s post, something I'm calling "Classic Quotated". This will be a weekly-to-semi-monthly quote of ye olden defunct Tumblr intros that were designed to show off both my dry wit and naughty sense of humor.

Today's installment is from ye olden post of October 27, 2018, and as you'll see, it touches two very real ongoing hourly/daily/weekly occurrences. Disclaimer: I am a moderate Republican, but did not vote for him, and I did suffer a direct hit from a now ex-FB Canadian friend (her choice, not mine) who is infected with said disease.

Boy howdy and howdy to the girl who likes to be the husband in the relationship and welcome to the wonderfully skewered literary world that is G.B. Miller, where dealing with Trump Derangement Syndrome is a daily occurrence in socialized media and posting "Illegal immigrants are criminals" is hate speech.

As they say, FacialSlapBook is like a gallon of rotten egg nog that tastes absolutely divine.

Anywho, to the writing up-to-date!

We're still busy merrily chugging along with our current round of editing, as I'm now working on chapter 12. I've sliced about 500+ words from the book so far and I'm sure more will be sliced by the editor. One of the many things that I'm trying to reduce {as per the excellent advice from my editor} is the amount of personal pronouns that I've used in the story. By "personal pronouns", I mean that I'm using the characters names way too much (like almost every two paragraphs), so I'm trying to substitute those particular pronouns with "he/she/him/her", and so far I'm doing pretty good.

And now, we feature a right hand "K" shaped u-turn for your enjoyment, which is specifically writing related.

As most people can confirm, I'm a linear kind of guy. At work, I always move in the way of "A-B-C-D-E" whenever I'm doing something. Whenever I'm forced to deviate (usually involuntarily) from a particular plan of attack, I can get highly irritable. With writing, it's pretty much the same deal. I can only write in a linear order: the beginning, the middle(s); the end. I can't do it any other way.

Flashback to late Summer 2016.

I had decided to re-write an early vanity published novella for my next project. I dug out the original manuscript to use as a basic outline, and proceeded to start writing. Happily oblivious, I soon had about 4 complete chapters written and I was doing sooooooooooooooo good that I felt invincible. But then, my mind played a dirty trick on me. It said, "G.B., what about that prequel that you wrote some ten years ago?"

And just like that, my happy oblivion was brutally eliminated with extreme prejudice. I immediately stopped writing and started looking for the prequel, which I found about a half hour later. We ate the dust bunnies (with coleslaw), re-read the slushie and commenced to writing. Roughly six months later, in the Spring of 2017, we had a doozy of a 1st draft for a novel. Once completed, I got ready to go back to work on my previous project and congratulated myself on a job well done.

But, tooting my own horn quickly turned sour and out of tune. Why? Because that insidious memory of mine once again spoke up. It said, "Ya know, it sounds like you need a prequel to the prequel."

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

I beg of you, please don't make me do it. I just can't take on that kind of responsibility. I'm not that strong enough to do it. My writing is good, but that would require me to take it up another notch or two. I'm old to do this. But...but...but.

But nothing. My friends, in a nutshell, I went out of my comfort zone by writing a non-linear trilogy.  I started what would become book #3 (version 1) first. Switched gears to write what I thought would be book #1, but became book #2. Then I wrote book #1, which came out last year. Trashed 1.0 of book #3 and ultimately wrote half of book #3 version 2.0

Yay.

As always, you can follow me on FB, check out my blogging archives as well as my books via the book covers and page tabs.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

I Have Stories To Tell! Episode the 8th

Girl howdy and howdy to the boy who is so comfortable in his masculinity that he has no problem in showing off his devotion to his lady love by wearing a customized dog collar and leash in public, and welcome to the skewered literary world of G.B. Miller, where nothing of note happens in his world without his direct involvement...whether it hurts him or not.

Since we're about to get gobsmacked with a vortex of weather cold enough to shrivel your hair follicles to nothingness, I thought for this blog's weekly picture, we show a house covered with some soft fluffy white stuff.

It has been a crazy week in G.B. Miller's world and he has no idea on where to start, but like a certain well known comedian would say, let us begin at the beginning.

Work has been normally nutty at best and since I've talked about ad nauseum about work (I's a state guv'ment employee who DOESN'T deal with the general public on any kind of basis, seldom or otherwise), we'll kick it back over to the writing mode. But first, a blast from the past.

I've always abhorred censorship in all of its ugly forms (including when I'm forced to do it either on my blog or on FaceSlapBook) but I especially abhor it on radio. While I do understand the need to scrub/muddle F-bombs (which is why that kind of stuff is limited to college radio on the overnight or Internet radio) from songs, which can sometimes ruin the climax in a song {see RATM "Killing In The Name Of"}, I absolutely detest it when they, meaning commercial radio, scrubs non-swear words from popular songs.

A classic diatribe about radio censorship from ye olden blog Cedar's Mountain, dated January 4, 2013, for you to peruse and enjoy.

 And now, the noun-verb-adverb-adjective-other-types-of-grammar update portion of our post.

Like I stated earlier, this week has been certifiably nutty, so the mundaneness that is editing has been the oasis that helps me keep my sanity. Well that, and listening to music that normally helps me fall asleep too.

I'm wired differently when it comes to music and writing. To create, I need silence/P&Q in order to get things done. I discovered early on that if I listen to music or anything else while writing, I wind up concentrating more on the music that I do the writing. Editing is a entirely different animal. I can listen to almost anything while editing, including sports, but I find that if I really want to concentrate on what I'm editing, I'll listen to somewhat non-intrusive music for background noise.

I say "non-intrusive" since I will often tune out what I'm listening to when I'm doing other things. Bad if you're listening to a genre you really like (i.e. heavy metal, country or americana), but good if you're listening to a genre that you like but only can take it in small doses, so if you tune out and come back, you haven't missed much.

Back in the summer of my discontent {aka 2018} I discovered a fascinating Internet radio conglomo called SomaFM. Currently, SomaFM (which is 100% listener supported and which I will probably donate to once I get my finances under control) carries 30 different musical genres that cater to almost every taste under the sun.

I personally have the following, some of which I tap into to help me edit: FolkForward {folk}; BootLiquor {their version of Americana}; ThistleRadio {Celtic}; Lush {mellow/sensual electronica w/vocals}; BAGel Radio {non-commercial alternative/indie}; and a new one that I just added called Metal Detector {heavy metal}. The 1st, 3rd, 4th and 5th listed is what I'll use as white nose while editing. Low volume plus not knowing any of the artist equals a good time to be had by all. I also listen to bluegrass and eclectic music from Radio Paradise as well.

This my friends, helps me stay in the proper frame of mind for book I'm currently editing. Nothing worse than listening to something that does't work with what you got. So far, it's been working extremely well for me.

As always, you can follow me on Facebook and check out my various writings by clicking on the book covers or Books by G.B. Miller.

{c} 2019 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved