Episode #345: Breaking The Fourth Wall Like "Crazy Eddie"

Flashback to the years of yore, when the local farm in the middle of suburbia had milk cows grazing in the fields. I believe they still run a fruit and vegetable stand in the summer.

Note about the title: Crazy Eddie's was a short-lived,  loud and brash electronics store from the 1980's in the tri-state area (NY, NJ & CT), who's gimmick was that the spokesman would go on epic 20-30 second rant about electronics and shout "Shop at Crazy Eddie's, his prices are insane!" 

~~~~~~~~

I was reorganizing/condensing a couple of half inch binders into what I thought was a suitable one inch binder for a short story collection to publish in the future, when I came across one of my rewritten short stories from a few years ago.

Glancing through the pages, I noticed that I had managed to write something quite odd in the story. This wasn't the first time that I had noticed this oddity, since I had previously come across a sticky note that said I should write a blog post about it

What this sticky note was alluding to, was the oddity that I had written into the story, which was having the narrator step out of the story, thus breaking the proverbial fourth wall, and talk directly to the reader. I've seen this particular trope done in movies and t.v. shows, but never seen it done in a story before.

Anyways, it was about three sentences in length where the narrator steps out of the story to address the reader directly about a pivotal event in the story, before stepping back into the story to continue his narration.

Now this was not something that was planned ahead of time. If I recall correctly, this just happened, rather sloppily, organically the first time around, so just cleaned it up on the rewrite.

But as a favorite former blogger would often say whenever he went on a slightly irrelevant tangent, I blogress. So, back to the topic at hand.

The story in question was written mostly in the 1st person/present tense p.o.v. I say mostly, because the narration would shift to 3rd person for events that the narrator wasn't there for. Once that particular arc was completed, it slipped back into the 1st person p.o.v.

I basically did this throughout the story, with the narrator doing his thing, then he would shift over to being a peripheral part of a particular scene (if it all), then shift back to narrating. I don't think you call it 'head hopping' in the traditional sense of the phrase, as he was the only persona presenting the entire story through his point of view. So I didn't have multiple 1st person p.o.v. throughout, just his.

For my short story collections, I wrote fourteen short stories, with may two original (that is, non-rewritten) and one essay, and that was the only story that was written in this weird 1st/3rd p.o.v. hybrid. All the others were written in the normal 3rd p.o.v. that we all know and have a love/hate relationship with.

I have a couple of other previously blog published short stories that I want to rewrite. And because you just know that I love to challenge myself, I decided to rewrite these stories from the inside out. In other words, I have a beginning and I have an ending. What I need is a new larger middle that will get me from the beginning to that ending as bumpy and as raucous as humanly possible.

I'm not quite sure if I had a purpose with this blog post, as it was more of general observations on how I did something radically different with my story completely by accident, and how it workout when the dust had settled.

I guess my question to everyone would be this: did you do something with a story that went completely against the rules for storytelling, yet somehow it worked out in the end?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode #341: Eighteen Years? Eighteen Years! Eighteen Years.

Memory Monday: Back when my life had structure, but no real meaning, we would take pics of random happenings at work. For example, this fine outstanding example of an unhealthy work lunch. Except the apple. Even now I still have a piece of fruit with my lunch.

Imagine if you will, it's 2008, and on the advice of your cyber friends, you decide to start a blog. And you call it Cedar's Mountain, based on the mountain you live across from. And you're happy as a pig slopping away in their sty, because you found a place where you can write to your heart's content.

You first start off with a punishing pace of two blog posts a day, every other day. Six months of burnout convinces you to drop your output to once a day every other day. You maintain that pace for a number of years and all is good.

Gradually though, the spark that kept you going starts to dim, so initially you change your posting output to revive that spark; then when that stopped working, you create another blog for your writing output. That seems to do the trick, and with that spark revived, you decide to create a picture blog, which was soon followed by an adult-oriented blog and a short story blog.

But like before, that spark starts to fade a little, so again you tweak the amount of weekly posting that you perform and life becomes good.

~~~~

Imagine if you will, it's 2026, and surprisingly to the people that know you, you're still blogging. Your output is down to one post per week, but you're still feeling good. Then one day, while you're posting a link to Meta, because Meta long ago dropped a feature that allowed you to submit your RSS feed and have it automatically update to your friend's news-feeds, a though suddenly appears in your frontal lobes. You peruse it and it asks a question: how many blog posts did you write?

Curiosity piqued, I meander through all seven blogs that I have created in the past 18 years {tabs above give a brief synopsis for four of them}:

Cedar's Mountain

Books By G.B. Miller

Pictures For Smarties

Flashing Georgie's Shorts

It's Always Saturday In Suburbia

Father Nature's Corner

I Have Stories!

And counted up all of the posts that I had written for all seven of those blogs. After seeing the finals total on my calculator, my jaw dropped, figuratively speaking.

2,017 blog posts in 18 years. Or, if you're a number obsessed weird stats nerd like I am, this averages out to 112.05 posts per year, or 252.125 posts per blog.

While both of these stats sound amazing on paper, you have to remember the slanted reality: I started with six to eight posts per week in 2008, and by 2026 I was down to one post per week. In a specific example, from December 2018 thru early August 2026, I produced a total of 358 posts just for the blog you're currently reading. And my book blog only has one actual post {but lots of tabs} after I had done a clean-up/overhaul of that blog's content.

Still, 2,017 posts is nothing to sneeze at. At the bare minimum, it shows how much I've pivoted over those 18 years when it came to finding topics to write about. From work to my writing, from music to books, humor to general observations, and everything else that you can reasonably think off, became fodder {in a good way} for six of my seven blogs.

In a weird parallel universe, my blogs became a text version about nothing. The only common thread throughout those eighteen years of merriment was me, myself, and I.

Truth be told, even though my blogging is a serious extension of me as a person and as a writer, and I do enjoy blogging as a creative outlet, I'm not quite sure how long I should continue doing this. Eighteen years is a long time, and in fact, those years spent blogging is almost half the time I've spent being married {currently sitting at 37 years, almost as long as most federal politicians have been in office}.

But, in the very old children's song goes, I will have to continue putting one foot in front of another, and see where this blogging journey of mine takes me.

Who knows, maybe someday it will earn me an all expense paid trip to Butte, Montana!

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

Episode #329: What Hath The Vinyl Gods Brought Unto Me?

As I've mentioned previously, I have a relatively large music collection, divided between out of date media (cassettes); stubborn media that doesn't believe they're out of date (c.d.s) and media that has been in and out of date more times than a coffee drinkers daily intake (45s & LPs mostly).

This week's post is about that pesky runt of the bunch, a runt where original copies stopped being produced by the conglomos by 1992: 45s.

My 45 collection isn't what you would call huge, unless you think having nearly 1,000 units covering nearly a bakers dozen worth of genres huge.

However, my 45 collection came about in roughly the same way that my L.P. collection grew: 20% of actual money being spent, and 80% being offered said items after having a version of the following conversation:

Strange friend/acquaintance/family member: "Hey G.B.! I found this box of 45's left on the side of the road. Do you want them?"

Me: "Sure."

I should note that this did actually happen. My brother was taking one of my children to a b'day party, and he found a box of 45s by the side of the round that someone was throwing out.

Now the main reason why the percentage of 45s purchased is so ridiculously low, boils down to a strange facet about me. A fact that you've probably never came across in your entire life: I never really listened to music in a way that most people did while growing up. Sure I listened to it on the radio (mostly AM Radio), but I never actually went out to buy the music I was listening to. For me, music was something more akin to pleasant background noise than anything else.

I didn't actually start acquiring that particular media until I was in my late 20's, and ever since I been making a good dent into making up for lost time. Especially after I started working for the state in the mid 1990s, and I had co-workers who exposed me to other genres than what I grew up listening to.

I would now like to present to y ou a few samples from my collection. Please excuse the minor water damage on the covers, for they were caught in the minor basement flooding of 2021.

~~~~~~

1} Boxed set of The Carpenters.

This one is a little weird, in that I actually read the liner notes on the box for this post (I know, slap my hand with a ruler). It's a tribute to The Carpenters that originally came out in 1994 (reissued as a CD in 2011, now out of print in that format, but available as a download). Because this came out in 1994, it features such eclectic artists as: Sonic Youth, 4 Non-Blondes, Mathew Sweet and Grant Lee Buffalo, just to name a few. All performers who put their spin on the classic Carpenter music.

~~~~~~

2} Boxed set of Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite #1.

I have a treasure trove of boxed classical sets, some were pressed in the regular black vinyl, others like this one, were pressed in color vinyl. Back in the late 50's/early 60's, color vinyl was a thing that companies would use to make their product stand out (ex. I have a polka 45 that is pressed in green vinyl). RCA Victor was no exception, as back then I think their only major rock act they had was Elvis, with everyone else being in the classical/easy listening/popular* music genres.

*Back then, 'popular music' referred to what we call "The Standards" today, that every ye oldies musician sings trying to stay relevant (e.g. Rod Stewart).

Speaking of popular music of the 50's/early 60's, we have the following EP collection.

~~~~~~

3} Jackie Gleason presents.

This music was the type you would often hear in the background of "serious" movies of that era. These were pieces that were "conducted" by Jackie Gleason, after he had "chosen" theme as per his "musical tastes".

Now the sarcasm peppered in that previous paragraph, is directly due to me taking the liner notes with a mega dose of skepticism. Knowing what I've learned about the entertainment business over the decades, especially for that era, I'm leaning towards his image/name being used in order to sell more records, and thus, just like how it's done in ye modern times (image/name is everything these days).

Anyways, these are just a sample of the type of 45's I have sitting in my collection: a majority of original music sprinkled with a few reissues. with the majority being acquired via the simple method mentioned at the beginning. I will say I do find them to be a fascinating history/look at musical tastes and company products/logos.

Have a smashing Monday and sparkling week.

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

Episode #328: It Certainly Isn't Christmas, But We Can Still Celebrate Them Movies

Say "Hi!" to the squirrel that we love to hate on. As I've previously stated we came to a non-peaceful resolution (like the US and the rest of the world), and so long as he stays in his lane, I'll stay in mine.

Like most of you, I grew up on the Christmas specials and movies that were part and parcel of our existence. And like some of you, my tastes changed as I grew older. For example, by the 2000s, the only Christmas specials I would watch would be the Charlie Brown Christmas movie and the annual 24 hour showing of A Christmas Story on TBS.

Fast forward to the mid 2010s, and the only Christmas movies I was watching were on Hallmark, which included a multitude of remakes of A Christmas Carol. Note: George C Scott and Harry Winkler had excellent versions, while Jack Palance made a truly bizarre one set in the west where the famous refrain of "Bah! Humbug!" was replaced with "Blah, blah, blah."

Fast forward to 2026.

I'm at the point in my life where I now enjoy an eclectic mix of Christmas movies that oddly enough, run the gamut of today's movie rating system (American style). So in this post, I would like to present three charming examples of the type of Christmas themed movies that I enjoy (and will try to buy copies of because physical media is cheap).

1} A Grandpa For Christmas (2007)

This charming movie features Ernest Borgnine as a divorced grandfather who is also a retired actor, is estranged from his daughter via parental alienation. One day he receives a phone call from a distant hospital telling him his daughter was badly injured in a care accident and that his granddaughter needs a temporary guardian.

It's one of those gradual family reconciliation movies, where the daughter finds out what her father was really doing for her behind the scenes. It's not quite maudlin or a tearjerker, and fortunately it's not one of those typical Hallmark-type of movies, but comes very close to it. It feels dated, in that everything is circa early 2000s (e.g. IPod) but it's an enjoyable movie.

2} Lost Christmas {2011}

I have mixed feelings about Eddie Izzard. Much like a few others who I can't tolerate as a person but their output is fantastic (e.g. Sean Penn, John Cusack, Kevin Spacey), he is a good actor (except at IMDb has him now listed as an actress) and this movie, that I found on cable, is no exception.

The very short non-Wikipedia synopsis: "As night falls on Christmas Eve, an enigmatic man named Anthony awakens on the streets of Manchester (UK) with no memories of the past and the unique ability to locate the lost."

To me, the underlying theme of the movie, which I only understood after watching it, was "What if?" What if one choice was made instead of the other, would the trajectory of a person's life change?

Actions have consequences, and the actions of one had a profound effect on the lives of others. This movie is particularly dark, but I believe it realistically portrays a slice of life that is often overlooked during the Christmas season.

This movie has a ranking of 7/10 on IMDb and 89% on Rotten Tomatoes.

3} Bad Santa (2003)

I like Billy Bob Thornton as an actor and as a person. His first one, which he wrote, directed and produced, Sling Blade, is a fantastic movie about a simple man trying to reintegrate back into society after a long stay in an asylum. Highly recommend.

But Bad Santa is an over the top film of crass mayhem. Billy Bob plays one of those mall Santas, who plans a dept store robbery with his "elf". Along the way, he comes an authority figure to a young tween who severely needs one, and brings his "girlfriend" into the mix (there is a memorable three word exclamation that I cannot say on this blog, but if you mention it, most people will automatically know what movie you're talking about).

It should come to nobody's surprise that I really enjoyed this movie, which also features Bernie Mac in one of his last movie roles and John Ritter, as it had reminded me a little of Animal House with its controlled chaos.

I think one of the reasons that I enjoy these three movies, is that Christmas isn't overwhelming the movie, but it's more like a good background noise that isn't too intrusive, but let's you know it's there. To me, these movies have good stories that are enhanced by the Christmas season, instead of being overwhelmed by the same, and that makes them enjoyable.

Thanks for stopping by for another round of what G.B. likes to watch in celluloid. Have a fantastic week.

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

Episode #326: The Family Bookcase {6}: Dictionaries

I caught my parakeet in an unguarded moment the other day. I usually see them using their swing at night when I'm about to cover them up, so when I was going about making my lunch and saw them, I took a few pics. The clipped curtain is so that they can peek through the window to see the outside word.

Way back in the day, when computers were either a nifty concept or something reserved for the academic word and the Internet existed in the windmills of the minds of those same academics, we had these various times called "dictionaries" and "thesauruses", that we would use when we were doing various projects that required a degree of brain cells usage that simply isn't done today.

These times often came in various sizes and lengths, depending on your personal situation. You had bulky desk top sizes that naturally stayed on your desk, small pocket sizes that you could take with you or throw into your desk, and finally, you had mid-size versions that you could either throw in your desk or stand on your desk.

For some bizarre reason, our family bookcase has between one-half and one dozen types of dictionaries (usually Websters) from various decades. Why? Your guess is as good as mine. I know a couple of them were mine: a pocket version and a regular version of Webster dictionaries. I think I even had a pocket version of Rogets at one point.

Anyways, both items were great to have back in the day. Just like the Yellow Pages, you would let your fingers do the walking, especially if you were hard at work writing a letter or some business correspondence, or even if you were playing a board game or a crossword puzzle.

(pauses for a very long moment as something in his brain loudly snaps, crackles and pops into the forefront of his cranial cavity)

~~~~~~

(and now, he's back, just like a tired rock band from the 80s who doesn't know when to retire)

You know when you get that feeling about a particular idea, and you become excited and gung-ho and you're just itching to act on it, and you dive in head first with gusto? And you frenetically pound away on your keyboard with enough energy to wake up an elderly senator from a blue state?

And suddenly, you crash and burn like someone who's been up for 36 hours straight, as that idea says, "nope, I am out of here, good luck to you," and you're left wondering how did I get here?

Well,. how did we get here?

We got here, as I had eloquently explained in a 93 word word salad that starts with "you know..." and ends with "get here?", or for those who have a terminal case of short attention span, we can sum it up in four distinct part harmonies. Quotated.

1. We have idea. We must act on idea.
2. We are acting on idea. We are smart.
3. Idea suddenly runs to the hills like a coward.
4. Words dry up.

Basically, what I thought was a good idea at the beginning, like I wrote it on a blog post to-do list good idea, turned out to be what Daffy Duck would often brag about, mediocre.

So we wound up using memorable snippets from the following people/items to save the post, in no particular order of importance.

1. Senators from a majority of Blue states (like mine) qualified for social security some twenty years ago.
2. A popular meme/GIF of someone exponentially destroying their keyboard.
3. King of the Hill.
4. Talking Heads.
5. Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant"-1st version.
6. Star Trek: TNG.
7. Daffy Duck cartoons.

Okay, the last one everyone could figure out because I stated directly where I was quoting from. In any event, we managed to complete a Tiny Tim dash to the end zone with this blog post. It certainly wasn't pretty, it certainly wasn't neat, but it got the job done.

A Happy Monday to one and all, and remember, The Happy Monday's was a popular true alternative music rock band.

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

Episode #316: A Typical Day In The Life Of Your Gen X Writer

This...is about as much as I'm willing to show of myself on social media in 2026. Photo was taken some time after 2006 and before 2015.

Yes my friends, you're reading the blog post title correctly. Gen X is defined as someone being born between 1965 (me) and 1980. You're welcome for the sticker shock. Oh and one more thing, Gen X invented the modern curse called the Internet. Again, you're welcome.

Anywho, I don't think I've done a post like this in quite some time, if at all, on this blog. I know I've done on my other now inactive blogs (thanks Internet AI!) periodically, because, you know, easy blog filler.

And this one will probably be the same, as in easy blog filler. Maybe. But we'll have some fun just the same. So to over use a tired cliche, "are you ready?", and a classic British humor line, "let's begin from  the beginning.", we shall indeed, start at the start.

Note: since we're in the early throes of using tweezers on our hair follicles due to editing, our routine will be focusing on that.

7:30-ish in the a.m., we turn around to face our $660+ ASUS Chromebook, because if your love for M$ stopped at Win7, this OS is for you, and continue where left off editing, which in this case is our fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". After we get our morning dose of procrastination out of the way, it's now 9-ish in the morning and it's time to close up shop....I'm just kidding. In all seriousness, we spend a maximum of 1 1/2 hours either to continue editing the chapter we left off at the previous night (for the purpose of this post, we're editing chapter 21 of book #2); or finishing the chapter, printing a fresh copy, download a Word doc of the completed chapter for backup, putting away the old chapter and pulling out a fresh one to edit.

9-ish in the morning to about 1-ish in the afternoon, we live the relaxing life of someone who took an early retirement now going on five and half years, which mainly consists of getting our morning calisthenics, followed by our extremely self-regulated socialized media fix (about fifteen to twenty minutes on Meta, longer if I'm performing my M-W-F posting on my author's page with about one hour watching/commenting on YouTube). Oh and, can't forget our very regimented, calorie-wise, lunch. Regimented as everything is properly weighed per the serving instructions on the packaging.

1p-ish in the afternoon to about 2:30p-ish in the afternoon, we perform a repeat of the aforementioned 7:30a-ish phase of our day, unless I have a pressing errand(s) to run that cannot be done in the evening (e.g. banking). Then we do maaaaaybe a half hour of editing before running our important errand(s).

If no errands are to be had for the afternoon, then we get our afternoon calisthenics in, which lasts from 2:45p-ish to 4p-ish. I should note that Sunday thru Friday I break up my modest goal of 6k steps into two easily digestible parts, hence the twice a day calisthenics. I should also note that this year's winter's cold has been extremely nasty to me, to the point where anyone over the age of two can move faster than I can.

So with that bout of whininess out of the way, we're now, for the sake of the post, back home nestled in the warm comfort of our den, sipping a cup of hot chai and dreaming of monetary goodness and being recognized by others for the excellent books that we've written. 

Doesn't that just give you the warm fuzzies?

At that very second, the sound of a t.v. with the volume jacked to eleven hits you with the force of a five gallon bucket of ice water suddenly brings you back to the reality of the present (my reality is being a political elephant in a large extended family of political donkeys, although there may be hope for a 2nd cousin). You turn your heater back on, move the mouse to activate the computer from sleep mode, and spend from 4p-ish to 6:30p-ish doing absolutely nothing related to your current project, but you are posting snarky comments to Meta posts and YouTube videos, all while devouring the evening meal of pizza and fries, with a veggie and sugar free pudding for dessert.

However, you do feel motivated enough to spend perhaps fifteen minutes writing a future Meta post for your author's page, because you taught yourself how to write sixteen lines totaling 220 words or less for each post, so fifteen minutes is all you need. And you pat yourself on the back because you're able to apply what you've learned from others.

It's now 6:30p, and you're sitting there, in your chair wondering just exactly where the day went and most importantly, why you're still sitting in the chair. So you get your (allegedly) tired butt out of the chair and force yourself to make....yeeck...contact with....people, yet again. You don't really want to, but you still have your evening errands to run (like clockwork, because, schedules baby). So you spend anywhere from one half to one hour running your evening errands, before you go back home and call it a day. You change into your jammies, pour yourself a hot cup of chai and settle down in The Comfy Chair to dream about those huge paychecks coming from your writing.

{cue very long record scratch}

Reality: You go back down to your semi-cold den and after brewing yourself a cup of instant coffee of the Walter Martin variety, you turn on your computer and proceed to spend from 7:45p-ish to 10:00p-ish performing the following writing projects: editing your series as per the opening paragraph of this post. This overall project is interrupted by two infomercials called 'handwriting upcoming posts for Meta' and 'upcoming blog posts like this one', both of which require you to get off your butt and do research.

At 10p-ish, you tidy up your work area, turn off the power to your computer and printer, fix the settings on your computer so that 95% of your computer programming is throttled to conserve power (seriously, my computer has settings that allow you to drastically throttle most of the background programming, etc when you're using battery power. It stops when you turn the DC back on), and either spend that last half hour-ish of time working on the aforementioned projects or doom-scroll YouTube, because you like to fry what few remaining brain cells that have been untainted by the written word. Then you finally go to bed, get your five hours of sleep and experience the rapturous joy of Bill Murray's Groundhog Day.

And yes, we ran the gamut for your p.o.v. pleasure in this post, because, you know, practice makes perfection. I hope you enjoyed this snapshot of a typical day in my writing life, and remember, being a good writer is about rising above your redundancies and turning slop into an above average fast food meal. 

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

Episode #312: I Want My (Sugar Free) Candy!

This was taken the week prior to the snow bomb that dropped over a foot of snow that ultimately shut down the state for a day and a half.

Like most normal intelligent people, I love candy. When I was able to eat normal candy, more often than not my faves were 3Musketeers, Snickers, Milky Way and Mars Bar with Almonds. I tried a whole bunch of others (thru the age of 21, so about 15+ years), but these are my top four.

Fast forward forty years and although I still love candy, it does not love me like it used to back in the day when I was a sugar junkie. Instead, it loves me like a plan "B", in that the only way to get some loving out of me is to go sugar-free, which we all know is not conducive to living a good sugar junkie life.

Now I have eaten a lot of sugar free candy since 1985 (this is when I was officially diagnosed as a diabetic), and for me they fall into three categories: good but expensive; average for the price point; and slop not worth the money. So without further ado, let's begin at the beginning.

1} Good but expensive:

There aren't too many candy companies that I've come across, either highly commercialized or niche regional, that can produce a quality sugar-free product. In fact, I know of only  two that I can personally offer my positive opinion on.

Russell Stovers: Now we all know that Russell Stovers makes a quality chocolate product that you do pay a premium for. But their sugar-free product is something that you pay a premium price for because it's a quality product.

I often go out of my way to buy their sugar-free product because it's a quality product, and honestly, a quality sugar-free candy is hard to come by.

Muson's Chocolate: Is another example of a good quality product that is worth the premium price if you can find it, as most stores do not carry a large selection of sugar-free chocolate. 

2} Average for the price point:

Most sugar-free mints and gums fall into this category: they get the job done and don't make you sick if you go overboard consuming them. And really, this is what you basically want out of your sugar-free mints or gums: to fulfill that craving without making yourself sick in the process.

Granted, there are some candies that should not have a sugar-free version if the company has a regular version. Let's face it, most confectioners should not make a sugar-free version when there is no call/clamor for one, because why expand your market when you feel there isn't one.

Which brings us to the last category: slop that isn't worth the money.

Stop me if you've heard this one: Hershey's chocolate is mediocre.

Now it was never this bad throughout most of their history, because if it was, you wouldn't see the vast economic empire that is Hershey's today. Instead, you would see maybe a niche chocolate company that was swallowed up by their rivals.

Some thirty plus years ago, Hershey's radically tweaked the process in which they made their chocolate. The end result of this tweaking is a product that those outside of the US would only consume as an absolute last resort.

I was a so-so fan of Hershey's as a child, with their offers being a top fifty choice unless they were launching a new product. As an adult, I am not even remotely a fan of their sugar-free product.

I used to be in the beginning, because sugar-free candy was often a crapshoot and when you can find one to add to your very short consumable list, you do. But it eventually became apparent that their product was not worth the higher price tag (on average, sugar-free chocolate is up to 50% higher than normal chocolate).

Compared to others, most notably Russell Stovers, the taste was off and the contents inside (e.g. peanut butter cups) was roughly textured (sometimes when you bake with a sugar substitute, the quality can be...off).

Hershey's, in my personal opinion, is a mediocre product to begin with and has devolved into one of those companies that everyone knows about due to their oversaturation of their product (think any Kraft product or Sweet Baby Rays BBQ sauce) and buys based on that oversaturation and not on taste or price point.

There are few other sugar-free chocolates that I've found over the decades, but the ones listed above are those who I've had extensive experience with. I sincerely thank you for allowing me to offer my five cents (no pennies as they've been discontinued) about sugar free chocolate and other assorted sugar-free options.

Remember, sugar free doesn't always mean it's better, it just means it doesn't have the sugary taste that you crave and love. So consume your sugar free products with your eyes wide open, your taste buds wide open, and most importantly, that bottle of Imodium within arms reach.

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

Episode #306: Never Getting Into The Groove With Them Again

We can dream of a white Christmas, but realistically, it's not gonna happen here in Connecticut this year.

Over the years, I have lost a lot of respect and tolerance for various members of the creative community who choose to open their mouths and spew forth certain political viewpoints that IMO are not based in reality, or have revealed their true colors on how rotten of an individual they happen to be.

The problem I have is that they have a plethora of progressive platforms that are, in my learned opinion, quite out of touch with the forty odd states that are still grounded in reality, they honestly believe their opinions are righteous and no one can say otherwise.

While I have quite a few bones to pick with a myriad of individuals across an extremely wide spectrum of the creative community, I want to concentrate on the musical side of the aforementioned community, as they are the ones that I pay attention to the most.

This will be a short list, as it will only focus on artists who I have c.d.s of and used to play on a regular basis.

1} Rhiannon Giddens: this exceptionally talented musician, who was a Julliard trained opera singer, fits the usual mold of being an ultra progressive in the increasingly insular entertainment industry, and it got harder for me to reconcile her music with her political views. So about a year ago, it finally hit a point where she posted a political picture that was very sympathize to what all of the college crazies are protesting about. After that, her music simply disappeared from my audio world.

2} Rage Against The Machine: I used to listen to them with some regularity as their music, while overtly political, still resonated with me. That all changes when I found out they supported a cop killer in Pennsylvania, a man who is quite popular in the progressive academic world and Hollywood, and just like previously, I stopped listening to their music.

3} Bruce Springsteen: the older and richer he became, the more progressive and vitriolic his political views and open disdained for the people who actually got him to where his today. Basically, he became just another toady with no independent thought for the Democratic party to trot out as a mouthpiece for their increasingly unhinged views.

4} Hayley Williams: co-founder of the early 2000's alt-rock band Paramour. She's trying to still stay relevant after her fifteen minutes of fame by perpetually bashing those who do not possess her world view, which includes supporting men and women who cosplay each other (I have a very unpopular view on this topic which I will keep to myself). So yeah, I'm not gonna waste my time listening to someone who claims to be open-minded yet somehow wants to ban people like myself from attending her concerts.

And to round out this very short list are The Eagles. The Eagles are no longer a functioning band, but a major conglomo of annoyance with only one original member left. They are, courtesy of that one original member, the epitome of how a band should act when they want to stay irrelevant and undiscovered by a new generation of listeners. Every single anti-consumer act a business can inflict on others they have done with gusto.

Bottom line, due to the abysmal behavior of this remaining original band member, nobody listens to their music by choice. Not on Spotify, which allows you to rediscover the music of your parent's youth, and certainly not at home. I'm sure there's a good percentage of people who now regret purchasing product from this band (myself included), simply based on the abysmal behavior of this conglomo.

So my friends, I sincerely hope you have enjoyed this modest dive into music that I choose not to partake in, either at home or on the radio (commercial/college/internet). Do you have any artists that you choose to no longer listen to for various personal reasons?

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

Episode #299: The Music Of Our Youth Influences The Music Of Our Today

I was feeling just a tad zany today, thus the main protagonist from one of the very few (like you can count the amount on one hand) live action movies that I've chosen to pay money and watch as an adult. This was an actual gift I had bought for my wife while we were dating.

The music that I grew up with as a child has had a moderate influence on what I have decided to listen to today as a "mature" adult (I'm 60, so you can take that "mature" descriptor with a grain of Himalayan sea salt), although it took me quite few decades to realize that.

Back in the 70's, I grew up listening to what my parents listened to: my mother enjoyed 50's rock/doo-wop and I think some 60's & early 70's pop; while my father enjoyed 60's folk and 70's/early 80's country.

As the 70's morphed into the 80's my music tastes didn't really change much nor did they follow what my schoolmates liked (e.g. the classic rock/new wave bands that were originally fresh and popular in the late 70's/early 80's). For all intents and purposes, they basically stagnated, and stayed that way until the mid 90's when I was introduced to the wonders of college radio.

College radio allowed me the ability to not only reconcile the music of my youth with music of the present that was still under the same genre umbrella (e.g. folk and classic country), but also allowed me to explore other genres that I had given short shrift to previously.

I want to focus a little bit on the aforementioned genres that I grew up on and hopefully show how they've influenced what I listen to today.

1} The folk music that I'd grown up listening to boiled down to three groups: the heavily commercialized/influential Peter, Paul and Mary; the commercially successful trio that had four members The Kingston Trio (If you can find it on c.d. check out their live recording from Lake Tahoe (called "Once Upon A Time") when they were at their height of popularity; and the commercially successful/influential Australian quartet The Seekers (the original incarnation from the mid 60's).

These three groups gave me my first real exposure to acoustic music. Prior to them, the only other  real exposure I had to acoustic music was via Hee-Haw and The Waltons. It took me forever and a day to appreciate the power that acoustic music could bring to a given song. To be honest, early folk music allowed me to appreciate the lyrics of a given song, especially if it was a topical song. An appreciation that still sticks with me some 45 years later (never really liked the MTV show "Unplugged" because it sounded too artificial/too forced when artists tried to turn their well known hits into acoustic songs w/o putting in the necessary work to make them fit the format).

Over the decades, that early appreciation of acoustic music made me take a second look at other related genres like the singer-songwriter, classical guitar and even a deeper look into the folk music genre (but bypassing today's folk/pop trend that seems to be all the rage these days.

2} The country music that I had listened to growing up would be considered "classic country" by today's metrics: Kenny Rogers, Marty Robbins, The Statler Brothers and ye olden stars from The Grand Old Opry to name just few. I also grew up listening to just a smattering of Johnny Cash, as my father really wasn't in to him.

If you fast forward to the early 2000's, I started hearing more Johnny Cash on college radio, which really intrigued me. Turns out he had a renaissance of sorts where he was starting to cover popular rock and pop songs, (all courtesy of producer Rick Rubin), as well as performing duets with some as well. During that fertile time period, he released six c.d.'s on Lost Highway Records, of which the first five are really good, and I highly recommend checking those out.

Just like that early appreciation of acoustic music changed my outlook, so did listening to classic country. In addition to rediscovering Johnny Cash, listening to college radio allowed me to explore other genres under the country umbrella like Americana, bluegrass and alt country. What it did not do was modify my very dime outlook on country-pop, but I managed to dip my toes in a small wading pool wave by selectively exploring certain artists in the country-pop genre that I could actually listen to w/o being turned off.

In general, what I had listened to growing up has come full circle. While I now listen to the same kind of music that both of my children listen to (shock I know), I will also search out and listen to the music of my youth, because sometimes listening to the music of past often makes you appreciate the music of the present. Especially the stuff that doesn't quite make it to commercial radio in its currently decaying format.

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

Episode #293: The Family Bookcase: {2}

Before we get into the meat of the post, a word from our sponsor, the US Constitution, in regards to our perpetual flavor of the year: the 1st amendment.

SCOTUS has ruled, repeatedly I might add, that while you do have the right to unfiltered, unfettered and uncensored free speech, your right to that unfiltered, unfettered and uncensored free speech comes to a screeching halt like putting a car into 'park' while driving 65 down the highway the second you cross the threshold to your place of employment. Because at that point, they have the authority to regulate what you can and cannot say on their time; and as an added bonus, they can regulate what you can say on your own free time, because reputational damage is a very real thing.

And now back to our previously scheduled blog post.

The book pictured above, One Good Deed by Dave Rosi, is a mystery of some renown, that is currently out of print. The publisher of this particular book, Hard Shell Word Factory, was in business from the early 1990's thru the early 2000's, and they were an early embracer of digital technology, as you were able to purchase downloads and floppy disks (the 3 1/4 inch version) of their published books.

This particular book stood out to me due to the simple fact that I was looking for a decent book of fiction that I could take my sweet time in reading. My reading is often cyclical in nature, in that I have long periods of wanting to read a plethora of books in the shortest time period possible. Those long periods are intermingled with equally long periods of wanting to move at the speed of slow with my reading, which is not conducive with borrowing books from the public library (even though my public library has basically eliminated fines in favor of perpetually renewing a checked out book until the patron decides to return it).

So among the many dozens of books of fiction, this particular book jumped out at me. The cover art was eye catching and the back cover blurb intrigued me as well (low level drug dealer, hurricane, lost stash of drugs, murder of what is now derisively called a 'White Liberal Savior', etc.), with the actual hook being: "the decision he makes will measure how much his life can be changed by one good deed".

The book itself is but 364p in length, which, in my opinion, tells me it can be a solid enough read that should any draggy parts be encountered, the rest of the story will pick up the slack. So far, with about 70+ pages read, I have not encountered any draggy parts.

I like fiction, but just like I'm finicky with the type of non-fiction that I read, I'm also finicky with the type of fiction that I like to read. This book seems to fit my offbeat criteria for what I feel comfortable in reading for fiction.

~~~~~~

One final advert, this time sponsored by me: I now have print copies of my latest book, To Live Is To Die Young, available on Amazon KDP, as well through me. The copies available through me are roughly 40% off the list price (plus CT sales tax) and I cover the S&H. Details can be had at my book blog, Books By G.B. Miller.

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

Episode #291: The Family Bookcase: {1}

In my basement we have two monstrosities that pass for bookcases: the family bookcase that basically stretches some ten feet across a side wall, and mine that stretches some four feet down the side wall in front of my den. Starting with this post, we'll be doing a skewered exploration on the contents of the family bookcase, and alternate a few about my bookcase.

Our family bookcase contains about 60 years worth of books collected in a few different ways: directly purchased from bookstores, acquired on the dirt cheap (aka free) from various people who were bringing/purging their collections. 

Just to give you a basic idea of what kind of books/reading material taking up space, we have the following: old mystery/sci-fi magazines; religious materials, encyclopedias, fiction, pop culture and different types of non-fiction that one would find in schools/universities. Like I said, this is just a sampling.

Wherever I walk by the bookcase, I'm always on the lookout for a particular missing repro book from the late 19th century, specifically, memoirs from the US Civil War (I bought some 35 years ago, two different Time-Life book series that totaled almost 65 volumes, each one costing, on average, $14.99 (not counting S&H) in 1980's money). When I was creating my own personal bookcase, I discovered I was missing one volume from the memoir series, thus the need for perpetually searching the bookcase.

Because of the type of books we have stashed in a bookcase that will never be read, there are titles/topics that often jump out at me, simply because of how strange the topic is. For our first example, we have this:

To be honest, I do not recall how this particular book made it to our family bookcase, but since my brother is a bit of a mild hoarder, I'm thinking it came to us courtesy of him.

Now, I know absolutely zero about cricket and I'm 100% positive that no one in the house knows anything about cricket. I think I tried watching it once or twice, but when you don't know anything about a sport that is popular everywhere except the US, you kind of say to yourself, "No." and move on.

This is but one of about two dozen sports oriented books housed within that large bookcase, which run the gamut of encyclopedias, memoirs, histories and compilations, covering mostly baseball, with a few football and one emphasizing World Cup soccer....and one that's a short history of Bundesligia, which is German soccer (fun fact: our local PBS affiliate used to host a weekly German soccer game called "Soccer Made In Germany", which my dad used to watch every Sunday.

~~~~~~~

I have five of these highly informative baseball encyclopedias. This particular baseball encyclopedia was around from the 1970's through 2009, was a baseball junkie's wet dream. It had everything a junkie would want: a detailed synopsis of every season (both AL & NL) as well as the final standings; with a statistical breakdown of each team's total player stats; it also included a breakdown of each world series (and divisional playoffs); divided the entirety of baseball (1876 thru 2009) by periods/eras; lifetime stats were also divided by the same periods/eras; and even included the two years that the Federal League was around (1914 & 1915), fun fact: Wrigley Field initially belonged to the Chicago Whales, the Federal League ball-club before they disappeared with the Federal League did. Overall this was a fantastic detailed history about Major League Baseball.

This baseball encyclopedia was the catalyst for me getting into the minutiae of baseball for a number of years, and everything else that I've managed to come across I compare to this encyclopedia, and I found those...wanting.

This was and remains to this day, my absolute favorite encyclopedia of my absolute favorite sport (I became a NY Mets fan since I got cable t.v. in the late 70's), and it still has an influence on me as a person and as a writer to this day.

As the title of this post states, this is the 1st part of what I hope to make a reoccurring feature on this blog: a sampling of books that were read maybe once or twice, then became a part of a very eclectic collection of books that me, myself and I would ever read, as I seem to be the only hardcore reader in my household.

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

Episode #284: Constitutionally Catatonic Conundrum of Chuckling

Every American's new number one favorite document to hotly debate about, is a home grown creation that promises more chills, spills and mega thrills than any measly book written by the same English author that gave us a dystopian novel about an animal farm.

This week's blog post came to me much like the bulk of my previous posts: during a bout of self-inflicted stupidity, in which I actually decided to open the pictured book and actually browse the pages.

Among the various sections that I had skimmed, one really stood out to me: Amendments Proposed But Never Ratified.

Did you know that since the inception of this wonderful country, more than 10,000 amendments have been proposed, and that the Constitution has been changed a grand total of 27 times, giving us a grand total of 27 Amendments, with the 27th being approved 203 years after it was proposed (1992 changes to congressional salaries). If you're wondering about the 26th, that was approved in 1971, and it lowered the voting age from 21 to 18.

Any ways, I thought I would share with everyone a short list of proposed amendments that got seriously rejected by Congress, along with some enlightening commentary by yours truly. 

1. (1876) Abolishment of the US Senate: can you imagine the chaos if the Senate was abolished? Laws would actually be passed and a whole category of elderly people would actually have to become gainfully employed and have no real power.
2. (1876) The forbidding of religious leaders from holding a government office or receiving federal dollars: All NGO's would have to be secular. Even worse, they would have to perform continuous fundraising, and just about the only fundraising that the American public likes to participate in, is the purchasing of Girl Scout cookies.
3. (1878) An Executive Council of Three to replace the office of the President: a great way to legitimize bribery and corruption in the Executive branch. 
4. (1893) Renaming this nation to "The United States of the Earth": precursor to The Gulf of America.
5. (1893) Abolishing the US Army and Navy: no more of those pesky football games and definitely no more being the world's policemen. But hey, we can be protected by those stunningly brave social justice warriors, right?
6. (1894) The Constitution needs to recognize that the almighty Father and his Holy Son are the absolute authorities to human affairs: who needs separation of church and state when the church is the state and the state is the church.
7. (1912) Making marriages between races illegal: reality check, the unwritten/written law was declared illegal in 1967 with Loving v Virginia, which was affirmed by SCOTUS on appeal.
8. (1914) Finding divorce to be illegal: another reality check, spouses, usually female, aren't chattel that can be used and abused. They are living, breathing individuals who demand and deserve respect.
9. (1916) All acts of war should be put to a national vote. anyone voting yes is automatically drafted into the army: we could theoretically wind up with the largest perpetual peacetime army in the world. Of course, no one will respect us in the morning...or afternoon...or evening.
10. (1933) Limiting personal wealth to $1,000,000: adjusted for inflation, in today's dollars it would be $24.7 million. Can you imagine the outrage within the US Senate and House of Representatives that their personal wealth will be capped at $24.7 million? They wouldn't be able to...enrich themselves with all of those highly questionable (for us) financial maneuvers. I think I need to clutch my pearls tighter.
11. (1936) A variation of #9, with the difference being a majority rule affirming/denying that we should go to war: To be honest, while I'm neither a dove nor a hawk (realist perhaps?), this sounds like a happy compromise that neither side would like.
12. (1938) The forbidding of drunkenness in the US and all of its territories: this one is so far out of touch with reality that it should be written into an episode of the Twilight Zone or Night Gallery. Oh wait, this was written as an episode of the Twilight Zone, except that it dealt with the banning of being pretty/pleasant to look at and people got sent to a modern day reeducation camp.
13. (1947)  The income tax maximum for any individual should not exceed 25%: the earliest proposal for a flat tax, which of course would send one party into an absolute meltdown, because this means that they would actually have to stick to a budget. What a novel concept, sticking to a budget. I think I can actually hear the loud thump of jaws dropping to the ground.
14. (1948) The right of citizens to segregate from others: back then we as a nation were trying to desegregate ourselves and we eventually succeeded. Fast forward nearly 75 years, and we've sadly come full circle, as college/university campuses have now self-segregated themselves to the point where at some campuses, there are separate graduation ceremonies for each ethnicity attending.
15. (1971) American citizens should have the alienable right to live in a pollution free environment: yes. we do. Will it happen? not in mine or my children's lifetime...unless both sides find a realistic compromise that each side can live with.

So as you can see, some of those proposed amendments were so far fetched that they got seriously torpedoed by whichever legislative body they were introduced in. While others, even though they make minimal sense now, were just too radical to be passed by hypocrites on both sides of the aisle.

I know the above list seems to be a genuine exercise in obtuseness, but those were the people we voted for back then, because unlike today, the reps were a microcosm of their constituents. Which meant they proposed bills/amendments that accurately reflected the viewpoint of the people who elected them.

Reality is always conceptual when it comes to politics these days, because more often than not, the people we elect often present a facade of what they think will get them elected. Once elected, the facade drops and we're left with someone who doesn't truly represent us because they have an agenda that, more often than not, does not coincide with their constituents agenda. Once entrenched, they're almost impossible to get rid of.

Happy whatever day of the week you happen to be reading this post. I sincerely hope that this post gives you the briefest of chuckles to brighten your day, and makes you think about the people who represent you on whatever level, and ask yourself, do they align with your values, and if not, what are you going to do about it?

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

Episode #279: Sometimes Life Feels Like A Venn Diagram

Believe me, this blast from the very distant past (like early 2000s) kind of matches up with my state of being for this past week.

My life currently feels like a Venn Diagram. For those who need a tiny refreshment of minutia on what it is, please click on the offered link. Everyone else, I apologize in advance for bringing up something that horrified normal people in 2024.

To elaborate just a tad, I had a lot of things going on in the past few weeks in which the only common denominator was me. So, with that being said, let's explore this human equivalent of a Venn Diagram with me being the central connecting point to all four circles.

Circle #1: let's say this one features my recently completed fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Because of the general state of blue funkiness that I was in, I decided to do one last round of pen edits before I really put it away for the next year or so. Going through that five volume monstrosity didn't really do anything to negate the blue funkiness, because afterwards, I really felt just a little bit...lost. Like an actual hardcore empty nest syndrome.

Circle #2: let's say this one features book reading. Normally I try to keep up with my reading by consuming at least two books per month, but lately, my heart really isn't into consuming books, new or used. As I've mentioned previously, I really had to push myself to finish the book, because even though the topic intrigued me, the content was just...meh. Because it was meh, this 240+ page tome really did a number on me, as I was torn between DNF'ing this bad boy and pursuing the sunken cost fallacy to the bitter end. Suffice to say, the latter was chosen.

Circle #3: this one is a toss-up between two writing related options, so.....Jeopardy? And my answer is, writing fresh stuff. I spent the better part of two months writing nearly one dozen short stories as a distraction to actually doing the item in the final circle. Out of those nearly one dozen stories, one of them had ultimately planted the seed of writing yet another novella, featuring the two main characters from that story. So here I sit, mulling over that particular idea. Or rather, that idea gently nudging me saying, "write me, write me...you know you wanna."

And finally, circle #4: my novella, "To Live Is To Die Young". After completing all of the necessary tangents that are required for this novella {e.g. title and blurbs}, I finally pressed the proverbial Pay Now buttons and did just that, to the tune of $450. Yay me!

So we have four properly labeled Venn slightly illogical circles, none of which actually touch/intersect with each other, but do intersect with yours truly. Which if you really think about it, is quite odd. In theory, all four circles should have at least one thing in common with each other besides the main point, which in this particular case, is me.

But...they do not. Unless you count that they were all vehicles for my procrastination, which really doesn't work for me. Absolutely none of them have a common.....wait a minute.....wait a minute....okay, let me stare at the screen for thirty seconds.....

at this point, G.B.'s legendary muse walks up to him and slaps him upside the head like Moe does with Larry, Curly and Shemp. He promptly slides out of his chair, but is immediately caught by his muse and placed back in his chair. She sternly shakes her finger at him before silently walking away with a swagger in her stride.

Dumbfounded, which is a normal state of being at least once a month for him, G.B. suddenly picks back up where he had left off at previously.

Well, I'll be a McDonald's ice cream cone. They do have at least one thing in common with each other: reading! No, really. Think about it for second: circle #1 requires a boatload of reading since editing is being done; circle #2, no-brainer since a book is being consumed; circle #3, needed to do reading because one has to proof their stories to makes sure there's no typos etc.; and finally circle #4, reading was definitely needed while putting together one monster manuscript for the formatter to begin work on (my formatter of choice requires the entire novel/novella to be one entire manuscript, no matter how many pages/chapters it has in order to create the necessary files for KDP/Print/Non-KDP platforms).

Huh...so we had a come to your deity of choice moment while writing this heartfelt lament featuring the almighty (to some) Venn diagram. Which, if you really give it some thought, is about a bogey over on the golf course of life for me. More often than not, I will arrive at a conclusion a few minutes after the train left the platform, only to belatedly realize that making that stop at my local mom & pop coffee house allowed to arrive at that wrong conclusion, thus missing the train.

So now what this post boils down to is to pay closer attention to your surroundings, because while you're focused on the beauty of the blossom in your hand, you're completely ignoring the vulture standing on the arm of the cacti who is counting down the minutes to when his dinner will be served al dente.

Having good eats is not the same as being good eats. Paying attention to finding a common denominator to the multi-tasking that you're performing can only breed success in the long run. But definitely pursue finding that common denominator early, otherwise the end result will be something like this:

"A blog post that started with good intentions, but stumbled so badly out of the starting gate that it has no choice but to flail its arms in a cartoonist manner while running like Woodstock flies."

Happy Monday to one and all, and to those who are parents, whether dual or single, I sincerely hope you had a very good Father's Day.

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

Episode #273: From A Young Foot Patrol To An Old Foot Patrol

Gotta love the duck, for they only have three modes of transportation and doesn't give three quacks over which one to use at a given moment in time.

This past week has made me realize that I've come full circle with my modes of transportation.

To elaborate: after 16 years spent acquiring 132k+ very hard miles, it decided to throw a tantrum and drop its transmission. Under normal circumstances, I would simply say "adieu" and go through the aggravating/time consuming process of acquiring another dependable car.

Here's the thing though: after spending a solid month thinking about it, I decided to get another car for myself and keep this car as a proverbial back up/second car. Which means biting the bullet and having this one one brought back to working order (if you take about 6% of the aforementioned mileage, you will have a basic idea on how much this repair is going to cost me).

Which brings us to the topic at hand.

When we were young, foot patrol was our main method of transportation until we got our bicycle. That became our main mode (with obvious exceptions) until we acquired our first motorized vehicle. As we got older, foot patrol became a dependable/necessary back up when motorized transportation wasn't available. Sure, we would grumble about it, but we dealt with it to the best of our abilities.

Spending a week (actually 10 days) without a car made me realize how fortunate I am that reverting to foot patrol to run certain errands doesn't bother me as much as maybe five years ago. Five years ago, it was a major pain in the butt not to have access to other motorized transportation when my primary mode isn't available. I didn't have access to a bicycle anymore (safety concerns then and now) and walking was a pain in the butt to run my errands.*

*note: I live in the northern end of town where it's a forty minute walk to the center to run certain errands and an hour walk to the next town to run certain others.

Fast forward to now. Now walking is much easier for me to deal with, because less weight makes faster walking with less pain. So the majority of my time sans car was spent walking to run at least one of my night errands earlier in the afternoon. I did have access to a car to run a few important errands, but overall, I found I wasn't really inconvenienced by being on foot patrol.

I actually found the experience quite enjoyable, and to be honest, this past Friday (5/2), having to run two key errands, banking and lottery, was actually a snap to perform. It took me 2 1/2 hours to execute a large circular trip to the center (bank), then back towards home (not really) to the package store to run the second part of my errand, then finally back to home.

What helped me a lot was taking two viable shortcuts that saved me about 1 1/2 hours of extra walking time. Seven years worth of hardcore walking allowed me to plot out the shortest distance between two points on numerous occasions, and this walk was no exception. Think about it, if a normal walk to a particular destination took you close to forty-five minutes and you found a route that covered the exact same distance in thirty minutes, would you not take it?

I'm not sure if my new ambivalent attitude about walking has something to do with being a semi-Luddite when it came to technology as an adult. I'm a child of the 70's/80's, so the Internet wasn't a thing for me until the advent of Google in the 90's. I definitely was a half dozen steps behind when it came to both cell phones and smart phones, so being glued to my phone isn't as severe as other people have it. As for computers, no real exposure until I started working for the government in the late 90's.

In any event, I believe when you get older, it's possible to not be so concerned about transportation issues when you have a lot of time on your hands, and no real immediate need to actually do something with that excess time. As the old saying goes, work smarter, not harder. Or in my case, prior planning prevents poor performance.

How about you, do you find yourself not really worried/concerned when your normal mode of transportation has decided to take a short holiday and you have to improvise?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A very happy Monday to one and all.

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