Episode #185: A Unique Culture Always Enriches The Story {1}

Somebody decided to be a bit cheeky and left behind a very grimy glove with a cheerful demeanor on the rusted out chain link fence post the other day. Kind of reminds me of the lyric, "You say goodbye, but I say hello!"

I thought for the next few posts that I would do a deep dive on what I had chosen to use as background character info and the like, for my trilogy project Hot Mess. I figure that this would be a great way for you the reader to acquire a more fuller and detailed picture on what I write and why I decided to take the trails less traveled to begin with.

For today's post, the topic of choice is background. Specifically, the personal background for which all of my characters were created from. In this post, I'm going to only describe the basics, as I want to save some of the odder details about each one for subsequent posts.

As most of you probably do not know, I am fond of creating businesses/corporations out of different kinds of concepts/cultures. I first became enamored of this idea after watching the movie, "Defending Your Life". I found the concept of the afterlife being like a judicial system very intriguing, so I decided to employ this concept to my stories. This has been going on sporadically for about a decade, and so far I have applied this idea of making concepts/cultures as conglomerates quite satisfying {one of my slushies features Heaven, Hell & Purgatory as large mega-conglomerates}.

With that being said, in this story, I decided to turn one of the cultures that I use as background info for two of my MCs, the Aztecs, into a large stable city-state conglomerate (think of the Italian city-states of the Renaissance era). Complete with all of the usual trappings associated with the Aztecs, I also added to the mix a debt collection business, which is run much like a bail bondsman's business, to be their primary source of income.

For another two of my MCs, I shifted gears just a little by going further south into the Americas, and chose the Incans to be their particular base of operations, as well as their ethnicity. Did quite a bit of research into the culture, so that the characters would be as realistic as I could write them, which included some customs, language and mythology, among others.

For a different set of two MCs, I decided to take a tiny shot at the concept of world building. I've read about it before, but never really had the need or desire to create one, since up until I started writing this trilogy, my stories never required one, as all of my previous stories took place on good old planet Earth. The basic idea was that some kind of palatial residence/kingdom was needed, since those two characters are privately and publicly called "My/Our Queen". The one serious plot twist that I applied to this concept, because you know that's how I roll, was to make this modern/misogynistic monarchy strictly matriarchal. This concept, along with a multitude of tangents, will be expanded upon in future posts.

Finally, the last concept that I decided to have some fun with in this trilogy, is genetics. One of MCs is a mother to the other. Sounds simple, right? How about we throw into the mix that the mother is actually the originator of the genealogical line and that her daughter is the actual end of the line? How about we throw in anywhere from a half to a full millennia into the mix as a beginning and end? I'm sure you're asking the screen, how does that fit? Well, the mother is a stereotypical Scandinavian, yet the daughter either originates from the Iberian peninsula or from the Americas, which can feature people who are not Caucasian.

The few remaining MCs and SCs (I think maybe six in total) origin base is good old U.S. of A., with a breakdown being the military and urban decay. So the only thing of note to elaborate on is that I did a tiny bit of research on the military and had some general knowledge of urban decay. The urban decay was a little easier to deal with, simply because we've all dealt with it in one form or another, with my case being that I worked in the south end of the city capital for a number or years (like almost 20), so I had a good grasp of the bad and the fugly.

That about covers the main background choices for about all of my character origins, save for the horses and some other peripheral secondaries. Next week's post will touch upon a few sensitive topics that may or may not offend you, depending on your personal view points.

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

Episode #184.1: The Hardest Part Of The Story Is Done

I think water was found by Father Nature's diving rod the other day. Or a stick figure is missing their upper half.

The reasoning behind the ".1" for post numbering is pretty gosh darn simple: after completing part three of a four part series about my trilogy project, I'd managed to apply a bit of brain grease and completed not only the required back cover blurb for my upcoming novella that has the place holder title of Average American Novella, but came up with two possible titles as well. And since this is an extension of the previous post, well, there you go.

Naturally this required a bit of shuffling around the blog posts, which consisted of moving everything one week back. Twice. Why twice? Because sometimes when the brain goes on true auto-pilot (c'mon, I know you've experienced this from time to time, right?), you're so locked in on making sure, in this particular case, the dates being accurate that you forgot to make the numeric order of the posts are accurate too.

Now, enough about that. Let's focus on the here and now. I would like to share with you the reader, the blurb for my upcoming (we're shooting for a 2023 release) novella, as well as the two titles. The two titles in question are: The Lie Reveals The Truth and The Hidden Truth.

~~~~~

Dmitri was hip deep in an uncontrollable rage inducing beat-down and he was none-too-pleased about it.

Against his better judgment, he decided to do a very small favor for a friend and was now deeply regretting it. After experiencing bouts of extreme annoyance that quickly manifested into lethal bouts of extreme prejudice being performed, Dmitri was more than ready to torch the package he was carrying and deal with the consequences later.

But karma had other plans for him, as when he came upon a minivan to steal with an unwilling partner, the owner’s daughter suddenly took a shine to him. For reasons known only to her, Kaitlyn persuaded Dmitri to take her along, instead of his current partner, to help with the delivery.

Somewhere along the way, they became more than unwilling partners thrown together by chance. But could that deeper commitment somehow survive the dangers that lay ahead on their journey to deliver that package?

Now I know I have to do a bit of tweaking as the blurb clocks in at 157 words, mainly reducing the word count and re-adjusting the opening line yet again (6 times already before posting it to my FB page). But I really would like your opinion on which title would work best: a long title of five words or a shorter title of three words.

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

Episode #184: Why This Name For What You Write?

Welp, that certainly ain't Donald, Daffy, Huey, Dewey or Louie. Or even Mallard Fillmore. It's just a local duck chilling on a rock above the waterfall on a sunny afternoon back sometime in the early '10s.

I've always had a few problems in choosing names for my characters, in that trying to find the right one that actually fits the characters, has more often than not, eluded me. And when I do find one, I have a tendency to work it to death {ex: Nikia. Used it in what should be, when all is said and done, 6 books}.

And, what makes it even more adventurous, I have developed a strong affinity for names based in Europe (East & West) and Russia. Not so much as exotic, but simply more of a variety to choose from. 

To expand even further, I have dipped into mythology, mostly European, and European translations of American English names, and for ha-ha's, the occasional tweaked spellings of traditional English names.

A good example of this would be the names used in my Hot Mess trilogy: Myla (Greek/Roman mythology); Jhon (variation of John); Nyx (again, Greek/Roman mythology); Mateo (Italian for Matthew I believe); Bella (short for Belladonna); Ilka (cool name, Hispanic I believe); Adeola (no idea as to why I chose it); Thanatos (Greek/Roman mythology); Lady Nordic (generic Scandinavian) and Macha (Incan), to name just a few. But with those, names don't necessarily point directly to each person's ethnicity.

Anyways, the names I chose for my Average American Novella, fall along similar lines, and I would like to elaborate on my reasoning behind my choices.

Note: I like to point out one salient point about my stories: I enjoy writing stories that feature a diverse group of people. Always have and always will. It has nothing to do with appropriation, and everything to do with appreciation. I appreciate all the cultures that I come across and respectfully use. I try to do as much research as possible in order to present well-rounded characters/scenarios. That includes using names that can closely match up with a particular character.

Now, to elaborate on my name choices for the three MC's and two SC's, which are as follows:

1} Dmitri: I needed a good muscular name to hang on my 1st male character, who happens to be Black. I didn't want to give him a wimpy name because that would just make him into someone that you couldn't take seriously. Also, I really like male Russian names.

2} Kaitlyn: I needed a good name to hang on my 1st female character, who also happens to be Black. I wanted to give her a name that would make people think twice about not treating her with respect. Also, I really needed to use another name beside Nikia, which I spent the better part of a decade continuously using, for my badass female character.

3} Charles: This was an interesting selection, because I always thought it was a name that one needed to respect, whether you wanted to or not. I first heard of the name while watching "Little House On The Prairie". I liked it and filed it away for future use. It's the kind of name that when you speak it, it leaves a bitter taste of annoyance for an aftertaste. A great name for a villain, no matter what the ethnicity of the person is.

4} Andrik: Andrik is Kaitlyn's father. Again, it was an issue of coming up with a good muscular name for a Black man. So I went tip-toeing through some Eastern European names, and came up with this Slavic name.

5} Amaliya: She is Dmitri's sister. Not sure how I came up with her name, but perhaps it was a spelling tweak on a plain name. I was always partial to tweaking the spellings of traditional names, because I often found traditional spellings of first names to be rather bland. But because I don't like far out names, whether in the real world or in fiction, this was my happy compromise.

I do have two others that were chosen, but because those characters were basically fulfilling a need to move key parts of the story along (one for about four chapters in total and the other for one), there's really no need to delve into the reasons for choosing them. 

I hope you like my mini-dive into the reasoning used for choosing the names that I did. Tune in next week when I do a mini-dive into reasoning behind the ethnicities/cultures that I chose to use for my trilogy.

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

Episode #183: Outside The Box Of Conformity

Tail end of a sunset in mid July from my front porch. Sometimes it pays to sit outside to bathe one senses in the quiet solitude of Father Nature.

Momentarily switching gears here to talk about another project I decided to bring from the back burner to the main burner for a bit. Main reason as to why is that I decided a small break from working on my trilogy was in order.

I was becoming just a tad {like 3%} burned out from writing a trilogy, and since I FINALLY got my one and only major c/c down to a balance of less than $2.05, a refreshing change of pace was needed.

The project in question is one that I first touched upon back in early 2021, when water damage to the basement necessitated emptying of said basement of its contents so as to actually fix the water damage. It was the second story that I had decided to tackle and fix, with the first one belonging to the tag of Average American Novel. This one was a completed first draft that I had actually sent off to a now ex-writer friend who did editing as a viable secondary hustle. I got it back, and promptly shelved it for about 4+ years prior to 2021.

In 2021, I rewrote the parts that I'd agreed with her explanation of, and by the end of it all, I had a very nice and very tidy 17 chapter/43k+ word novella (betcha that was a concept that you would've never heard of on here again). Along the way of this very violent story of a debt/soul collector delivering a package, I decided to have a little bit of fun by re-titling the chapters. Instead of the traditional numbering system, I decided to give each a unique title that largely served as an entry into a short story of sorts, with the meaty plot of the chapter centered around the title. Plus, it allowed me to show off my skewered sense of conformity.

In short, the seventeen chapter titles also doubled as a very odd writing prompt or a very bad comedic short story. Let me know what you think after reading the titles for all seventeen chapters.

1} The Delivery Begins;

2} The Meeting;

3} Road Trip! We're Together!;

4} Road Trip! Infuriated!;

5} Road Trip! Dual Revenge;

6} Through The Forest;

7} The Cabin: The Delivery Is Completed;

8} The Cabin: Pain & Lust;

9} To Fight Back!;

10} Finish Them!;

11} Prelude to Charles;

12} The Cannon Fodder Firm;

13} Amaliya;

14} Niles;

15} Sister, Brother, Lover;

16} Charles v. Dmitri;

17} In The Here & Now.

Now, the only items that I have left to do is to 1} apply the first round of editing notes; 2} write a very short blurb/synopsis, which two years ago I actually had the foresight to write a basic outline of one and 3} come up with a title, because, let's face it, a title of "My Soul Has Been Captured" only works as a place holder, and not a very good one at that.

So that's where I currently stand with my writing. I'm taking a much needed break from my current project to work on a basically completed novella with a realistic goal of getting this bad boy self-published by the end of the year.

Tune in next week when I try to plumb the depths of my memory archives so that I can intelligently expound on the background of the Average American Novella.

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