Episode #74: We Blipped

Sometimes we experience the occasional blip in our month, where we get to thinking about where we were, where we're going and where we're presently.

This has been the case this particular month.

My particular blip happened this past week, when the aforementioned issues intersected at the exact same time.

It's now mid-February, and everything intersected at the same time. To whit:

1} This week, I went to a few doctor appointments. This brought home the fact that in about three weeks the state medical board will be meeting to determine whether or not I qualify for a disability retirement (thus a higher monthly pension) or not. Either way, the immediate headache will be that I'll be forcibly changed to another health insurance place. The state of CT has a completely differently health insurance plan when you become a retiree, so this will cause all kinds of chaos not only for myself but for my wife and daughter as well.

2} In conjunction with the first point, my income will drop by roughly 75% or so. So once the dust settles, I'm going to be looking for something part time about 15-20 hours a week or so. I was actually planning to do this originally back in 2020, but had a change of plans where I could file for disability and still get paid until it gets approved (going on 4+ months now). I do have things in place for when April rolls around, so I'm not too terribly worried about things as they presently stand.

3} Daughter is slowly getting back to her old self, after taking a minor detour for all of 2020. She has a brand new road map for herself and I couldn't be more happier for her or prouder of her.

4} The recent passing of a few extended family members and former middle school/high school classmate has now introduced a sobering new reality/mortality. It's a bit troubling when people who are either roughly your age (55) or ten years plus or minus to your age have passed away. Certainly hammers home the fact that tolerating human toxicity sucks major moose testicles, and should be excised with extreme prejudice.

And finally,

5} Sometimes the best laid plans, no matter how bulletproof they may be, can be thrown into a state of flux, just by the simple act of the real world poking its craggy little head into your business when you least want it to.

So remember, act accordingly during your day-to-day existence, because having people talking about you in the present tense is surely much better than being talked about in the past tense.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #73: And You Censored Me Because...Why?

As most of my long time readers know, I'm incredibly squirrely when it comes to be moderated/censored. As in, I get seriously bent out of shape to the point where I often cut ties with the person/entity who did the censoring.

The censoring itself has been pretty much dormant for the past few years, beyond the occasional unfriending of those on FB who took exception to a comment(s) that I made on a post that they were unwilling to defend (easier to unfriend someone that it is to defend your point of view).

I say "dormant" since I've become much better at reading what a person's personal views are on a given topic, so I make it a point to be respective and simply "scroll on by", which is a concept utterly lost on 98% of Americans who lean left/progressive with their personal views. Instead, I keep my more "offensive" comments limited to the pages that I follow/suggested pages that I troll.

For the most part, this has worked fairly well for me. I play nice with people I like, and they play nice with me. Easy peasy. However, this year, there have been two occasions in which I've been taken to task and had verbiage removed, and I've had two noticeably different reactions to being called out.

1} I had a blog post removed from a writing group I belong to. This happened during the first week of January when protesters stormed Capitol Hill (IMO it was not "an insurrection"). I had posted it in the group for a prompt that day. One of the lovely admins (I genuinely mean that as a compliment) removed it and gave me a few thoughtful reasons as to why. I told her that I appreciated the sentiment, that there was no hard feelings on my end and that everything was good. Ultimately though, I probably prompted a tweaking to the group rules on what can and can't be posted in the group. 

2} This one is a bit more difficult to simply accept. I've become a bit more active on YouTube as of late and have posted dozens of comments over the past couple of years, some thought provoking and some funny/whimsical and all about the topic of the video being shown at the time. And none that violated the fluidity of the community guidelines. None. Earlier in the week, an acquaintance of a writing group I belonged to posted a video link to someone who talks about all things writing, which the topic of the video was about vanity publishing (of which the acquaintance was interviewed for the video). I made what I assumed to be an inoffensive comment about it, along with a suggestion about a website to check out, and also subscribed to the channel.

Maybe about an hour or so later, I went back to the video and saw that my comment was gone. Now there was nothing on the channel itself saying that comments were being moderated (like you can on blogs), so you can imagine that I was extremely upset about my comment being nuked. I left one about my comment being nuked and sure enough, that one never posted as well. Suffice to say, I was really upset about this and immediately unsubscribed to the channel. The owner eventually commented and offered to restore the comment. Long story short, I'm not quite sure what happened to my original comment. He said that it wasn't him that took it down, that it must've been YouTube. Personally, I find this hard to believe as all my previous comments have met/passed the various algorithms with flying colors, and only YouTube and the owner of a channel can remove comments they deem offensive/poor taste. In any event, I politely gave my two cents and wished him well with his channel.

So these were my most two recent bouts of censorship: one where my response was casual and understanding, and one where my response was not casual and understanding, but more to the point of being seriously ticked off and pledging to avoid the content creator for the future.

Censorship is fugly, but depending on where and what the circumstances are, can be, to a small degree, acceptable.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #72: Where I Be? I Be Here, There & Nowhere.

Since I was in a good mood at the tail end of my last post, I thought I would continue in that same vein with the posting of pic taken from my 2nd to last real vacation that I took (2009 I believe). 

I mean, who can't help but like a happy yellow frog, right?

Anyways, here is where I currently stand with my latest project.

From the last post until now, I managed to get everything that I wanted to get done with this book done.  I wrote a new table-of-contents; tweaked my bio; tweaked the links on how peeps could follow/find me (yeah, previous version had all kinds of broken links); and added two different samples to the end. The only things left that needs to be done is to make one long document out of everything and covert it all from Google docs to Word.

The samples were important as I want to make this into a print edition as well, and in order to do it, the page count has to be 1} up there (last short book I did, What Is Life?, has roughly 80+ pages) and 2} the size of the book has to be a bit smaller than normal, so that the book can have a spine (thus the need for a minimum page count).

So all that remains of this to get published is 1} purchase a cover and 2} hire a formatter.

Ultimately we're shooting for a late Spring/early Summer publication date. I'm a bit mellower/laid back now, so that may get me a few brownie points with the businesses of choice.

And now, a preview of other potential e-book projects.

Doing the aforementioned e-book rewrite provided just the right kind of motivation/jump-start that I so desperately needed (no writer's block, just lack of proper motivation). I immediately went through what I had stashed on my current USB drive (I have others which will eventually migrate to my current computer) and found two suitable short stories to play with. Also went through my Google Drive and printed out the story that I spent 2020 working on as well.

The current idea that I got percolating is to come out with at least two more short story e-books, which means I will need to find a doable fourth. The three that I do have in the on-deck circle are as follows:

1}What A Day...: this one takes place at home where the MC is telecommuting. Alternate reality with shades of horror/gore. Unpublished 2020.

2} The Grid: This one is basically a public revenge story that unfolds over the course of a few days. Will probably tweak it to an alternate reality of some kind, where two worlds uneasily co-exist. Also unpublished and originally written in 2009.

3} Saturday: This unfolds during the course of a few hours, with the MC running a morning errand to the bank via foot patrol. Definitely takes place in our favorite alternate reality. Writing and blog published in 2009.

While I'm looking forward to get back into the swing of things, I think I'm going to concentrate on the short story thing until I can get back in my comfort zone, then switch back to the novella/novel genres again.

Until next time, always vocalize what you feel and don't let anyone stop you from doing so.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #71: My Muse Has Chosen For Me

As you might been able to guess, this e-book is my next project.

When I had decided to take an early retirement (pending disability) this past November, one of the modest goals I had set for myself was to get back into my writing groove in 2021. A groove, I might add, that was put on the back burner in the summer of 2019, mostly due to other pressing, and quite necessary, life commitments that required my full attention.

So here we are in 2021, and I decided that I wanted to work on an important sub-tangent to my primary goal of writing: to make money from my writing. One of the quickest, and not quite the easiest way but pretty damn close, was to enroll a book into the KDP Exclusive program.

What book, you might ask?

Well, in this particular case, I wanted to start with something simple. Which turned out to be the book pictured above. That particular book was my first official attempt at self-publishing (via Smashwords), which was accomplished in 2013.

While this book was head and shoulders above anything that I written prior, it still had a serious flaw to it: namely basic editing that was very basic. It also had a few other things that needed adjusting, so basically it became the opening salvo (hopefully) of a good quantity books enrolled in that particular program.

So far, I have tweaked all three stories in varying degrees, including changing two of the stories' titles. Among other things that need to be done in no particular order: is a table of contents, new title for the book/e-book (check), new links to where you can find me; new copyright/publishing page (check and this one was way easier to do than the one I did for What Is Life?), and most importantly, since I want to come out with a print copy, a snippet to another book that will pump up the final page count.

Presently, my manuscript page count stands at about 25 pages, with a word count that's just a shade over 11k. Once all is said and done, the present incarnation of this book will be unpublished, since one of the rules is that the book cannot be published elsewhere. Which in this case is no biggie, since a lot of people don't really do Smashwords since it requires setting up another account, and lets be honest, people (including myself) are lazy and would prefer to do one-stop shopping if at all possible.

So, if anything, this project will force me to do the following things: kill the dust bunnies on skills long dormant and face my fear of publishing on Amazon for the first time since they merged CreateSpace back in 2018.

Making money is a good thing indeed, and if I can earn enough to buy a tall dark roast from Starbucks (in my town, it's $2.36 including 6.35% sales tax), I'll be a happy boy.

{c} 2021 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved