I Have Stories!

Episode #322: The Grooviest Groove That You'd Ever Groove To.

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 13 Apr 2026 14:12:00 +0000

Just before sitting down at this now full screen, I was jamming to a song by Blues Traveler that was going through my head because of the title of the post. Thus, we have Winnie The Pooh chilling on the bench in the bright sunshine.

T he writing groove.

Many have searched for that elusive state of being, where the words keep flowing and that you're churning out stories at a continuous pace. Some have found it and are quite happy with their lives. Others have not. They suffer through bouts of not being able to put the proverbial pen to paper on a consistent basis and become completely aggravated with the process.

And then there are people like me, who have extended peaks and valleys with their writing. In other words, Johnstown Flood and Arizona in the summertime. I know, odd analogy, but it's an apt descriptor. You have peaks where the worlds and stories pour out at a frenetic pace until you suffer from epic burnout and you're scrapping the bottom of a tapped out vein looking for sentences.

A good example would be my blogging. I started with two posts every other day; then dropped to one post every other day; then dropped to three posts per week; then dropped to two posts per week; then finally dropped to one post per week. Oh, and I've been blogging since 2008, so...yeah.

But, as a former blogger used to say, I blogress.

I was definitely going through a medium sized valley with my writing prior to my retirement in late 2020. But after digging out the previously mentioned (repeatedly I might add) manuscripts, I started working on them in 2021, and I slowly started digging myself out of the valley that was my current writing home.

By 2022, when I was hip deep in year one of writing my fantasy series, my writing groove was mostly back. Although I wasn't doing any original writing of stories, I was enjoying blogging once again, and I was a Happy Boy.

Later in 2022, I got bit by the short story bug, and for the next several months, I wrote there short stories. I didn't write anymore after those initial three because I didn't want to get too sidetracked while writing my fantasy series.

Fast forward to 2025. I had written the last sentence of my series in mid-February, and I eventually hit that small rut that everyone goes through after completing a novel. But I wasn't terribly worried, in that I was busy getting this novella published and that usually takes me four to five months to complete.

Oddly, or strangely enough, depending on your viewpoint, I got bitten by the short story bug again. This time, in addition to writing original stuff, I thought I would take a crack at rewriting old stuff. Now if you're like me, you never really toss old stories away into the circular file, you just stash them inside a three ring binder and pray you don't forget them.

Now I do want to point out the underlying reason why his short story bug came back to bite me after being dormant for three years: I had forced myself to take a one year sabbatical before I got back to the serious business of editing the final master draft of my series.

So I dug out several extra stories to rework and rewrite, which is what I spent all 2025 doing. With one of the stories, after I had reworked/rewrite to my satisfaction, I made four different attempts at turning it into a novella.

After that fourth attempt, I decided that I didn't want to spend months researching and writing a novella that would have taken time away from my fantasy series.

Fast forward a few months to 2026. I decided that I would document my journey to publication on Meta (aka Facebook), like I've been doing on my blog. I initially wrote about 15 posts from Dec '25 through Jan '26, then once I got in a good editing groove, kept stockpiling more posts (I publish twice a week on Meta), as well as writing updates.

Now we're here in mid-April and not only am I still stockpiling posts and writing updates to my editing (still slogging away on book #3), but now I've also started stockpiling posts for a novella that I wanted to re-publish this summer. So I can definitely say that once again, I've found my writing groove.

Or, as the Blues Travelers opines, "it's all in the groove!"

Happy Monday and may your week be a dream on your reality check.

Episode # 321: The Family Bookcase {5}: Encyclopedias

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 06 Apr 2026 14:18:00 +0000

Items that you can buy with bubble gum comics: bobbleheads!

If you're somewhere in the general vicinity of my age (60 1/2), you didn't grow up with the Internet to use for research purposes; you grew up with ye olde fashioned public library, which contained among other research items, encyclopedias.

Or perhaps, your house may have contained a semi-up-to-date set of the (usually) Encyclopedia Britannica, or some other quality encyclopedia set.

If perhaps you're a member of the younger generation, your definition of "encyclopedia" is probably just an actual encyclopedia, but more to the point of having it attached to a pop culture item.

Today's post is going to focus on both types of encyclopedias: those that have now turned into a search engine as Google, Bing, FireFox and Opera; and those which are connected to the genre of pop culture along with all of its sub-genres.

Regular encyclopedias:

While I no longer have that original set of Encyclopedia of Britannica from my childhood, I do have a 2,500+ page monstrosity called The Columbia Encyclopedia. Yes it was published by Columbia University, and yes it is one volume. (about 4 1/2 inches thick, cover-to-cover), and it was published in 1969.

Here are some examples of some long articles you can find. I should note that the font size in this book is around 4-5. For comparison, newspapers is around 8. To confirm, open any blank document and drop the font size to the aforementioned size for a better understanding.

1} The Hussites: religious movement.
2} Writing and the alphabet: complete with examples like cuneform.

Then we have non-traditional encyclopedias. We have quite a few complete sets, courtesy of my brother, who likes to salvage while performing home improvements for others.

1} Funk & Wagnells Wildlife: and you thought they were just a Carnac the Magnificent bit.
2} Illustrated Encyclopedia of Animals.
3} l Want to Know: what would considered to be Middle Grade.
4} Our Living World: published in conjunction with the Dept Of Interior.

Then we have the non-non-traditional encyclopedias. These are primarily oddball/pop culture collections that people would slap the "encyclopedia" label on to make it sound really interesting and a lot more expensive to purchase.

I have found the following types in our family bookcase:

1} A half dozen different types of baseball encyclopedias.
2} Various music encyclopedias.
3} A Cliff Notes version of Britannica.
4} Pro Wrestling.
5} Horror Movies.
6} Gun Design.
7} Antiques.
8} Boxing records.

As you can see, it's very much quite the eclectic haul of encyclopedias we have in this house. And rest assured, they will be treated like the last days spent with the previous owner: unwanted, unloved and most importantly, unread.

Now I will admit that the pro wrestling books are mine, and one of them is remarkably out of print (having come out around five years prior to the explosion of Hulkamania), but the other as previously stated, were not acquired by me, nor would they be something acquired by me.

My speed has always been the oddball collection like the Illustrated History of Rock & Roll, coffee table books like on the Rolling Stones, or extended collections that I had touched up on months ago from the now defunct Time-Life Imprints, or even one on Warner Bros Cartoons. Most importantly, the books I decide to acquire, I will actually read.

I know, imagine that, spending one's hard earned money on books that you enjoy reading, sometimes repeatedly. It does boggle the mind (a game I have played only once in my life) though, that some people, like myself, enjoy reading so much that they would have no issues in pulling out a random volume from a set of encyclopedias, flipping to a random pages and just start reading.

Fun fact that you may or may not be able to deduce from reading this post: I have a rather ambivalent attitude towards the encyclopedia, no matter what form they may come in.

I won't go out of my way to purchase a set, not even if it's on a topic that I like, True Crime for example. If one happens to be available and is reasonably up-to-date, I will be more than happy to use it, if only as a jumping off point to help me confirm something that I have knowledge of.

I leave you with one last thought: on a personal note: I would highly recommend, if you have a school age child that has an inquisitive mind and decent comprehension skills, that he/she be allowed to read the encyclopedia. It's an absolutely fantastic way to introduce your youngster to the world around them, both current and past, no matter what the topic, and give them a jump start on going down the rabbit hole of knowledge when something piques their curiosity.

Because as the old saying goes, reading is fundamental.

Episode #320: Yo! What's The Name Of Yer Book?

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 30 Mar 2026 14:08:00 +0000

Beef in the summer time, it's what makes a family get together, a family get together.

Book titles have always been a hit or (mostly) miss for me.

Either I get it reasonably right: The Inner Sibling or A Trilogy of Love, or I get it painfully wrong: Line 21 or Red Stripe.

With my fantasy series, even though I got the overall title correct, Sister vs Sister, creating the individual titles has been a small pine cone in my work boot.

The first title was way beyond a no-brainer, since the first book started off the adventure with a kidnapping, it made sense to feature that particular word in the title. The second was just a shade more difficult, but knowing how everything was unfolding made it only a slightly bumpier ride to come up with a title that kissed the ceiling of the unwritten rule about title length.

The title for book $3 was the most difficult to come up with so far. One difficult part was reasonably matching the title up with the content of the book, which in this case features a key climatic point that sets the tone for the rest of the series.

The other difficult part was making sure that the title did not break that unwritten rule about title length. After performing about a half hours worth of brainstorming, I came up with a seven word title for the story. I felt it reasonably hinted at what the book was about, so I made a cover sheet for the binder and called it a day.

An hour later, I realized that it was too wordy, and if I felt it was too wordy, then other would too, so I spent about fifteen minutes deciding on where to chop it down and the end result became a three word title.

~~~~~

The apparent unwritten rule of thumb with the title, at least how I understand it, is that the title should be five words or less, because you have a few seconds to catch someone's attention and if they have to expand their short attention span longer than that. you're basically cooked.

If you know anything about publishing history, and I'm not talking about the modern 20th century, but going back to ye medieval times when the printing press came into vogue, book titles were both short and incredibly long at the same time.

Book jacket covers are a modern invention, where you can stuff everything that one needs to know about the book with impunity. Prior to the 20th century, you didn't have the jacket cover, you simply had the cover enhance with the title and the author's name, and maybe on the side. There were exceptions to that rule though, like dime novels.

Anyways, back then the title page inside often became the modern day equivalent of a brief synopsis: you would have a brief/succinct title of your book, say, "how to ice fish."

Underneath in parenthesis, you would have a fifteen to thirty word synopsis of the entire book as a subtitle. So instead of having a short title of your book, it would suddenly expand to a minimum of twenty words. And this was more the rule than the exception.

So when the modern publishing industry was created, I believe the unwritten rule of five words or less became the industry norm for fiction and some non-fiction. I think you would be hard pressed to find a fiction book with a title longer than five words in this day and age.

I'm almost certain that I will be revisiting this topic very soon once I start working on book #4 & #5, because I foresee having my usual difficulties in creating a title that connects in some way with the content.

Thank you for visiting this rare two-for post that is equal parts a writing update and a history lesson.

Episode #319: My Den {2}-Getting Into The Groove: Vinyl LPs

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 14:14:00 +0000

It's been a while since I've talked about my modest music collection (well modest compared to others), so I thought it would be a slight refreshing change of pace to focus on audio, instead of video/visual. Specifically, the petroleum product portion of our vast music collection (aka vinyl).

To give a very brief update, between 45s and LPs, my petroleum product collection contains a combined total somewhere north of 9,000 pieces. Now this is a conservative estimation, as I have one full carrying box, twenty and a half wooden crates (each full crate about 55 units) of LPs and six and a quarter crates (each full crate contains 60 +/-) and one full carry box (about 100).

My petroleum product collection has been acquired in a few different ways over the decades.

Purchased for me when I was a young'un (ex: a Brady Bunch album);
I purchased for myself: new (as a teen and young adult); used (from the age of twenty-five going forward);
Have been given to me by family, friends and co-workers.

Presently, #3 is how I've been acquiring them, as my family and my friends know that I'm always open to acquiring petroleum products on the cheap (aka free). Because of this thoroughly treasured part of my character, I've been able to expand to all kinds of music that maybe three decades ago, I would've simply waved away.

Here is a small sample of music in my collection. Please note that I do not make the distinction between 45s and LPs.

Country of all types of persuasions, including classic and pop; pop music; true alternative/indie music; comedy LPs (60s thru the mid 80's); classical of all types; true R&B; rock music (60's thru 90's); show tunes; easy listening and even niche stuff like barbershop quartets and "adult" (aka smut) music.

Granted, college radio had a major influence in my later years, specifically starting late 90's going forward, which exposed me to all kinds of music, no matter the country of origin.

I now would like to show you a few examples of what has come across my hands and into my collection over the decades.

Elton Britt: yodel songs

Yes, you read correctly. I have an original album from 1956 that contains twelve selections of yodeling songs. I did a modicum of research and this gentlemen recorded nearly 600 sides (45's) and 60 albums during a 30 year career*. I've yet to listen to it though.

*The only artist that comes to mind that might come close to those totals is Willie Nelson.

Apparently yodeling songs were quite popular back in the day, as this gentlemen had a few million sellers back in the 40's & 50's, and from what I was able to ascertain, he was working right up to the day he passed away in 1972.

This is a country album put out by Senator Robert Byrd. Yes, that Robert Byrd. The older than Methuselah rabid segregationist who stayed in office right up until his death.

Anyways, apparently he was an accomplished musician and this was released on a small private label in 1978. Oh and, he actually sang on this record.

~~~~~

While I often enjoy collecting for the sake of collecting, there are times, when after I do a quick run through of a recent acquisition or even a basic run through of my collection looking for something to play, I will often scratch my very bald head in bewilderment at some of the music that was produced and oddly enough, actually listened to.

I sincerely hope that everyone has an enjoyable week and I'll see you next time on the price is not quite spot on.

Episode #318: American English?! No, Not That! Well....Maybe

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 14:49:00 +0000

Flashback to when both dogs were living large and living pretty while enjoying life.

I discovered the joys of the American English Language very late in life, but early enough that it came to be part and parcel of my palette when I began to take my writing seriously.

To reintroduce everyone to my former employment background, my very first job was working at the CT State Library in something called "The Connecticut Newspaper Project". The extreme T.L.;D.R. is that I helped prepare old Connecticut newspapers for microfilming. the date range of these newspapers with the late 18th century through the mid 1980's, with a particular emphasis on the 1850's to the mid 1980's.

As I got to reading those early newspapers, I slowly began to appreciate the elaborate workaround that newspapermen would do to skirt the strong libel/slander laws of the time period. For example, you couldn't use select adjectives to describe someone in print. Instead you would often put a letter or two, followed by an underscore, and because your reader was reasonably intelligent, they would instantly recognize the word in question.

Or, if you want to insult someone in print, you would have to get really creative with your insults. For example, if you wanted to call someone "week" when they were bragging about the rope tying skills, you could say that "I had to learn on the fly because I didn't have the luxury of someone helping me out by standing still."

Fast forward about a decade or so. When I decided to become serious about my writing, I knew I had to make my characters stand out in some particular way. The no-brainer for me was to flesh out my character's linguistic skills, and I did this with all of my characters throughout all of my stories. Like a stock character trait.

So what I've tried to do was to model my characters language/speech traits after those writers and journalists of the Victorian age: a sharp tongue, biting wit, a delicate mix of sarcasm and bluntness that allows the user to get their point/insult across without too much collateral damage. I also made sure that those particular traits were sprinkled throughout a given story, because as the old saying goes: saying less carries more of an impact than saying more.

To elaborate on the 'less is more' philosophy, I have found that you can easily establish the personality of a particular character is, by simply having them use one word that they can apply a lot of inflection with.

For example, whenever I use the worlds "Indeed", or "Quite", I'm imaging my character is wanting to get to the point of whatever issue they're dealing with so that they can move on, or they're simply agreeing with whatever salient point someone else is making. Whenever I use the word "Come", it's basically short hand for "we need to get moving on to the next issue at hand."

In summation, I try to create characters that are well-rounded, erudite without being snobbish and will often use language as a way to keep the antagonists at bay, or at least, in their lane.

Episode #317: The Family Bookcase {4): Gaming

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 14:01:00 +0000

I was searching through the family bookcase looking for something interesting to blog about when I happened across a few RPG rulebooks/guidebooks. Now I am one of a good chunk of the population who are quite familiar with RPGs, but I never had the itch to play one. I prefer to use my imagination and writing skills for the general fiction world of the novella & novel, but I have mad respect for those who enjoy RPGs and the worlds they can create.

Anyways, I performed a bit of research on the three books that we possess, as well as a brief skim through, and I have to say that I am seriously impressed with the amount of effort from a collective to create these three books. Two of the three books are sadly out of print, as they were created by a close family member who no longer maintains that level of participation in the RPG community, although they have branched out in other ways {click here to see}.

The other role/guidebook was created by a company called West End Games, which surprisingly enough, is still in business under a different corporate umbrella. I won't bore you with the convoluted details, but please click on the link if your curiosity is piqued.

In general, I am astonished with the amount of work that went into creating these worlds (and their background, although it seems that the ones created and published by my close family member are heads above the corporate one), and so I will be explaining what each one is to the best of my ability.

~~~~~

The first of the two books created by my cousin is called Twin Crowns and Other Lands.

Considering I'm a serious neophyte when it comes to RPGs, what impressed me the most while I was thumbing through the book, was the incredible amount of detail and back story that were created for this particular RPG. I always knew that worlds were created for fantasy novels/series, but I always assumed that they would be limited to what would be actually needed for the story (like mine is), but I guess with RPGs, it skips to a whole new level of thoroughness.

The second book that my cousin had created was a role-play for the Twin Crown world that was based on Live Action Role-playing, which was something that I had never heard of before. Think of it as dressing for a Ren fair and then playing a D & D adventure, or one of those dinner theater mysteries.* And yes, my cousin and her gaming friends are featured on this cover.

*okay that last one is pulled directly out of the definition from Google of Live Action Role Playing.

Again, just like the first, it's extremely dense-not so much concentrated on the extensive background dump, but more concentrated on the characters and their respective KSAs, as well as the assorted ephemera that makes a fantasy world function.

The third book seems to be the only part of an entire box that was left behind somewhere. Not knowing much about RPGs, I'm gathering there's other components that are needed in order to successfully play this particular adventure called Torg: The Possibility Wars.

If you check out the link for West End Games, it goes into greater detail about the origins of this game, and the company, which was found in the late 70's, and created a lot of well known RPGs for some very popular IPs such as Star Wars.

~~~~~

My views on all three games are decidedly mixed. On one hand, they have really opened my eyes to the amount of worlds building that is required to have a successful RPG (or fantasy series, both written and celluloid), so having top notch writing skills is a major plus, with a solid imagination a good second (especially if you're creating your world from scratch and not using an established IP.

On the other hand, the amount of world building, along with the extensive KSAs involved with that particular world, is incredibly daunting and challenging to a neophyte such as myself, who has a very hard time putting that much effort to playing an RPG to begin with (which is why I never migrated beyond sports when it came to video games in my young adult years).

In spite of this kind of game not being my cup of tea by any stretch of the imagination, I do like learning about a facet of life that a lot of people enjoy participating in because it works both as a stress reducer and a way to build a skill set that you can successfully apply to the real world.

Gaming is a great way to improve your critical thinking and problem solving skills, no matter what type of game you enjoy playing. Try one today. Or as my cousin used to say on her podcast, "happy gaming everybody."

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 15:04:00 +0000

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.

Episode #315: Let's Talk Celebrity Books!

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 23 Feb 2026 14:54:00 +0000

"Here he comes to save the day...maybe!"

I like books that are either writing about celebrities or are written by them. In regards to the former, I enjoy reading those that are created with at least the tacit approval of the subject in question. Those tend to be the most interesting because the biographer can often perform a deeper dive into the subject when they know they have unfettered access to them.

Example: I recently read a very good bio of R.E.M. Even though the band declined to be interviewed directly/participate, they made it known that they had no qualms with any member of their families or extended friendship circles actually participating.

Now I have read or almost read biographies of those who did not want to participate and made it known that they were not nor would they going to give their approval, so the finished product had a tendency to be wanting. Robert DeNiro, Paul Simon, Ringo Starr and John Prine fall into this particular book category.

In regards to the latter statement, books written by 'celebrities' have a tendency to fall into two distinct categories: memoirs and topics that they have an in-depth knowledge of. While I enjoy both, I should let everyone know that my definition of 'celebrity' is probably a complete 180 from yours. To me, a celebrity is someone who is well known from any and all walks of life, and not from the usual fields of sports and entertainment.

For example: over the decades I've reads memoirs from a diverse group of people such as Eric Roberts, Sissy Spacek, Mike Campbell (founding member of The Heartbreakers), Dave Grohl, Steve Boone (The Lovin' Spoonful) and John Lyndon (aka Johnny Rotten).

However, I have also read memoirs from people who are well known in their chosen field, however niche it may be, but not known to the general public.

For example: I have read a memoir from an internet personality with the nome de plume of The Bitchy Waiter (who also has a movie out); a very strange bio about one half of a duo that makes up the popular YouTube channel Jolly (the book was ultimately written as fundraiser for a theme park in Australia; and a memoir from a popular TikTok/YouTube personality, Hayley Morris.

Now if we switch over to the other type of 'celebrity' book that I have enjoyed, you'll find that my reading list is just as eclectic. I have read memoirs that doubled as history books.

For example: professional wrestling. I've read memoirs from Bob Backlund and Pat Patterson, both of which also cover the golden age of what is now the WWE prior to Hulkamania. I've also read (and have a copy) a memoir from Lynn Denton, who was a professional wrestler under the name "The Grappler" and worked primarily in the Northwest part of the US. His memoir doubled as a history of territory wrestling prior to the massive national expansion of the WWF/WWE

If we switch one more time, we move on to books that have been written by people who are very well known in their chosen niche field. A well known Michigan attorney, Steve Lehto, has written a slew of books covering true crime and the automotive industry. The only title that I have is "American Murder Houses: A Coast-to-Coast Tour of the Most Notorious Houses of Homicide". It's actually a really good & fascinating book and I highly recommend it and his other books.

Another book that I have is written by podcaster Patrick Wyman. He's a former MMA sportswriter turned legitimate historian who specializes in Medieval, Roman and early World history. His 1st book is called "The Verge: Reformation, Renaissance and Forty Years That Shook The World 1496-1530", and he examines that forty year period through the eyes of ten real people. Highly recommend this book as well.

In general, I enjoy reading books written by people who are well known in their particular field of work and have become 'celebrities' in their own particular way to the media platform they choose to use. I enjoy memoirs written by people who may not be what we sarcastically call "A, B, C, & D" list celebrities, but are still celebrities in their own right.

One more thing: I often find those quirky memoirs and biographies at my local public library, from FB, from YouTube and from podcasts. These platforms have a tendency to weed out the fluffy ghostwriter money grubbers from those who actually know what they're talking about and are willing to show the good, the band and the fugly about themselves.

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 15:06:00 +0000

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

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

1} Sister vs Sister: The Series.

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

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

2} Facebook.

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

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

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

3} Graphic designer (cover).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Episode #313: Re-Visiting, Re-Reading and Re-Examining

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 15:28:00 +0000

Got a bit of those winter blahs, so here's a little something from last summer.

Back in the day I used to participate in a monthly writing related blog hop sponsored by the Insecure Writers Support Group, a writing community that supports new and established writers. They have their own blog and have a killer newsletter that is jam packed with all kinds of writing related info, both of which I highly recommend.

In the newsletter, they always offer a question that you can answer during the monthly blog hop (which is always the first Wednesday of the month). I thought that this month's question was so up my alley that I decided to give it a whirl for my weekly blog post.

"Have I ever re-read any of my early writing, and what was that experience like?"

The short answer is: I have and to quote an old song, "oh boy!"

The long answer, which is this post is: It has definitely been an eye opener. When I re-read the stuff that I wrote early on and compare it to what/how I write now, I cringe so hard that I sometimes pull a facial muscle.

While a lot of it has been all kinds of level of cringe, a good chunk of it has been salvageable to the point where I've been able to successfully rewrite and either publish/re-publish or have it soon to be published.

A few examples spring to mind:

1} Both of my recent novellas, The Mortality of Familial Love & To Live Is To Die Young, are re-imagined versions of previously poorly written stories of the kind that would forever languish in a slushy pile never to see the light of day.

2} My current fantasy series was re-imagined from the ashes of a (very) badly written novella that went nowhere fast over a dozen years ago until I changed the way I write my stories and decided to revisit that cringey story.

3} I have a novella that I plan on republishing this year, because the original version that was published over a decade ago was not up to my current standards as a writer. I realize it shouldn't have been and I'm now trying to rectify that. I've already did this with a previous short story collection, because the mid-2020's me absolutely hated the late 2000's version me.

4} And finally, I was able to successfully re-write nearly a dozen short stories because again, this version of me was severely disappointed with that version of me's mediocre writing (and it was).

So yes, I have spent the past half dozen years pulling all kinds of Calvin & Hobbes faces when reading all of my early writing, but during those same half dozen years, I've also been channeling my inner Calvin & Hobbes can-do attitude when it comes to re-imagining those admittedly bad stories into something 20x better.

I think perseverance is a must have quality for a writer, especially when you're able to find a few good pebbles in the proverbial sandbox of badly written stories, no matter how old those stories happen to be.

Life as a writer is often good, but it's better when you can resurrect an early badly written story into something that you can be proud of.

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 02 Feb 2026 15:25:00 +0000

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.

Episode #311: My Bookcase {4}-Capitalizing Thy Punishment

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 14:30:00 +0000

A kindly heads up to my readers: I rarely talk about hot button issues on this blog, simply because of the amount of static I would receive and the fallout afterwards. This is one of those hot button issues that has divided the nation into two distinct camps: pro-criminal/anti-victim and pro-victim/anti-criminal, and you can probably guess which political party today is the former and which is the latter.

I am a very strong proponent of capital punishment. Always have been, always will be. I always believe that if you commit a heinous crime that involved multiple people or certain types of people becoming a fond distant memory for others, then you should suffer the ultimate consequence. This philosophy has made me a very usual person in my very blue state of Connecticut, as the pro-criminal/anti-victim Democratic party eliminated the death penalty in the early 2010's.

I won't go further into the weeds or how broken the system is and other assorted tangents, because this post is not about the (mostly) factual rantings of a "senior citizen". This post is about a book whose topic of choice is Texas's death row.

~~~~~~

I'm not entirely sure when I had picked up this book beyond narrowing it down to the late 2000's. I've always been interested on how death rows work in the states that do have them, so I figured, 'why not?'.

The book itself is an interesting read, as it first spends a few pages talking about how the death row in Texas is run; the rules and regulations, and the like (fun fact, no tobacco products are allowed with your final meal). The rest of the book is set up encyclopedia style in chronological order (but not in the way that you think).

In short, each entry contains the following:

The name of the criminal(a);
Brief synopsis of the case;
Brief bio of the inmate;
The amount of time spent on death row;
Last meal, if any;
Last statement, if any*.

*There is an appendix for some of the inmates who gave very lengthy (usually one to two book pages) statements.

I should note that this book covers the modern era of the Texas Death Row, when the lethal injection was the standard method of execution, starting in December 1982 through the publication date of this book, April 2007.

I will say that this book is a good read, although not terribly enjoyable for the average person or even true crime aficionados. People who are into criminal justice or social justice may find it a very good read, as well as those who enjoy reading about the history of capital punishment in the U.S.

This book does not sugarcoat the heinousness of the crimes the inmates were convicted of, and the author presents a well balanced look in at capital punishment in Texas.

As I stated in the beginning, there's a lot of things wrong with how capital punishment sentences are carried out, and this post isn't about the end result of a deep dive through the internet (among other things), just a book review/recommendation for those who are curious about the death penalty and how it's applied in the U.S., with a specific focus on Texas.

Thank you for coming to my blog today, your feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Episode #310: Time Now, For The Editing Portion Of Our Program

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 15:11:00 +0000

An oldie but still a goody from last summer. Sunflowers for a sunshiny day. A harbinger of a cool spring this year, perhaps?

And so it begins that zero day is upon us. Or to be more precise, over one thousand three hundred pages spanning five books totaling one hundred twenty chapters are now officially knockin' on my front door.

On February 6, 2025, I wrote the proverbial 'the end' to my fantasy series "Sister vs Sister". Besides deciding on the overall title of the series and coming up with the necessary sub-titles for all five volumes, along with the previously mentioned page edit note taking, I spent the rest of 2025 performing the following:

Front-to-back-to-front note taking and reviewing.

Basically, on that first read through, I performed another round of editing and making sure there were no continuity issues going forward. I then did the exact same thing again going backwards from the end looking for the exact same issues.

After that particular read through and letting it rest for a few weeks, I turned my attention to fixing a few characters so that they were consistent all the way through. In other words, a few characters started off being portrayed a particular way, but by the end had evolved into something completely different.

For example: The Pod Queen's hair spirit started off in Book #2 as being her bff, but by the end of that book had morphed into being her sister. Thus a continuity issue that needed to be addressed.

I found another continuity issue with another character that was portrayed one way and as the story progresses performed a one-eighty by the end.

Overall, I found about five character/plot continuity issues, of which a couple were actually fixed while I was writing the series. So while I have my work cut out for me, it's not as bad as it could have been.

I say "not as bad as it could have been" because I made a concentrated effort to be clear and concise with my note taking. As most of you know, my handwriting is garbage, so my printing has to be clear enough for me to decipher. Believe it or not, this is a serious on-going issue for me. If I become too tired, my printing becomes just sloppy enough not to be legible, which has created problems over the years.

So this is my life for the next year, and just like in 2024, I will publish the third of my four projects (revamped/rewritten novella) sometime in the spring while working on these edits. And just like previously, I will be journaling my continuing adventures with my fantasy series, with a brief summary here and a slightly more detailed post on Facebook. If you have Facebook, please check out my author's page (link on the right hand side of the front page).

Have a good rest of your week.

Episode #309: When The Hard Part Suddenly Becomes Easy

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 12 Jan 2026 14:42:00 +0000

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

1} A title for the story;
2} Synopsis, both long and short;
3} Tag.

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

Click for details

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

Click for details

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a good week everyone!

Episode #308: Were You Ever Given Bad Writing Advice?

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 14:36:00 +0000

Coffee so mediocre that it didn't want to be open for fear of polluting the air with the coffee beans that were lying around on the ground beneath the coffee bush for a year before someone finally took notice and showed pity on them.

I gotten plenty of good advice over the years in regards to my writing, with the majority of it being indirectly (i.e. reading about it from reputable people) acquired, for which I am very grateful for.

I've also gotten a bit of bad advice over the years, some of which that cost me money and reputation (i.e vanity presses and agents). Others had given me advice that basically cost me time and enrollment in the school of Sunken Cost Fallacy.

Once such piece of advice that in 20/20 hindsight was bad, was to create an author's page. This was suggested to me by my one and only publisher back in 2009, as a way to promote myself and my book(s). Naively, I went along with this suggestion, not realizing until many years later that I could've done the same by simply promoting my regular personal page for my writings.

Over the years that page had more or less stagnated, as it got to be very time consuming in posting fresh content on that page. But earlier this year, I had the ability to cross-post/share from my personal page to my author's page, which in turn generated some mild interest and a few extra eyeballs.

But as we all know, all good innovations introduced by FB must also be taken away because it was a good innovation. So as a matter of record, I lost my ability to cross-post and to share to my page. And thus, I once again found myself with a stagnant author's page that averaged at most, one post a week, which was a link to my latest blog post.

I realize now that creating an author's page was redundant, and I also realize that I should've kept it deactivated when I had the opportunity to do otherwise (not sure if I can deactivate it now w/o messing up my personal page). I also realize that I simply can't abandon the page no matter how much I want to, again we circle back to the sunken cost fallacy that I had mentioned earlier.

So I came up with a plan that if anything, will hopefully make people inquisitive enough to check out my writings and blog: posting my editing/publishing journey as it relates to my five volume fantasy series.

For past couple of weeks, I started writing short blog posts that are less than 200 words in length*, first with pen & paper, then transcribe to the computer before doing the very predictable copy/paste (lesson learned from long ago when I would be halfway through a good FB post, only for my computer to suddenly glitch or me hit a stray button and POOF! no more post).

As of the day of this post, I have thirteen posts completed and ready to be launched. If I couple it with my weekly blog post, I have either thirteen weeks of FB posts (one per week), or six and a half weeks if I add two per week. I haven't quite decided, but I'm leaning heavily towards two per week, if only because I play to start editing in earned this month and I don't want to be writing about the editing of book one when I'm starting on book two.

*fun fact: because I was never able to uncramp my printing from previous decades spent filling out forms with ludicrously small spaces, I gave myself to hard caps for writing these FB posts: maximum of thirteen words per lone and sixteen lines per post. this gives me a standardized goal of 208 +/- words per post, which translates to one quarter to one third typed.

I'm not sure if I will do this with anything else that I might create in the future, but at the very least I will enjoy shaking my tired groove thing while trying to drum up a few more eyeballs my way. If anything, I have a new pseudo blog to play around with that won't involve any of the inherent stress that this blog sometimes brings to me (general purpose vs one specific purpose).

Episode #307: One Exception To Total Silence

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 29 Dec 2025 15:23:00 +0000

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 22 Dec 2025 14:37:00 +0000

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?

Episode #305: Trying To Ignore The Trees For The Forest

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 14:57:00 +0000

Year two of faking it, because reality is just too darn expensive and messy.

I had a post already in the can that covers this very topic, but after realizing that four page handwritten blog post would total nearly 800 words on the computer screen, thus putting people into a zombie-like trance, I spun on my heel to write a shorter version. A reverse twist on the popular T.L.; D.R. by calling it T(oo).S(hort).; D(id). R(ead).

Due to circumstance completely within my control, I was struck with a drive-by female canine slapping of the incredibly obvious: I couldn't delay working on the all import draft #2 of my fantasy series "Sister v Sister" until late Spring 2026. I needed to push up the start date January 2026.

Why? It's simple if you boil it done to a bone broth: the self imposed deadline I gave to myself shortly after writing the proverbial The End, has mostly imploded, leaving remnants of good intentions gone sour.

Out of three tasks that I had assigned to myself for the majority of 2025:

Let the entire series marinate until next year, which I mostly did save for some front-to-back-to-front editing;
Publishing another book;
Birth a new novel.

The reality was a bit sobering. The first item was partially accomplished, as I started developing a serious case of 'what in the tarnation am I dong' when it came to item number three; item number two was accomplished earlier this year; item number three....

Number three....involved at least four attempts spread out over three different stories, in which each attempt flamed out spectacular, spectacular. First I tried expanding on a short story, unsuccessfully I might add, on two separate occasions before giving up the ghost; 3rd attempt was dragging out a 1/2 to 1/3 completed novel that I had originally gave up the ghost because...GASP!...I literally lost the plot.

The fourth and final attempt drove me to my slushie pile, where I found the beginnings of two stories that were written sometime in the early 2010s. So I took a good look at them, saw they were fantasy stories, then sat down to write.

The first sticking point with them is that I had to remind myself that I was not writing a prequel for one my characters in my recently completed series. The other sticking point, which ultimately became victorious, was I started to really loathe what I had written, so as soon as I transcribed both chapters, it got pitched into my slushie box.

The one issue that all three of the stories had in common (besides fantasy) is that in order to them justice, they needed the type of complex writing that I had to perform for my recently completed series (see this post for a deep dive that will hurt your head) that I was unwilling to devote one to three years of my life to.

The other issue that drove me to distraction and ultimately got me to focus on thee heavily packed forest and not the scorched earth in front of it, was the nagging cerebellum tap reminding me of the series that I had sitting in a giant milk crate next to my computer.

I did briefly silence that tap as I decided to finish up the multi-chapter synopsis before officially putting the series into hibernation. That involved writing up the last twenty-five chapters (and summarizing all the characters that appeared in the series) and it took me about a month of solid note taking, which was followed by a week of transcribing.

So for better or worse (the worse is not what you think), we have come to the decision to work on the second draft of my fantasy series. The scary thing, at least for me, is that the easiest part of this ginormous task was actually making the decision to do so. Because I had decided when I had first made the decision to create this series, I was going to a thorough job of acquiring everything that will be needed to properly write the 2nd (and others) draft.

As a former supervisor of mine would often state, it's never simple. But one way to make it simple, is to continue bringing everyone along on my journey to salvation by publication.

Have a fantastic week everyone!

Episode #304: My Den {1}-Getting Into The Groove

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 08 Dec 2025 14:03:00 +0000

Sometimes, you just need to be anti-social in order to have a peaceful relaxing day in your neighborhood.

When I sit down to write, I need almost total silence in my surroundings. Doesn't matter where I am, indoors or out, I need to be as close to complete silence as humanly possible, which is saying as lot, because my den is directly below the living room, and the great outdoors, well, you got the occasional car, peoples and animals. So 96% is the best that I can shoot for.

When it comes to transcribing, that is a completely different topic all together. I need my proverbial white noise to help keep me focused, whether it's MLB (summer), podcasts or music. I know it's odd, but this works for me. Today's post will feature my favorite artists/collections that have become my go-to white noise when I'm transcribing.

Even though this is a top ten list, to quote a stale YouTube channel, it's just a list with no discernible difference between artists, only what I choose to pull out to help me concentrate. With the disclaimer out of the way, let's hit the ground jogging.

1} Any new stuff: I'm still heavily into buying used and the occasional new c.d., even though the new has become fewer as the months/years pass by. So whenever I'm ready to transcribe, I will often pick through my TBP pile to see if there's anything to pique my curiosity or fit my particular mood. I should note that I have quite the eclectic collection, so...yeah.

2} Schoolhouse Rock: Back when Schoolhouse Rock was going through its 90's renaissance, my brother picked up a 4 c.d. collection from Rhino Records (now out of print). It eventually came into my hands some many years ago, and it has become one my fave go-tos for transcribing music.

3} Children's music: I'm a fan of children's music from my younger days, when thought and time were given to create songs that would last, so I have two c.d.s: one featuring Marlo Thomas & Friends and one by Carole King. Strangely enough, both c.d.s were created for t.v. specials back in the 70's and the 80's respectively.

4) Weird Al Yankovic: Been a fan of his music since the late 80's, when I had first heard his stuff on Dr Demento (formally a nationally syndicated radio show), and I got hooked. I have a few c.d.s of his and his stuff is so earworm inducing that even decades later, I can still remember chucks of melodies to dozens of his songs, both hits and non.

5} Samantha Fish: A really great blues guitarist and I first got into her via a FB friend who had posted a link to one of her videos. And as I'm want to do from time to time, I started acquiring her back catalog. I'm still a few current releases behind but I'm hoping to rectify that in 2026.

6a} & 6b} Sanmy Kershaw/Maddie & Tae: I rarely listen to 'country pop' and these two artists have become the exceptions. With the former, I found one of his c.d.s for sale at my local library, my curiosity was piqued and the rest they say, is history. As I'm want to do, I'm currently working my way through his back catalog. As for the latter, I first heard their hit 'Girl In A Country Song' on college radio. Curiosity properly piqued, I found the riotous video and immediately bought the c.d., and I'm also in the process of acquiring their current catalog.

7} Billy Joel: Like him or hate him, he has created some interesting music over the decades, so I have about six c.d.s that make it into my rotating playlist periodically.

8} Band Maid: An all female Japanese hard rock band that was brought to my attention via YouTube algorithms, which as of late is how I'm exposed to new music. Got hooked really bad and spent a pretty penny acquiring their back catalog and mostly present releases.

9} Train: Popular alt band from the late 90's through the early 00's. Acquired several of their c.d.s, with the latest being a live release from the later 2010's. Fantastic band even when nothing is charting, they're another of my go-tos.

10} Johnny Cash: About several years before he passed away in 2003, he teamed up with producer Rick Rubin and created a series of phenomenal c.d.s that were collectively called "The American Recordings, vol 1-6". This collection features original, classics and covers from well known artists and even duets. I highly recommend this particular music series (note, he won a Grammy for his version of 'Hurt').

I have a bonus recommendation that I would love to pass on to everyone: a cover band tthat is called Broken Peach.

They're a Spanish band who performs phenomenal cover-mashes. They tour mostly on the Spanish coast, have a multitude of releases on Spotify and came out with a c.d. of original material a couple of years ago. They came to my attention via YouTube's algorithms when one of their annual Halloween videos cropped up on my front page, "Tainted Love/Sweet Dreams Are Made of These", which in a span of four years has hit nearly 10 million views.

So my friends, I sincerely hope that you enjoyed my quirky top ten list of music I like to listen to while transcribing. I do want to add one option more to the list: everything else in my collection in case the top ten list doesn't do it for me at the given moment.

Happy Monday, and may no fourth be with you, just the magic number of three.

Episode #303: A Plethora Of Plots, But Only One Destination

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 01 Dec 2025 14:02:00 +0000

Flashback photo from when even the animals were chill, circa early 2000's.

A comment that I had made earlier in the month on a blog post about secondary characters got me to thinking about how I was able to successfully pull off the mammoth complexity on what seemed to be on the surface, a basic plot: husband is kidnapped. Wife and ex-wife go play fetch.

Simple, direct, home-grown and has the hallmarks of a pedestrian story. But what if I told you that out of that basic premise, I managed to weave over one dozen plots that involved more than an equal number of characters, all of whom had one singular target in play: the husband.

Granted, the most plot lines that I managed to write for a given novel/novella was three (my recent novella has three plot lines), and I certainly didn't plan on having to deal with so many plot lines within a given story. But after the dust had officially settled in 2025, I have to say that I am very pleased to say that pulling off such a mammoth complexity as this was a worthy feather in my cap (and a headache for a future post) that I would like to share with everyone.

~~~~~~

1} For starters, we have the original plot line that begat nearly one dozen other plot lines: husband is kidnapped and his wife and his ex play fetch. From here, we have our second plot: ex-wife is connected physically/mentally/spiritually with her ex, and now that connection is broken. So she wants to retrieve him in order to restore that connection and become healthy once again.

2} Our third plot line is as follows: the wife has a betrayal by those who she thought were family (non-blood) and that betrayal revolves around her husband.

3} Our fourth plot line that revolves around this husband involves the mercenary who was hired to perform the kidnapping, with the person who hired her being plot four point five, because both plot lines are tied at the hip.

4} Our fifth plot line plus the additional half, involves a powerful person from the ex-wife's past. He wants to help her achieve her goal, but knows he can't directly help her, but can indirectly. The additional part of this plot involves two others whose main objective is to help retrieve the husband so that they may achieve their goal of freedom.

Presently at this juncture, we have five main plot lines along with two sub-plot lines, all of which center around the husband. Let us now continue.

5} Our sixth plot line revolves around the half plot point from number four, as this person was the actual catalyst for the original plot point. Do not fear though, as this plot point has an additional plot point that involves a recently added member of her retinue.

6} Out of the next three plot points, two of them indirectly involve the husband, while the third involves catalyst from point four and point six and the added member of point six. Our seventh plot point involves the wife who indirectly caused the death of her sentient; our eighth plot point involves the ex-wife from point two, who kills the close family member from point four, with the half plot point involving the reincarnation of that particular member. our ninth plot point involves the added member from point six who takes a traitor in their midst.

7} Our tenth and final plot point involves two people who were caught on a camping trip and turned into edibles. However, they were given the opportunity to earn their lives back by performing a task for the mercenary, and if you'd guessed it was something to deal with the husband, you would be correct. The half plot point is that one of them becomes an involuntary host to a sentient who has a week to prove their worthiness or else.

In conclusion: out of ten official plot points, we have one sub plot point doubling as a full plot point, three sub plot points and one plot point that has no ties to the husband whatsoever. Fifteen plot/sub-plot points spread among eighteen characters, with only one plot point not connected to the husband in any way, shape or form.

I don't know about you, but I personally find it impressive that I had fourteen plot/sub-plot points tied to one person and managed to properly resolve every single one that was tied to the husband to everyone's satisfaction. Even though I don't think this is something that I'll be able to repeat anytime soon, I genuinely believe this has made me grow quite a bit as a writer, because it's showed me that with a little patience, I can handle up to triple the previous amount of plot points that revolve around one person.

I think I have a better understanding of what it takes to create a complex book series, especially one based in the fantasy genre, and why it can take multiple years to finish the series.

Here's to a happy Monday and stress free first week of the official Christmas shopping season.

Episode #302: When Music Clashed With Reality, It Made You Think

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 14:53:00 +0000

What advertising was like back in the mid 2010s: cartoonish and cringeworthy.

Back during my younger years (that would cover 1980 thru 1999), I used to hear all kinds of songs that were based (sometimes loosely, sometimes not) on real events. Those songs would always make you think and sometimes search out the event in question that piqued your curiosity.

For example, my earliest memory of a good song based on a real event was Ohio by CSNY (listened to it a lot on oldies radio). Unless you've been living under a rock or in a non-Western country, the song was about a shooting that took place during a protest of the Vietnam War at Kent State University.

As I grew older and expanded my musical horizons to include non-commercial radio stations, I would often hear other songs based on real events that received a lot of notoriety upon release.

The punk band The Dead Kennedys performed a cover of I Fought The Law but reworked the lyrics to have it based on the shooting of Harvey Milk and George Moscone by Dan White (he of the Twinkie Insanity plea). I heard this one on college radio because no same commercial radio programmer would in fact, add it to the playlist.

A few years after the previous song listed, the Boomtown Rats (Bob Geldof's original band) wrote a song based on a school shooting in California called I Don't Like Mondays, which was the reason the shooter gave for shooting up the school. Now that song still gets fossilized on the classic rock/alternative radio stations. Song itself has quite the orchestral feel to it, which is perfectly suited for the lyrics.

Fast forward almost two decades, and now you have a solid major label debut from one of those flavor of the month 90's alternative bands that had one banger of a release then got forgotten about. Seven Mary Three released an exceptionally dark c.d. that produced two radio friendly hits: Cumbersome, and Water's Edge. Water's Edge, according to the band, was based on a real life event that took place in Chicago. It seems that a young woman was being chased by two drug dealers and they boxed her in on a bridge. Frantic, she took her only route available for her to escape: jumping off the bridge into the water below, where she ultimately drowned.

Staying in the same time frame, R.E.M. created the song What's The Frequency, Kenneth, which was based on an incident involving CBS news personality Dan Rather, when he was attacked by a mentally ill man who kept repeating that phrase throughout the attack (note, he wasn't caught until almost a decade later).

Drift back to 1991, you have the song Tears In Heaven that Eric Clapton wrote as a tribute to his young son who tragically passed away after falling out of an apartment balcony.

These few rock songs are the only ones that stick out to me, if only because the majority of songs like this are done in other genres, like Bluegrass, Americana & Folk, which can pack a more powerful punch and leave a far reaching lasting impression.

Are there any songs that you know of that are based (loosely or completely) on real life events?

Episode #301: Back In Ye Olden Days When Comedy Was Memorable

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 14:57:00 +0000

A blast from the very distant past: sidewalk art via the road, circa 2010's, as performed during the annual Waterfall Festival. It's funny how images can conjour up a tenuous connection to a random song, in this case, The Spirit of Radio.

As most of you know, I am quite ambivalent to most forms of audio that originated during my teenage years which are currently being fossilized on an hourly basis on commercial radio.* There are however, a few exceptions, of which one is comedy. I grew up/came of age in what I consider to be the 2nd golden age of comedy (late 70's through the 80's) and is where I often retreat to when I want to listen to good comedy.

*the stuff being fossilized today I remember listening to when it was actually fresh.

I actually have quite a bit of comedy in my record collection that ranges from old time (Lily Tomlin), to really old time (Victor Borge), from crass druggie (Cheech & Chong) to the strangely topical (Vaughan Meader and Rich Little), to name just a few. But I rarely venture beyond that 2nd golden age of comedy, simply because the majority of today's doesn't really do anything for me (I will admit to watching some Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence in their collective prime though).

However, amongst the baker's dozen or so of comedy records that I own, there are three that I do cherish from my favorite comedian-turned-to-very-competent-actor, Steve Martin.

~~~~~~~~

Pictured to your immediate left is one of those albums, which in today's world the front cover featured would probably get you into trouble for being the "T" phobic word.

Like most adults who grew up in the seventies, my initial exposure to Steve Martin was through his novelty song "King Tut" (also had my first exposure to censorship on vinyl with the B side called "Excuse Me"). This novelty song of his piqued my curiosity enough to search out his comedy albums, of which three: the one pictured to your left, "A Wild And Crazy Guy" and "Let's Get Small", are part of my collection.

I felt his humor really connected with me on a personal level and some of his bits, like the aforementioned "King Tut" and "The Cruel Shoes" became absolute comedy classics. The man was an absolute legend as a comedian and I personally believe he was way ahead of his time with his comedy.

I for one, was truly sad when he stepped away from being a comedian and moved in other forms of entertainment, like acting (the majority of his movies were commercial/critical successes) and music (he dipped into bluegrass with his banjo playing, and became quite the solid entertainer in that endeavor). In general though, his comedy is still, some 40+ years later, my go-to humor of choice whenever I want to have a chuckle or two.

He was my introduction to the type of comedy that you really don't see much of these days: clean with the occasional swear word thrown in. In my later adult years, I came to appreciate his comedy as well-written sketches that actually relied on talent with the English language as opposed to 50 ways to use the "F" bomb in grammar. I think subconsciously, I wanted to emulate that with my writing: playing around with the English language just enough to make my stories interesting without an over reliance on select adjectives (trust me, creating a kneecap insult that replaces a swear word/multiple swear words is not the easiest thing to do).

He will always be a comedic legend in my book. A legend that people often strive to emulate but haven't yet completely succeeded in doing so.

So I leave you with this question: who is your favorite comedian, past or present, that has influenced you in a particular way?

Episode #300: My Bookcase {3}-Curiously Odd Non-Fiction

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 10 Nov 2025 14:13:00 +0000

Flashback Monday of sorts: just to give everyone an idea on how long I've been blogging, this is a pic of my daughter that I had used in my photo blog back in the late 2000's. She is now 24 1/2 and a university freshman pursuing a dual PhD/Masters (already has a BA) in neuroscience; the two stores in the background filed for bankruptcy earlier this year and were (mostly) liquidated.

As I've mentioned previously, non-fiction is my preferred genre to read. It started with the Guinness Book of World Records, but quickly spidered off into other sub-genres under that umbrella, including one of my perennial faves: true crime.

Now I know that sounds weird, but true crime really became my go-to non-fiction genre for most of my adult life. Whenever I had a problem in finding something to read, I could always depend on true crime coming through for me.

Fast forward a few decades. Having exhausted most of what I have chosen to read about in true crime, I moved on to other topics under the queasy literary umbrella that is death that happened to strike my fancy. One of the odder topics that had struck my fancy was how people passed away performing/pursuing certain outdoor activities (aka The Darwin Awards), of which one, visiting a national park, is the subject of this post.

~~~~~~~

I had first heard about this particular book while I was watching a documentary about North America a few years ago, so I decided to check it out. As the subtitle suggests, it contains all kinds of Darwin Awards activity (along with some that were decidedly not Darwin Awards eligible) that has happened since Yellowstone was first opened back in 1872.

The one thing that stood out to me was not the fact they had records of untimely deaths dating back to 1872, nor the fact that the book was written by (at the time of publication) a member of the NPS, but the fact that this book is an updated second edition, circa 2014, with the first edition being published in 1995.

It kind of boggles the mind that a second (and apparently final) edition had to be produced in order to bring this darker side of Yellowstone to completion (as of 2014).

Not to weird anyone out any further than they already are by reading this post, but I found this book to be quite the engaging read. While some of the events are distasteful to read, Lee managed to weave in the history of Yellowstone quite effectively throughout his narrative. Essentially, you're not just reading a book about smart people doing stupid things, or nature doing stupid things to smart people (with tragic results), but you're also reading a thoroughly researched history of Yellowstone too.

If your secret guilty pleasure is reading stories about people who nominate themselves for a Darwin Award, this book is for you. It's well written, highly enjoyable tome that treats the profoundly stupid, the simply careless and the those who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with equal gravitas, thus letting the reader judge for themselves the merit of each and every story.

I sincerely hope that this latest installment of my personal bookcase has met or exceeded your expectations this week.

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 15:03:00 +0000

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.

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

noreply@blogger.com (G. B. Miller) — Mon, 27 Oct 2025 13:59:00 +0000

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

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

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

#1: I decided to start another novel.

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

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

#2: I joined another writer's group.

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

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

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

3#: My bookcase.

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

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

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

Examples:

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

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

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

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

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

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