Music 202: Rules For The Blues 2

Continuing with the wickedly funky e-mail that was thoughtfully passed on to me by Riot Kitty, here is #2 of Rules For The Blues. If you missed #1, check it out here.

13} You have the right to sing the blues if:

1. You older than dirt
2. You blind
3. You shot a man in Memphis
4. You can't be satisfied

14} You don't have the right to sing the blues if:

1. You have all of your teeth
2. You were once blind but now can see
3. The man in Memphis lived
4. You have a pension fund

15} Blues is not a matter of color. It's a matter of bad luck. Tiger Woods cannot sing the blues. Sonny Liston could. Ugly white people also got a let up on the blues.

16} If you ask for water and your darlin' give you gasoline, it's the blues.

17} Other acceptable blues beverages are:

1. Cheap wine
2. Whiskey or bourbon
3. Muddy water
4. Nasty black coffee

18} The following are NOT blues beverages:

1. Perrier
2. Chardonnay
3. Snapple
4. Slim Fast

Thanksgiving....

More than enough to go around, don't you think?

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

Music 202: Rules For The Blues I

The other day, I got this very funky e-mail from my very good friend Riot Kitty, who in turn got it from someone else. So, for lack of any lengthy original topic (trust me, dealing with Amazon and having a toddler file a grievance against me for not answering an e-mail in a timely manner, not make lengthy diatribes. One of them, and the 1st 10K guesses do not count, does make a medium sized explicative laden diatribe), a little musical humor for the day. Enjoy part 1 of Rules For The Blues.

1} Most blues begin, "Woke up this morning...."

2} "I got a good woman" is a bad way to begin the blues, unless you stick something nasty in the next line like, "I got a good woman, with the meanest face in town.

3} The blues is simple. After you get the first line right, repeat it. Then find something that rhymes...sort of: Got a good woman with the meanest face in town. Got teeth like Margaret Thatcher, and she weigh 500 pounds."

4} The blues is not about choice. You stuck in a ditch, you stuck in a ditch--aint' no way out.

5} Blues cars: Chevys, Fords, Cadillacs and broken down trucks. Blues don't travel in Volvos, BMWs, or SUVs. Most blues transportation is a Greyhound bus or a southbound train. Jet aircraft and company motor pools ain't even in the running. Walkin' plays a major part in the blues lifestyle. So does fixin' to die.

6} Teenagers can't sing the blues. They ain't fixin' to die yet. Adults can sing the blues. In blues, "adulthood" means being old enough to get the electric chair if you shoot a man in Memphis.

A Little Of This And A Little Of That

The other might, I was perusing the blogs that I subscribe via the e-mail (roughly one dozen) when I came across a post from a blog called The Real Blogger Status about using verification for anonymous comments. I read it with great interest, and afterwards, I gave some serious thought about reactivating anonymous commenting on my blog (singular).

To refresh everyone's memory, I stopped allowing anonymous commenting around June 1, 2013, which was directly due to getting nailed with roughly 75+ spam comments Memorial Day weekend.

But as they say, sometimes necessity will trump the annoyance/common sense factor, so with mild trepidation, I reactivated anonymous (along with name/URL) commenting on just this blog only. My other blogs will not have it, because quite frankly, I'm not in the mood to perpetually monitor 5 blogs for spam.

And wouldn't you know it, a long time spammer (circa 2008) left the first anonymous comment. For those of you who have been around since the last decade, there was a blogger who intensely disliked American woman, and he made sure that everyone one and their 3rd cousins twice removed knew about it. Suffice to say, in no short order, he was completely binged and purged from Blogger. He still pops up from time to time to peddle his nonsense, but overall, he's like a little annoying mosquito that you have to zap during the summer.

So, with that little announcement about a very minor change to this blog, on with the main course.

Spend Those Greenbacks Wisely And You'll Never Be Disappointed Again

I thought for today, I would share my unique experiences/viewpoint on the wonderful world of self-publishing. I say unique because I'm one of those rare breeds that have accomplished the publishing trifecta: published through normal means, published through vanity, and published through an indie platform.

We'll completely skip being published through normal means because the cost of doing so is basically zero if you don't have an agent, 15% if you do, and go right to the other two-thirds of the trifecta.

Being published through a vanity is a basically a case of not spending your greenbacks wisely, because let's face, shelling out dollars to someone to publish your book as is, repeat as is, is stupid. I should know, because I did it myself, and it took me about three years to recover from the financial hit. The only silver lining out of being published via a vanity publisher is that the books you wind up buying can be used to set up shop as a boutique store (i.e. Books By G.B. Miller) and thus file a Schedule C on your federal taxes. For those of you who are wondering about the financial hit, overall it cost me somewhere in the general neighborhood of $2300.

Now, being published by an indie platform, which in my case is both Smashwords and CreateSpace/Amazon. In each particular case, the greenbacks that were spent, were spent wisely.

Vent Or Promo?

I have a bit of a quandary today.

Originally, I was going to do a little promo work on one of my books. You know, a little puffing of the chest and the groveling on the ground as it applies to my writing. But yesterday (11/13), I got the wind slightly knocked out of my sail when I received yet another complaint that called into question my KSA's (that's Knowledge, Skills and Abilities) as it applies to my job. But, unlike the Cruel Shoes, this was a complaint that I, in the 18 1/2 ungodly years spent working for state of Connecticut, had never previously received.

Suffice to say, I am seriously pissed off about this particular complaint from this toddler. And as many of you know, when I get seriously pissed off about something (apologies for the uncouth select adjective), I have a tendency to slice, dice and julian about it on my blog.

However, after giving a mini-version of this issue on Facebook, I'm not so sure I want to vent about it on my blog. After all, the last thing I really want to do on my blog is come off like a whiny little toddler, which of course would be a major coup for me, considering I'm just a tad south of 50.

So after spending a few hours calming down (can you picture how bizarre a calm G.B. would look?), I decided to take a crack at doing a little pimping of my latest. For those of you who need a mild refresher on what my latest is, please peruse either the Blogger version of my book blog or the Tumblr version of my book blog.

So the news about my latest is this: I got the manuscript back from the formatter and once I get the cover back from the graphic designer, I'll upload everything to CreateSpace this coming weekend.

And that, in a nutshell, is the highlight, both personal and professional, of my week.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

Life: Is Where It's...At?

Philosophically speaking, I do not have two turntables and a microphone. Instead, I have five payrolls, four parts of fiscal insanity, three parts of labor stupidity, two parts round pegs/square holes and one part of what's-in-it-for-me?

Mentally speaking, I am simply here in body and barely here in spirit. I am maladjusting quite nicely to my new schedule and the side effects that I'm experiencing are simply awesomesauce:

Seriously long work day plus getting home late plus having dinner very late plus having almost no time to run errands or properly decompress from the aggravation of the day plus a severely messed up sleep schedule equals burnout on the level of this (modern):

or burnout on the level of this (classic):

What's this mean for you the reader? For now in the short term, it means that my blogging will be even more sporadic that usual (if that's possible). But on the flipside, it means I will make a concentrated effort to get out and visit your blogs more regularly.

As always, the ultimate goal is to shake off what ails me (which in this case is serious work stress and serious personal stress, but surprisingly no financial stress) so that I can return to the normal chaos that I'm used to functioning in. Until then, keep knocking at the door, because you never know when you'll find it unlocked.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

IWSG Post Day 3!

IWSG

Welcome my friends to the blog that never ends, I am your most excellent host, G.B. Miller!

Not only is today November 5th but it's the first Wednesday of the month, and you know what that means? It means it's IWSG time!

The first Wednesday of the month is set aside for insecure writers across the blog-o-sphere to share all of our individual experiences, the gud, the baaaaaad and the plug ugly. You can either click on the link at the picture, or on the IWSG page located at the top of this blog.
Today's post is about a topic, while not exceptionally dear to my heart but resides just to the right of me (seriously, like my XP computer that I do my writing on is like one foot pace away from me), that is the latest plague ailing me, and I'm sure at one point has ailed you.

Having story that grabs you, shakes you around for several seconds to get the juices flowing, then unleashes you like a category 5 hurricane on an unsuspecting computer.

Right now, I can count on one hand (using the old calendar rhyme) the amount of times that a story has grabbed me in such a way that I had to simply spend all my free time writing it to completion: six short stories, of which three reside here and one resides here, two novellas of which the synopsis of one is here (note: this links is to my adult blog) and one novel.

For the past year I have fluttered between roughly a half dozen or so stories of various lengths in an attempt at finding the one story that will unleash the storm within and so far, I have a batting average that is extremely south of the Mendoza Line. Let me tell you, as someone who probably has some latent OCD flowing his veins, this has really bothered me at a level that I am simply not comfortable with being at for any kind of period of time.

But, as they say, there is at the moment, a microscopic glimmer of hope that this will be soon turned around. About four months ago, I started yet another writing project (shades of OCD), in that I wanted to do a short story anthology. I've already re-written one story, while it didn't really grab me like I wanted, it gave me enough of a nudge to perform the BICAW maneuver and actually complete the assigned task. I performed a quicky search of my XP hard drive and found a few more stories that looked like candidates. One, entitled Rain, has become the possible front runner of being the story that will become my category 5. While I haven't spent all of my free time rewriting this, I am spending some of my free time outlining a few plot possibilities for the story, which I will take as a good sign.

And that, my friends, is the plug ugly portion of my trifecta. Tune in next month when I will have the gud portion of my trifecta.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.

Moanday....

A semi-short pointy post about nothing (funneling my inner Jerry Seinfeld, which in and of itself, is a very scary thing) today, since we're hip deep into the extended version of my work schedule (48 regular hours + 2 hours of OT) this week. For those of you who need a super short yet highly informative post, please wander over to the Tumblr version of Father Nature's Corner.

For those of you who can't stand the data suck up that Tumblr can inflict on a computer, I have this annoying little song that is guaranteed to stick in your brain for the rest of your Monday.

BTW, this is the B-side (Just Like) Starting Over.

(c) 2014 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved.